Untying the knot

THE FIRST Iraqi opposition conference held on Iraqi soil was in the city of Salahuddin, in northern Iraq, at the end of October 1992. It was preceded by three opposition meetings, the first of which--facilitated by Syria and financed by Saudi Arabia -- was held in Beirut in March 1991, shortly after suppression of the uprising inside Iraq.

In June 1992, various Iraqi opposition groupings met in Vienna. At that meeting, the Iraqi National Congress (INC) emerged as the umbrella organisation under which some prominent factions of Iraqi opposition tied the knot, but the coalition later collapsed, causing the INC to lose much of its credibility.

On October 27, 1992, some 234 delegates representing Iraqi opposition groups gathered for the first time on Iraqi soil in the town of Salahuddin, north of Arbil. The conference was able to create INC's basic institutions. The national assembly membership was expanded from 87 to 234. Then it created a three-man presidential council that gave equal representation to the Shiites, Kurds, and Sunnis, consisting of: (1) Sayyid Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, (2) Massoud Barzani, (3) major General Hassan Mustafa Naquib.

In a telephone interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, Salah Al-Sheikhli, a member of the executive committee of the conference and a former member of the Ba'th Party, said that the major bulk of the Iraqi opposition movements took part in the Salahuddin. This included the Iraqi National Accord (INA) Harkat Al-Wifaq; the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), represented by Abdel-Razaq Al-Safi; the Iraqi Democratic Party; and the Independent Iraqi Authority, headed by Major General Hassan Al-Naquib.

The meeting was also attended by Mohamed Al- Haydri, representative of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq; Ibrahim Gafaari, representative of the Islamic Daw'a Party; Ibrahim Al-Mateeri, of the Islamic Action Organisation; and the Iraqi National Turkoman Party, which was represented by Muzafar Arsalan. The INC was represented by Mohamed Bahr Al-Ou'loum, Iyad Alawi, Sheikh Sami A'zara, Ghanem Gawad and Mohamed Mohamed Ali.

A committee of 15 members was appointed to look into proposals to further unite all Iraqi factions. Among the many recommendations, the conference stressed that "the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Iraq cannot be compromised" and that "the government of Iraq will be a parliamentary democratic and constitutional government."

In February 1993, a follow-up meeting of the INC's executive council was held in the same city. It brought together representatives of the various Iraqi factions, but was boycotted by the Islamic Daw'a Party. One of the main results was the formation of a consultative committee comprising 10 members to represent the different trends of the political spectrum. This number was later increased to 26, according to Al-Sheikhli.

The task of this committee was to examine the different scenarios of a future political system for Iraq and to outline the principle guidelines regarding political and military action of the opposition. During this meeting Al-Sheikhli, who formerly headed the planning department at Iraq's Ministry of Planning, was named the spokesman for the INC. He was also appointed a member of the consultative committee which was to oversee the plans for a future political system in Iraq.

In the view of many, the most important achievement at this landmark meeting was the allocation of representative "quotas" to the various opposition factions along ethnic and sectarian lines -- commonly known as the "Salahuddin quotas". Accordingly, the Kurdish political entities were offered 25 per cent, the Islamic Shi'a parties and movements' quota was 33 per cent, the Sunni groups seven per cent, the Turkoman parties six per cent and three per cent for the Assyrians. The rest was allocated to secular and liberal parties and groupings. According to Al-Sheikhli, the criteria of representation were based on "a virtual census", with Shi'a Arabs representing 55 per cent of the population, Sunni Arabs 22 per cent, and Kurds 19 per cent.

The London meeting held last December remained faithful to the "Salahuddin formula" in its distribution of quotas. It allocated 25 representatives for the main Shi'a opposition movement, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) (Al-Majlis Al-A'la lil Thawra Al-Islamiya fi Al-Iraq), and 15 representatives for the two main Kurdish parties -- the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The Iraqi National Council (INC), led by Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi National Accord (INA) (Al- Wifaq) and the Constitutional Monarchy Movement (CMM), led by Al-Sharif Ali Bin Al-Hussein, were allocated 15 representatives. Finally, there are four Turkoman representatives, two Assyrians and five independent representatives.

The SCIRI, KDP, PUK and INA are known as the "Group of Four" -- the INC and CMM often being added to this group. The representatives of those groupings comprise the so-called "Committee of 65" (referring to the number of members), which is due to convene in Arbil this month to discuss the future of Iraq. This conference will be boycotted by both the Al-Daw'a Party and the Iraqi Communist Party, both of which feel they were not part of the original setup and would simply be added for form.

Ibrahim Nawar's Iraqi Opposition and the Struggle to Remove Saddam 1990-1993 (London: N. Publications, 1993) was used to compile this report.

C a p t i o n : Talabani, Khalilzada, Barzani, Salem and Al-Hakim

Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 13 - 19 February 2003 (Issue No. 625)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/625/sc5.htm