Sunni Ire Appears to Have Been Stoked, Not Calmed

U.S. and Iraqi leaders had hoped that efforts to include Sunni Arabs in the preparation of a new national constitution would discourage those embittered by their loss of power from taking part in violence and political extremism.

They were wrong.

“With our souls, with our blood we will defend you, Saddam,” angry Sunni protesters of the draft charter chanted in Baqubah on Friday while holding up portraits of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Leading Sunni Arabs have emerged from the constitutional talks enraged by what they see as a blueprint by Shiites and Kurds for dismembering Iraq into federal regions. Many have said they are determined to continue fighting the draft, due to be voted on in a nationwide referendum Oct. 15.

They also fear that the process, in which they have been able to wield little influence, has served to inflame the more extreme members of their minority sect, which controlled Iraq for decades.

“The constitution is a volcano waiting to erupt,” said Raed Abed Mashadani, 31, a Sunni industrial supply merchant.

Ahmad Ibrahim Azzawi, a 34-year-old Sunni engineer, predicted that the constitution would lead to not only more violence between Iraqis and the U.S., but also more sectarian violence among Iraqis.

“We’re not afraid of fighting against Americans,” he said. “We’re afraid we’ll be fighting ourselves.”

Ahmad Khalil Duri, a 40-year-old Sunni supermarket owner whose tribe has strong ties to the insurgency, voiced a similar dire assessment.

“Dying is nothing new for us,” said Duri, who has lost brothers and cousins in battles against U.S. forces in Tikrit, Samarra and Baghdad as well as his native Dorr. “They will continue to fight and die.”

For months, U.S. officials have touted the process of developing a constitution as a way to enfranchise Sunnis hostile to the American military presence and a government led by Shiite and Kurdish former exiles.

Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, told reporters at a June 21 news conference that if a new constitution was accepted by Iraqis, “the insurgency could dwindle down very quickly.” On the other hand, he warned Thursday on ABC television, “support for the insurgency will probably broaden if the Sunnis feel like their interests are not protected.”

The Sunnis have refused to give their blessing to a constitution they see as potentially carving Iraq into ethnic and religious cantons and discriminating against former members of Hussein’s Baath Party. Kurds and Shiites, wedded to their vision of a democratic, federal Iraq, have refused to budge.

Far from bringing the country closer together, the constitutional process may have increased suspicion and mistrust, said Ismael Zayer, editor of the daily Al Sabah Al Jadid.

“That has exacerbated sectarian tensions between Shiites and Sunnis,” said Zayer, a secular Shiite. “[Sunnis] think they are the losers. If we want to attract the Sunnis, we have to show that there are no winners, that they are not the losers.”

Instead of bringing peace, the draft constitution may ensure years of war, said Nabeal Dulaymi, a Sunni political scientist who hails from one of the tribes leading the insurgency. “If you’re going to convince [insurgents] to leave violence behind, you have to give them something valuable, something they think is good for the community and the national interest,” he said. “This doesn’t give them anything.”

Sunnis largely boycotted parliamentary elections early this year but have served on the constitutional panel at the invitation of Shiites and Kurds. They’ve found it difficult to accept their status as a minority, and moderates have been intimidated and even assassinated by Sunni extremists.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, speaking to reporters last week, acknowledged the Sunni discontent emerging from the constitutional talks, but said the Sunnis needed “to be realistic and need to take into account that they cannot always have their way.”

Sunni Arabs had dominated Iraq through a centralized Baghdad government since shortly after the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. Rifts between Iraq’s disparate groups widened under Hussein, who used his Sunni-led security forces to brutally crush rebellious Kurds in the 1980s and Shiites during a 1991 uprising.

Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Sunnis have found themselves under the thumb of successive U.S.-backed governments dominated by Shiite political parties led by the former exiles and Kurdish rebel leaders they once fought. Sunnis say proposed drafts of the constitution have seemed tailor-made to enrage them.

Iraq’s massive oil reserves lie mainly in the Kurdish-dominated north and Shiite south. To the Sunnis, the constitutional proposals have been a recipe for a country composed of oil-rich northern and southern regions separated by a barren Sunni center.

“They want to take all the natural resources in the south and north and leave nothing for those in the center and the west,” said Adel Majid Ani, 32, a convenience store owner with roots in volatile Al Anbar province west of Baghdad.

Azzawi, the engineer, said his recent business trip to Sulaymaniya, in the Kurdish north, gave him a bad impression of federalism. The region has been semiautonomous since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Kurdish peshmerga soldiers treated him like a criminal, he said, and a hotel receptionist refused to rent him a room until a Kurdish colleague called and vouched for him.

“I was treated much better when I traveled to Germany and Austria,” he said. “In Kurdistan, they treated me like I was from another country, just because I am an Arab.”

Even if the Sunnis accept a last-minute compromise on federalism offered by the Shiites, they continue to oppose other major features of the draft.

Mostafa Shaker Bazzaz, a 44-year-old Sunni employee of the Trade Ministry, said he found himself enraged as he read through a copy of it on the Internet. The charter, he said, does not even define Iraq as an Arab nation.

“It says we’re not part of the Arab League,” he said. “Iraq is 85% Arab.”

Sunnis also have rejected what they call a weak presidency, language condemning the Baath Party as an entity that promotes “terrorism” and a provision allowing Iraqis to hold dual citizenship.

“Those who wrote the constitution did not live in Iraq,” said Saad Shehada Issawi, a 42-year-old Sunni employee of the Water Resources Ministry. “They lived abroad and they wrote it according to their own interests.

“We will never allow those who came from abroad to rule over us.”

Some of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs say they are fed up with the violence. The sect has borne the brunt of the fighting since the fall of Hussein. Sunni-dominated cities such as Fallouja, Ramadi, Samarra and Tikrit, and Baghdad neighborhoods such as Amariya, Adhamiya and Dora, have become synonymous with death and despair. A number of Sunnis say they plan to peacefully fight the constitution with their votes in the Oct. 15 referendum.

“We’re tired of all this arguing, fighting and boycotting,” said Khaled Sheikhly, a 29-year-old owner of an antiques shop. “Federalism does not bother me as long as I live in a secure and prosperous country.”

Times staff writer Noam N. Levey and a special correspondent in Baqubah contributed to this report.