US military's new Iraq strategy: religious conciliation

Last week's meeting in Baghdad – the largest of its kind in 37 years – included warring Sunnis and Shiites.

from the June 21, 2007 edition

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"If this step hadn't occurred, there wouldn't be any movement in that direction," he says. "This is the foundational step to allow broader reconciliation, at least among religious leaders, many of whom are perpetrators of violence, to begin to move forward."

But at least one US analyst says such meetings have occurred on some level before and while they yield conciliatory rhetoric, that rarely translates into a decrease in violence.

Many of those perpetrating violence, at mosques and elsewhere, don't listen to the clerics, says Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington. "It would be great if this works, but I'm deeply pessimistic at this stage in the civil war that it can be reversed by meetings like this."

Much of the meeting was spent on deciding how the meeting would proceed and included only a little substantive discussion beyond denouncing extremist Sunnis in the form of Al Qaeda and vowing to protect holy sites around the country, Hoyt says. The accord they signed included other broad points around the ideas of free expression of faith, tolerance, and unity.

Hoyt declined to say what the issues of contention that remain are, saying those are negotiating points that will be addressed at the next meeting within the next two months. Media reports from Baghdad indicated that imams from various mosques in Baghdad have recently been encouraging each other to attend one another's mosques for Friday prayer.

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