Informed Comment

Radio Sawa reports that the United Iraqi Alliance bloc in parliament met and rejected the new US policy of arming Sunni Arab groups to fight "al-Qaeda" in Iraq. The UIA, the leading bloc in parliament, is a coalition of Shiite fundamentalist parties. They insisted that arms be only in the hands of state forces.

"Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" has alienated a lot of Sunni Arab Iraqis, and appears to have assassinated one of the most venerated Iraqi clerical leaders, Harith al-Dhari of the Association of Muslim Scholars and (covertly) of the 1920 Revolution Brigades. The Guardian reported recently that 7 Iraqi Sunni guerrilla groups are forming a political party and have turned against "al-Qaeda" (mainly foreign fighters adhering to the Salafi Jihadi ideology). (For the main guerrilla groups See this background piece.

The Shiite parliamentarians are alarmed at the US military's plan to arm Sunni Arab guerrillas to fight "al-Qaeda." Unlike clueless US pundits such as Charles Krauthammer, these UIA MPs know that being against "al-Qaeda" does not mean being for the al-Maliki government. The Sunni Arabs willing to fight the foreign volunteers are just as anti-Shiite and anti-government as ever, and, armed, will pose new problems for the al-Maliki government as the US draws down its troops over the next couple of years.

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