Pluralistic Campaign Run by Iraqi Nearly Imprisoned for Visit to Israel

WASHINGTON – A former Iraqi minister who was nearly imprisoned for visiting Israel this year has started his own political party that aims to defeat foreign terrorists and enshrine pluralism in Iraq’s constitution.In an interview this week with The New York Sun, Mithal al-Alusi said he was running candidates for the transitional legislative assembly elections next month under the slate of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation.“My party is appealing to the people of Iraq. We must fight for our freedom and against the terrorists,” Mr. al-Alusi said. Not content to count on support from the relatively stable sections of Iraq, the former director-general of the Iraq de-Baathification commission said he was opening campaign offices in the heart of the insurgency: Fallujah, Tikrit, and Ramadi.Mr. al-Alusi’s new party in some ways embodies what American war planners had hoped would emerge in Iraq after the military dismantling of the Baath state. Unlike the major ethnic and religious blocks expected to dominate next month’s elections, Mr. al-Alusi pointed out that his party includes Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis, not to mention Christians and other ethnic minorities.Not only does Mr. al-Alusi say that a post-Saddam Iraq should recognize the state of Israel, but he was also the only member of his country’s de-Baathification commission to go on national TV and make a case for the wide-ranging War Crimes Tribunal. On Monday, 140 members of his party led a protest outside the Syrian Embassy in Baghdad, calling on the world’s remaining Baathist regime, to stop interfering in Iraqi affairs.“We do not want a Palestinian solution, we do not want a Syrian solution. We want an Iraqi solution to our problems,” he said. “There is no deal with terrorists. We have to fight for our liberation. The terrorists only have one aim: To be again in power.”One might think that a political figure like this would be feted by the White House and funded by the Pentagon, but Mr. al-Alusi, who was expelled from Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress in September after he publicly returned from a counterterrorism conference in Israel, has not received a single American dime.“We are getting our financial support from Iraqis who do not have a lot of money right now,” he said.It is perhaps a sign of Iraqi politics that this multiethnic party that rejects the meddling of both Syria and Iran is also one of the country’s smallest. Out of 275 seats in the new transitional legislative assembly, Mr. al-Alusi’s party will only run 24 candidates.“To be honest, when I came back from Israel, everyone said I am a dead man. I am still alive. I still go to the market to buy things for my family, to show people we are there and fighting. If we win one place in this new Parliament, that will mean something, but I think we will win more than one,” Mr. al-Alusi said.He said that he would not enter a coalition with any of the other major ethnically dominated voting blocs before the election, including the Shiite caucus that includes member of his old organization, the Iraqi National Congress. “We don’t want to compromise on a basic platform that supports an open economy, freedom for all religions, and open support for America,” he said.This position is in sharp contrast to Mr. Chalabi’s, who prior to the invasion gave many speeches in Washington where he spoke fondly of a new Iraq, indeed a new Middle East, where the Arabs were not cursed to live under dictators.Today, Mr. Chalabi has aligned himself with a broad coalition of largely religious Shiite parties that are openly calling on American soldiers to end the occupation of Iraq. This slate, expected to win the most seats in next month’s election, is divided on whether Iraq’s constitution should emulate the one in neighboring Iran, where clerics wield considerable political power over almost all of the state’s institutions. For now, Mr. Chalabi supports the Shiite faction, that opposes the Iran model.He has also neutralized some of the more radical Shiite opponents of the military coalition like Muqtada al-Sadr by persuading them to seek power through elections and not violence.But Mr. Chalabi’s political migration has cost him the support of liberals like Mr. al-Alusi. Mr. al-Alusi complained bitterly about Mr. Chalabi’s hand in intimidating bureaucrats in the de-Baathification commission that were loyal to him.“They have asked three people with the commission why they are close to me, and they are trying to throw them out. This is the way of the Nazi and the Baath. Chalabi, he was the head of the commission, and he has given the okay to ask the three people close to me to leave,” he said.Mr. al-Alusi added that he believed “Chalabi is a tool for the Islamic parties. These parties believe if you are not one of them, you have no right to live. But we are not going to give up that easy.”

Pluralistic Campaign Run by Iraqi Nearly Imprisoned for Visit to Israel

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