Iraq's sidelined opposition pushes for greater war role

Iraqi Kurds and Shiites feel as if they have experience to offer in opposing Hussein. Following the 1991 Gulf War, Kurdish militias and Shiite rebels overwhelmed the regime and took control in 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces - without benefit of a US invasion.

They undertook these uprisings in part because of encouragement from then President George H. W. Bush, and they remain dismayed and embittered that the US declined to prevent Hussein's forces from using force to turn them back. Fear of a repeat of 1991 is undoubtedly keeping some Iraqis from fighting the regime.

In reviewing the progress of the war in southern Iraq, where coalition forces have found little popular support, opposition leaders shake their heads. "The lesson from the south is that they are there to do this on their own, without [the] opposition," says a Kurdish official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

SCIRI official Adel Abdul Mahdi, a senior adviser to Ayatollah Hakim, attended the Dukan meeting, but says he sees no concrete signs of a US willingness to involve the opposition. "We see good will, we have heard some good words, but in practice we have seen nothing," he says.

Hakim has sidelined his Iraqi Shiite followers because of the way the US has handled SCIRI and other groups, Mr. Abdul Mahdi says. "The Americans have isolated the opposition, minimized its role, and in contacts in Washington and London, they have spoken only about 'consulting' the opposition."

Opposition leaders say they do not expect the US to hand them the country on a platter, but they do insist on a more substantive role in prosecuting the war and in whatever transitional leadership emerges following a defeat of Hussein. "We are not going to fight the Iraqi Army without knowing the real intentions of the Americans," Abdul Mahdi says.

In its campaign against Hussein, the US has often kept the opposition at arm's length, in part because different elements of the US government have been at odds over the utility and reliability of various opposition groups.

The main constituents of the opposition are the two Kurdish parties that administer northern Iraq, SCIRI, and several smaller groups, including the INC, that consist of longstanding exiles and defectors from Hussein's regime.

The US may have drawn some benefit from having Iraqis call for Hussein's ouster, but it has also kept the opposition on a short leash because of worries that Iraqis inside the country would reject opposition figures perceived as outsiders and turncoats.

If the US does not incorporate the opposition into its war effort, SCIRI official Ghaleb al-Assadi warns, "there will be a lot of losses inside the coalition and lots of destruction and damage against the people of Iraq and the forces of the Iraqi regime."

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