Iraq’s new government is expected to announce on Monday an amnesty offer for Iraqi insurgents who have fought against United States forces, in a striking attempt to draw a line under the US occupation of the country.
Though the amnesty is aimed at the ”footsoldiers” of the insurgency, it will include the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose militia has fought US troops in the southern Shia cities of Najaf and Kerbala.
Even more controversially, the Iraqi government has indicated that individual gunmen who fought against the US-led coalition would be pardoned, arguing that opposition to the American occupation could be ”justified”.
”Now we have had sovereignty returned we are prepared to forgive those people who have been misled in order to make a new start,” said Sabah Kadhim, spokesperson and senior adviser at Iraq’s interior ministry. He said the amnesty would not include ”real criminals”, but it is unclear where the line will be drawn.
Any attempt to extend the amnesty to those people who are known to have killed American troops runs the risk of angering the US military, which still has around 140 000 troops in Iraq.
Kadhim said the new administration wanted to make a break with the occupation and the decisions of the disbanded governing council. ”I don’t really want to deal with the problems of the past. We are starting a new page,” he said.
Officials in Iraq said a final decision to offer an amnesty to low-level insurgents would be taken at a cabinet meeting today, just one week after the prime minister, Ayad Allawi, assumed power in a hastily organised handover.
A source in the new government said on Sunday night there was widespread support for the move and an announcement was expected on Monday morning.
The initiative underlines the difficulties facing the new government and the problems it has inherited.
On Sunday Tony Blair’s former personal envoy to Baghdad, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, accused the Bush administration of underestimating the scale of the postwar problems.
”There were different analyses. And those making the decisions, which is Washington, chose the wrong analysis.” He said the administration had been influenced by the prominent Iraqi exile, Ahmed Chalabi, ”who wanted the thing to happen, and therefore wanted to make it seem more easy”.
Asked whether the invasion had been worth the bloodshed, Sir Jeremy conceded on BBC1’s Breakfast with Frost: ”You can’t say that yet.”
The offer of an amnesty presents a delicate problem for the new government as it manoeuvres between establishing its authority in Iraq, without antagonising America. The balancing act grows even more complicated if the amnesty is offered to the Iraqi guerrillas in Falluja who inflicted heavy casualties on US forces during a year-long campaign.
The government spokesperson, George Sada, told reporters in Baghdad that none of the ”hardcore” criminals, including those accused of murder, would be eligible for amnesty. Only those who were ”misled” by the leaders of the insurgency would qualify, he said.
However, individual gunmen who fought against the US would be pardoned. ”If he was in opposition against the Americans, that will be justified because it was an occupation force,” Sada told AP. ”We will give them freedom.”
On Sunday night, the precise terms of the amnesty for al-Sadr and his militia remained unclear. He was charged with the murder of a rival cleric in April last year, and he has publicly denounced Allawi’s government for being no different than the US occupation.
However, in an interview with ABC television on Sunday, Allawi said that he had received a delegation from the cleric on Saturday night. ”He is looking for an amnesty,” he said. ”He is looking to be part of the political process.”
Allawi said the delegation was told there could be no amnesty for the militia fighters unless they surrendered their weapons.
The policy is also an attempt to show the independence of the fledgling Iraqi government. Allawi’s government is likely to take other steps to improve security that are dramatically different from the approach of the US occupation authority.
Some officers and soldiers from the dissolved Iraqi army are expected to be invited back to their jobs and the death penalty, suspended by the US last year, will be reintroduced. – Guardian Unlimited Â