Iraq continues towards reconciliation
posted at 1:00 pm on April 22, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Nouri al-Maliki has fulfilled another demand of the US Congress and the Sunnis in Iraq towards national reconciliation. The Baghdad government began releasing thousands of detainees accused of all but the worst of crimes during the 2003-2008 time period, most of them Sunnis. The release further strengthens the bonds forged with the Sunnis over the past several months and enhanced by Maliki’s crackdown on Shi’ite militias:
Ghafur was among 122 detainees released from an Iraqi-run prison in Sulaimaniyah and given their freedom at a ceremony here Monday as part of the largest wave of prisoner releases since the war began. The Iraqi government set them free to reintegrate men into society who were accused of relatively minor crimes, and ease the strains on a prison system operating well beyond its capacity. ….
Most of those released were Sunnis who had been low-level army officials or former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. They were among thousands of Iraqis who were arrested without charges by coalition and Iraqi forces. The discharges signal “a return to some sense of normalcy,” said U.S. Army Col. David Paschal, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division, who attended the ceremony. “At some point, the fighting must stop.”…
The prisoners are being freed under an amnesty law passed by Iraq’s parliament in February. More than 52,400 detainees in government custody have applied for their freedom. Of those, nearly 78%, or more than 40,000, were granted amnesty. More than one in five, though, were denied because they are being held for crimes not covered by the law. These include killing, kidnapping, rape, embezzling government funds, selling drugs and smuggling antiquities.
The amnesty law does not cover more than 23,000 Iraqis who are in U.S. custody. Still, Air Force Capt. Rose Richeson, spokeswoman for coalition detainee operations, says nearly 8,000 detainees held at two coalition detention centers have been released since September, an average of 52 a day. “It is reasonable to expect that rate of release will continue,” she said.
This marks yet another benchmark in the Maliki government’s progress in meeting the political benchmarks set by Congress. It also defuses a longstanding point of friction with the Sunni tribes who have complained loudly about the imbalance in treatment for their communities by Baghdad. Their efforts to work within the political system have paid off, and their win in gaining amnesty for so many detainees will encourage them to work within the democratic system rather than conduct insurgencies against it.
The release allows both Iraq and the US to focus on bigger fish — and to keep them from recruiting insurgents from the inside. Both US and Iraqi officials note the danger of leaving massive numbers of minor violators in close proximity to real hard-line extremists. The prisons become recruiting and training centers for future terrorists, especially when neither have any real prospects for a normal life in post-Saddam Iraq.
At the ceremony in Sulaimaniyah, the released prisoners danced and celebrated with their former guards and their families. If that spirit can remain and the nation’s infrastructure can be restored and modernized, Iraq can reach a real reconciliation quickly. Perhaps at some point, the US will notice this progress and recommit themselves to encouraging and protecting it.
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NY Times headline: Iraqi prison break
Akzed on April 22, 2008 at 1:04 PM
I assume you mean the media and those won HAVEN’T heard the good news from Iraq?
HarryStar on April 22, 2008 at 1:05 PM
Somewhere there is a Lib, Photo Shopping orange jump suits and hoods on those dancers.
Hening on April 22, 2008 at 1:06 PM
We shall see. I don’t have much confidence that iraq will do anything right. What they do best is kill each other, and amnesty should help bring the death total for Iraqi on Iraqi murders up.
saiga on April 22, 2008 at 1:06 PM
“… the released prisoners danced and celebrated with their former guards and their families.”
Good God, I hope the screening process works!
Tony737 on April 22, 2008 at 1:10 PM
Barack Obama’s response….
Dr.Cwac.Cwac on April 22, 2008 at 1:14 PM
Sounds like Progress to me! I wonder if any lefty BDS “Progressive” folks will take notice?
kirkill on April 22, 2008 at 1:14 PM
That was my initial thought too, so we’ll see. But it still beats what might happen if we did the whole cut n’ run policy envisioned by the loonies on the left.
kirkill on April 22, 2008 at 1:18 PM
“Hmpf. Too late. W already lost” -Harry Reid
davidk on April 22, 2008 at 1:27 PM
LOL!!!
D2Boston on April 22, 2008 at 1:27 PM
McClatchy: Maliki government unable to maintain prisons at present populations.
