Diverse Opposition Groups Struggling to Pull Together

These are agitated times in the Iraqi community here.

Strategists gather in no-frills offices near Persian groceries and Islamic butcher shops, or in sleek cafes with views of Muslim women in black veils, full-length robes and high-heeled designer shoes entering Harrods department store.

The exiles talk about intrigues, their high hopes and the rumblings of war. They talk, at last, about action.

Ever since a landmark meeting with U.S. officials in Washington last month, leaders of half a dozen Iraqi opposition groups have been working to overcome conflicts rooted in their country’s deep religious, ethnic and tribal differences. They have stepped up decade-old cloak-and-dagger operations: They are debriefing defectors and aiding guerrillas inside Iraq, and they claim to be infiltrating spies into the regime of Saddam Hussein.

They have sat down to define their role in the U.S.-led campaign to topple Hussein and bring democracy to Iraq once he is gone.

“Almost everyone is committed to democracy and a constitution--that is fundamental to our unity,” said Nabeel Musawi of the Iraqi National Congress, a coalition of opposition groups. “We are continuing to debate and that is a healthy thing. The debate should continue all the way to Baghdad. We are so diverse--Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds. We are as diverse as the American nation.”

The opposition groups are organizing a conference of Iraqi exiles from around the world in Europe next month. They want to produce a manifesto outlining a democratic future for Iraq and a leadership committee to guide a post-Hussein political transition.

But some activists want to limit participants to no more than 100, while others insist that a truly inclusive event would include about 300. There is also infighting about a State Department program in which dissidents discuss issues such as justice, infrastructure and finances in a nascent Iraqi democracy. About 25 people took part in such a “working group” outside London last month, but a few leaders privately called it a waste of time.

The disputes are symptomatic of problems that lead some U.S. and British policymakers to conclude that the opposition is unreliable. Despite the exiles’ exhilaration and speculation, triggered by an apparently imminent showdown with Hussein, critics say these mostly well-off, well-educated and Westernized exiles have limited clout in Iraq.

Like Afghanistan, Iraq has deep divisions that could tear the country apart if the current regime falls. Analysts say it is difficult to come up with a representative leadership council from among the exiles, much less a potential leader for a transition similar to Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.

“None are ideal candidates,” said Daniel Neep, head of Middle Eastern studies at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank here. “You are kind of importing a leadership.”

There are an estimated 200,000 Iraqis in Britain, most of them in London. Their leaders say they wouldn’t presume to create a provisional government now. They recognize that the leaders of the future could well emerge inside Iraq, according to Hamid Bayati, the London representative of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

“There may be people in Baghdad who are more qualified,” Bayati said. “We are only doing political and media work outside Iraq. We would be disrespectful if we established a government in exile. We hope people inside will be major players.”

Edward S. Walker Jr., president of the Middle East Institute and a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, told Times editors and reporters that even if the Iraqi opposition unites, it might not be able to stay together.

“They will unite for the purpose of getting rid of Saddam, then they will fall apart afterwards over their own interests,” he said.

Bayati’s group represents the Shiite Muslim community, which dominates the south and accounts for about 60% of Iraq’s 22 million people. The group’s political and religious leader, Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Hakim, lives in Iran.

Iran’s government backs the group’s military wing, called the Badr Brigade, which wages guerrilla war on the Iraqi armed forces. The council has put together a gory video of its actions, including a night raid on an Iraqi army outpost, a drive-by shooting attack on a ruling-party headquarters, and the attempted car-bomb assassination of a former Iraqi prime minister in 1999.

Neither the United States nor Iraq’s Sunni Muslims want to see the Shiite organization dominate post-Hussein Iraq.

The organization’s strong ties to Iran have ensured that the Islamic dissidents “have never been flavor of the month for the U.S. government,” Neep said. Bayati said his group did not participate in last month’s State Department conference because “we think Iraq should be dealt with by Iraqis. It will look as if America is trying to plan the future of Iraq.”

The Shiite group urges the U.S. to refrain from an all-out invasion of Iraq.

Instead, Bayati called for an Afghan-style proxy campaign relying on the Shiite fighters in the south, estimated at between 7,000 and 15,000, and Kurdish forces totaling about 40,000 in the north.

British military analysts are not optimistic about that strategy, however. Obstacles include the superior firepower of Iraqi forces and the reluctance of Kurds to jeopardize their semiautonomous status by going to war without knowing what regime would replace Hussein.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the two main factions in the north, say they have overcome their bitter rifts. But the existence of a semiautonomous Kurdistan protected by U.S. and British air forces that patrol a “no-fly” zone puts the Kurds in a fundamentally different, more delicate position than other opposition groups, said Dilshad Miran, the London representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

“We are not a party in exile because we are present in Iraq, we have our own armed forces and judiciary,” Miran said. “Anything we do and say will have a direct consequence on the situation of our people in the safe haven in the north of Iraq.”

Kurdish negotiations with the regime in Baghdad have been fruitless, Miran said. “Now we’re adopting a policy of a federal democracy in Iraq where Kurds, Arabs, Shiites and all other groups have a role.”

An alternative vision of the future comes from the Constitutional Monarchy Movement led by Sharif Ali bin Hussein, a relative of Iraq’s last king, who was assassinated in 1958. He has joined the common embrace of a democracy, as has the Iraqi National Accord, created in 1990 by military defectors and described as having ties to U.S. intelligence agencies.

The most prominent dissident force is probably the Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella group led by Ahmad Chalabi, a wealthy Shiite intellectual.

The INC ran into difficulties with the State Department this year when U.S. diplomats temporarily cut the group’s funding in a clash over its accounting practices and use of U.S. funds.

Chalabi remains a close ally of some congressional leaders and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his aides, despite critics who say he lacks stature inside Iraq.

“He has more support on Capitol Hill than in Baghdad,” Neep said.

Neep is among those who predict that a transitional government will be less democratic than exiles hope, and will be likely to incorporate high-ranking military figures who break with the Iraqi president.

In response, INC leaders say they have been hard at work developing a strong espionage network in Iraq and recruiting defectors who have provided valuable information.

Musawi, a political advisor to Chalabi, went to Bangkok, Thailand, last year to debrief and turn over to U.S. defense officials a former engineer who said he fled Iraq after constructing clandestine biological weapons laboratories.

Opposition leaders reject the premise that Iraq and the Arab world in general must be governed by political strongmen because their societies are culturally unprepared for democracy.

“The Iraqis would be extremely touchy about someone in uniform taking over,” Musawi said. “You have corrupt, backward leaders throughout the region, and all the countries in Europe, even the United States, have reaped the benefits. We want a fundamental change that leads ultimately to a Western-style democracy. Iraq can become an example of what the Middle East could be in the next century.”