Sheikh Majid Abdul al-Razzaq Ali
al-Sulaiman is one of the two elder sheikhs of the Dulaim tribe, one of the
largest in Anbar province. He is the uncle of Sheikh Ali Hatem Sulaiman, and
both were leaders in the Awakening movement. The elder Sulaiman has an
interesting story because he fled to Jordan in the 1990s after he took part in
a failed coup against Saddam Hussein and become involved in opposition
politics. After 2003 he quickly became disillusioned with the American
occupation and retreated to Anbar. There he became a target of Al Qaeda in
Iraq, and that was what led Sulaiman to join the Awakening. That movement
quickly became divided by personal rivalries and broke up into different
factions. Sheikh Sulaiman’s story therefore covers the gamut of changes that
took place in Anbar both before and after the 2003 invasion.
Sheikh Majid al-Sulaiman got
involved in the Iraqi opposition movement in the 1990s. He was suspected in a failed coup against Saddam Hussein that led him to flee to Amman, Jordan. There
he became involved in the various exile groups that were against the Baathist regime.
That put him in contact with people like Iyad Allawi, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir
al-Hakim, Massoud Barzani, Ahmed Chalabi, Jalal Talabani, and the Americans. He
went to two major meetings of the opposition in London, one in 2000 and another
in 2003. There they argued about what to do with Baath Party members, the army,
and other issues in a post-Saddam Iraq, but came to no agreement as there were
deep divisions between the different leaders. Instead, Allawi got the sheikh
involved with the Americans. After a number of meetings with U.S. officials in
the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, Sulaiman was convinced to contact several
generals in Anbar, and even returned to Iraq where he handed out satellite
phones in Ramadi, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib to sources that would collect
intelligence for Washington. Sulaiman highlights the diversity of the
opposition to Saddam. There were religious parties like the Islamic Supreme
Council of Iraq, there were ethnic parties like the two Kurdish ones, and there
were nationalists and former Baathists like the Iraqi National List, along with
sheikhs like Sulaiman. Ultimately the wide range of groups and personalities
meant that the opposition could never come to any kind of consensus.
When the U.S. invasion finally
came, Sulaiman was quickly disappointed with its aftermath. He along with Iyad
Allawi were taken to the Iraq-Jordan border by the United States to enter after
the fall of the regime. He found the Trebil border crossing abandoned and being
looted. Then after being greeted by his Dulaim tribe in Ramadi he was called
for a meeting in Baghdad with Jay Garner the head of the Office for
Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) on April 28, which was the
first American-led group in charge of post-war Iraq. This was a famous meeting
where 300-400 Iraqis asked who was in charge of Iraq, who would provide
services, etc. and Garner told them that they were. The attendees then
exploded in rage, and the conference ended in discord. Paul Bremer and the
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) quickly replaced the ORHA and Garner.
Sulaiman was just as unhappy with them as with the ORHA. The sheikh was opposed
to dissolving both the military and the Baath Party, and believed that the
border was being left unguarded allowing Al Qaeda and the Iranians to flow into
the country. Sulaiman then met with Adnan Pachachi, Barzani, Chalabi, Hakim,
Allawi’s representative Nouri Badra, and Hoshyar Zebari in the Green Zone with
Bremer. All of them had complaints about what the CPA was doing, but Bremer
would not budge from his policies. When it came to forming the Iraqi Governing
Council Sulaiman was asked to join, but he declined, because he was so upset
with the CPA. He also complained that the Americans were trying to form a new Iraqi
leadership along ethnosectarian lines. The sheikh became so upset with what was
happening with the U.S. occupation that he gave up on trying to play a role in
Baghdad, and returned to Anbar. Many other Iraqis were just as angry at this
period. Some decided that they were better served staying in the capital and
working with the Americans to attempt to gain power. Sulaiman however was so
disillusioned that he returned to his home in Anbar.
Sulaiman’s time in Anbar didn’t
turn out well either. A new provisional government had been set up, and the new
Governor Abdul Karim Burjis al-Rawi was trying to get the administration up and
running. He sold some government stock to pay public employees, found jobs for
2,000 Anbaris in Baghdad as guards, and got the Americans to pay some civil
servants as well such as teachers. That move towards stability was quickly
ended when Sulaiman’s house was bombed. He then went for a meeting in Baghdad
when Al Qeada in Iraq (AQI) ambushed his entourage. The Islamists quickly
became the major issue in Anbar beheading people, banning certain practices,
and attempting to assert their control over businesses. Sulaiman believed that
Al Qaeda was actually working for Iran. This was an idea shared by many Anbaris
who tried to explain the chaotic post-war situation by blaming an enemy they
knew, Tehran, for nearly everything that was happening. Anbar quickly
became a hotbed of insurgent activity. That disrupted all of the attempts to
put the province back together, and those early positive moves were replaced by
more and more chaos and violence.
The excesses of Al Qaeda
eventually turned the tribes against it and led to the rise of the Awakening.
In Amman, Jordan, Sheikh Abdul Abu Risha held a conference of several prominent
Anbar sheikhs to discuss putting together a tribal force to fight AQI. Sulaiman
knew Abu Risha from before, and had a low opinion of him. Sulaiman called him a
highwayman and a gangster, and thought that actually made him the right person
to fight the Islamists. That led the sheikh to sign on to the Awakening and get
his Dulaim tribe to support it. Many others in Anbar felt the same way. Al
Qaeda came to Iraq claiming that it was there to help the Iraqis expel the
Americans, but it came with its own foreign agenda, which did not sit well with
Anbaris. Their killing of everyone who did not disagree with them was a perfect
example of their excesses.
The Awakening turned out to be an
effective fighting force, but a failure at politics. After security was turned
around in Anbar, the tribes tried their hand at local and national politics.
Sulaiman however claimed that some sheikhs were only concerned about their own
personal gain, and that led to the dissolution of the movement. He was also
critical of the Americans, stating that they were just like Saddam creating
their own sheikhs by handing out money and weapons to them. Sulaiman didn’t say
it outright, but he was talking about Sheikh Abu Risha. He came from a very
small tribe in Anbar, and became the governorates most prominent individual
meeting with General Petraues, President Bush, and others. Like the Iraqi exile
opposition the Awakening had too many personalities with their own agendas.
When the common threat of Al Qaeda was vanquished those differences came out,
and the Awakening broke up into various groups, which were nothing more than
personal vehicles for their leaders like Abu Risha and Sulaiman.
Sheikh Sulaiman’s story highlighted
the fracturing of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Before the 2003
invasion the sheikh participated in the exile movement, then worked with both
the ORHA and CPA, and eventually joined the Anbar Awakening. The opposition
couldn’t agree on what to do about Saddam. The ORHA and CPA didn’t have a plan
for the country, and the Iraqis that attempted to cooperate with it didn’t
agree with much of what the Americans did. Even when Sulaiman joined something
successful like the Awakening those good times didn’t last. The opposition, the
U.S., and the Awakening could not unify the different groups and individuals
that wanted power after the fall of the Baathist regime. Instead there were
always too many voices something that still plagues the country to this day.
SOURCES
McWilliams, Chief Warrant Officer-4 Timothy, and Wheeler,
Lieutenant Colonel Kurtis, ed., Al-Anbar
Awakening Volume II, Iraqi Perspectives, From Insurgency to Counterinsurgency
in Iraq, 2004-2009, Virginia: Marine Corps University, 2009
PBS Frontline, “”We want a Government and We Want It Now,””
Truth, War and Consequences, 10/9/03
No comments:
Post a Comment