Kafir on April 22, 2008 at 1:30 PM
I understand what you are saying but just remember that the iraqi people themselves are not the ones doing the killing. The large majority of the people doing the killing in iraq are foreign to the country. I believe the iraqi people are beginning to wake up and smell the coffee. It is a slow painful process, but then again anything that is worth doing is (japan, germany, north korea). Keep it up Iraqis, soon you will be the gem in the middle east.
SoCalInfidel on April 22, 2008 at 2:11 PM
Actually, I figure that the MSM will be interviewing the released prisoners in hope of finding one that will give them a juicy story about how they were mistreated and tortured.
Sunbane on April 22, 2008 at 2:21 PM
Don’t forget that Bilal Hussein, the AP cameraman, was similarly released under the same law. I noted that this was part of the US benchmarks at that time as well.
lawhawk on April 22, 2008 at 2:22 PM
That’s great…
right2bright on April 22, 2008 at 3:19 PM
I sh!t you not when I say that seeing Iraqi’s, or any Islamic population, holding roses instead of bloody swords, RPG launchers, AK-47s, signs saying death to the west, etc … etc … takes a weight off my soul. It’s as if the sun is peeking out and illuminating a truly brutal and demonic place.
bcre8v on April 22, 2008 at 3:42 PM
bcre8v: amen, brother.
crosspatch on April 22, 2008 at 3:50 PM
Maybe Maliki can come over here and teach our boys and girls in congress how to govern.
ThePrez on April 22, 2008 at 4:36 PM
The Left says:
We are already defeated.The surge will fail.
There will be no political solution.
it costs too much for us to be there.
jgapinoy on April 22, 2008 at 4:49 PM
im surprised there isnt very many comments on this thread….this is the stuff I love to read….am I alone in this thinking?
SoCalInfidel on April 22, 2008 at 6:08 PM
“Perhaps at some point, the US media will notice this progress and recommit themselves to encouraging and protecting it.”
Fixed.
:)
hadsil on April 22, 2008 at 6:46 PM
Victory is sweet. We took the arab dictator out of kuwait and we have a friend there now. Iraq is the next domino to fall.The French and the Germans are no longer selling out to the highest bidder in oil slush funds.Tell me again how dumb Geo W looks.Victory in the desert. Now lets keep up the victories rolling with the son of the Admirals’ McCain.Contribute to the victories with $100.00 to the McCain election Team. We need guns and God, but no more sour grapes.
jimw on April 22, 2008 at 9:09 PM
Excellent. You know what those of us over here working with actual Iraqis would call that? The polite ones of us would call that “a foolish generalization”. The less polite would call it something like “stupid sh$t” or “ignorant @#$%”.
How many Iraqis do you know? All slavering to kill, kill, kill, eh? Believe it or not, almost everyone here just wants to be left alone to take care fo their families and get on with life. There are opportunists, jacka$$es, theives and scoundrels, like anywhere else - and they happen to have some neighbors who have no trouble sending in people who will saw heads off and bomb markets. Why not spill a little bile on them, rather than their victims and the people fighting them?
Well, I am off to go work with the people you might even deny exist. The Iraqi Army that happens to be the ones doing most of the fighting (and dying) against the scum.
major john on April 22, 2008 at 11:40 PM
Maj. John, thanks for your service and very useful comment. I have worked a bit with the Iraqis and while frustrating it belied all the harshest generalizations we unfortunately see and hear all the time.
But Ed, please, button up on the superficial optimism. Reconciliation is not going to happen quickly. This odd faith in nearly instant solutions is one factor that appeared to contribute to our disastrous and inexplicable policy of passivity in ‘05/’06.
It’s bad enough that the signficant improvement in trends in Iraq has been cloaked in media silence (naturally, without any serious attempt to educate by the administration). Every step forward should be accompanied by the proviso “It sucks, and will continue to suck for a long time, and but will yield to determined effort and patience”. Reconciliation isn’t even absolutely essential to our objectives (long discussion) - but there’s no question that it’s NOT going to occur “quickly”.
Final note. The media clip used here repeats the standard media distortion about security detainees - the implication that “arrested without charges” means swept up randomly, or punitively based on affiliation or ethnicity. This was/is not a judicial operation, but a war. The Coalition and Iraq have attempted to apply quasi-judicial standards and processes as much as has been feasible, but to always add the “arrested/held without charges” line to every story on detainees is a deliberately misleading move that over-simplifies with an eye towards distortion. And naturally, per the usual procedure, this distortion has never been countered by military or administration public affairs efforts.
IceCold on April 23, 2008 at 12:47 AM