Tribes Defy an Attempt by Zarqawi To Drive Residents From Western City
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 14, 2005; Page A01
BAGHDAD, Aug. 14 -- Rising up against insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, Iraqi Sunni Muslims in Ramadi fought with grenade launchers and automatic weapons Saturday to defend their Shiite neighbors against a bid to drive them from the western city, Sunni leaders and Shiite residents said.
Dozens of Sunni members of the Dulaimi tribe established cordons around Shiite homes, and Sunni men battled followers of Zarqawi, a Jordanian, for an hour Saturday morning. The clashes killed five of Zarqawi's guerrillas and two tribal fighters, residents and hospital workers said. Zarqawi loyalists pulled out of two contested neighborhoods in pickup trucks stripped of license plates, witnesses said.
The leaders of four of Iraq's Sunni tribes had rallied their fighters in response to warnings posted in mosques by followers of Zarqawi. The postings ordered Ramadi's roughly 3,000 Shiites to leave the city of more than 200,000 in the area called the Sunni Triangle. The order to leave within 48 hours came in retaliation for alleged expulsions by Shiite militias of Sunnis living in predominantly Shiite southern Iraq."We have had enough of his nonsense," said Sheik Ahmad Khanjar, leader of the Albu Ali clan, referring to Zarqawi. "We don't accept that a non-Iraqi should try to enforce his control over Iraqis, regardless of their sect -- whether Sunnis, Shiites, Arabs or Kurds.''
Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders and armed followers of Zarqawi have clashed before in the far west, and Sunnis and Shiites in western cities have sympathized with one another over what they have saidare attempts by foreign fighters to spark open sectarian conflict there. But Saturday's clash in Ramadi was one of the first times Sunni Arabs have been known to take up arms against insurgents specifically in defense of Shiites.
The dramatic show of unity in the western city came as Sunni and Shiite Arabs and ethnic Kurds in Baghdad continued negotiations over the country's constitution. They were trying to meet a Monday deadline but failing to resolve some key differences.
President Jalal Talabani, who has hosted days of closed-door talks among Iraq's factional and political leaders, said he remained hopeful the deadline could be met. "There will be no postponing of any issue," Talabani told reporters. "God willing, tomorrow the constitution will be ready."
Disputes over federalism -- particularly whether Shiites should be allowed to have a separate federal state in the south equivalent to the one the Kurds have established in the north -- remain the biggest obstacle. Sunni Arabs rigidly oppose the division, expressing fears that it would split Iraq and leave their minority stranded in the resource-poor center and west.
Talabani's spokesman, Kamran Qaradaghi, hinted late Saturday that the talks were heading toward acceptance of a weaker federalism that would still give Kurds autonomy guarantees and grant powers to Iraq's provinces. "There is an opinion favoring decentralization, with wide powers for the provinces and an assurance of the special nature of the Kurdish region," he said in a statement.
Delegates said faction leaders did settle one argument Saturday: what to call the country. Negotiators concurred on "The Republic of Iraq," rejecting Kurdish-led demands to include "Federal" and Shiite-led demands to include "Islamic" in the title, delegate Mahmoud Othman said.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad sat with faction leaders throughout the day, pushing for completion by Monday, said a Sunni Arab constitutional delegate, Salih Mutlak.
The fighting in Ramadi suggested a potentially serious threat to Zarqawi's group, al Qaeda in Iraq, which is made up of Sunni extremists from inside and outside Iraq. The insurgency has increasingly targeted Shiite civilians along with U.S. and Iraqi forces, particularly with grisly suicide bombings that have killed scores of Shiites at a time. Zarqawi's followers see Shiites as rivals for power and as apostates within the broader Islamic faith.
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