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Give Peace a Chance, Iraqi Sunni Says

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Times Staff Writer

Like many other Iraqi Sunnis, Sheik Abdul Rahman Naimi is filled with rage at the U.S. presence in his country, an anger that makes his tall frame shudder and fists clench as he launches into diatribes against American forces and the Shiite-led government.

But unlike many other Sunnis, the 50-year-old tribal leader and National Assembly member has made it a mission to publicly urge fellow Sunnis not to take up arms against Americans -- even if that means swallowing centuries of pride.

“We lost your brother; we don’t want to lose you,” Naimi recalls telling a vengeful relative whose brother was killed fighting the Americans. “If we lose you, your brother will be behind you and we will lose him too.”

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Naimi, who lives in fear for his life, illustrates the struggle faced by moderate Sunni Arab leaders trying to mediate among the Shiite and Kurdish-led government, U.S. officials and their enraged people.

Bush administration officials have so far refused to set a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq, saying it would empower insurgents. But Naimi says it would help his credibility with his tribesman and fellow Sunni Arabs if Americans would do so.

“I always assured my people that if the occupation doesn’t leave at a certain time, I will go myself into the battlefield,” said Naimi, a Mosul-area native who also serves on the 71-member committee drafting Iraq’s constitution. Like most Sunnis, he rejects the final draft, calling it another obstacle to ending the fighting.

For his moderate stance, Naimi has paid in lost blood and tattered reputation. He is mistrusted by the Shiites and Kurds leading the transitional government and has been branded a traitor by his own people.

In July, gunmen killed his brother in Mosul, riddling his car with bullets. A month earlier, Naimi’s nephew was also slain in Mosul, apparently as punishment for the perceived sins of his uncle.

The violence shows the possible consequences for any Sunni taking part in the political process. The day after the death of Naimi’s brother, gunmen in Baghdad killed Mijbil Issa, another Sunni Arab member of the constitutional committee. Another prominent Sunni who leads a group taking part in the political process, Sheik Khalaf Aliyan, escaped a July 30 assassination attempt in southern Baghdad.

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Fellow Sunnis scorn Naimi for his decision to take part in the January elections. He initially stood as a candidate on the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance list and then broke away to form his own group.

“He did not stand with his people or his bloc when they boycotted the elections,” said Talat Wazan, a Sunni Arab politician, who accused Naimi of going “against the pathway and values of his fellow countrymen.”

He has been criticized even by some members of his tribe as a master manipulator and a storyteller with a sketchy past.

“During the days of the past regime, he was one of the biggest sheiks in Mosul because he was a Baathist, and his ideas were filled with the Baath Party’s thinking,” said Majeed Naimi, a Mosul journalist and member of Naimi’s tribe. “So many were sent to prison because of reports made by him even on his dearest friends.”

Shiites and Kurds, who dominate postwar Iraq, charge that he remains a supporter of the Baath Party. “He changes his mask every now and then to get what he wants,” said a Mosul leader of a Kurdish political party who spoke on condition of anonymity. But if Naimi has reinvented himself, so have many others in the new Iraq, including Iranian-trained Shiite militiamen who’ve recast themselves as American allies and Kurdish guerrilla warlords who’ve donned suits and remade themselves as liberal democrats.

And if Naimi has a way with words, he’s using it these days to advocate peace as well as to promote himself. Even Shiites acknowledge that moderate Sunni Arab leaders like Naimi are in a near-impossible position.

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“They have a hard constituency to please,” said Laith Kubba, spokesman for the Iraqi government. “They have to walk a very narrow path.”

Naimi, often towering above his colleagues in the National Assembly as he sweeps into the convention center in a flowing gray dishdasha gown, acknowledges that his life took unconventional twists and turns before he arrived at his current role as tribal leader and would-be broker among U.S. soldiers, Sunni Arab militants and Shiite and Kurdish politicians.

He was an officer in Saddam Hussein’s air force in the 1970s and 1980s. During the deprivations after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Naimi says, he protested Hussein’s creation of Al Quds Brigade, arguing that young Iraqi men would do better earning money for their families instead of being forced to volunteer for the dictator’s elite militia. He avoided jail but was booted from the Baath Party and began a second career studying law at Mosul University. A father of three, Naimi now hopes to get a doctorate in law.

The proud tribal leader often extols the lost glory and grandeur of the Sunni Arab officer caste of which he is a part.

“All Iraqis are brave,” he said, “but the Sunnis are the bravest people in all Iraq.”

Yet he admits mistakes among his people, a rare trait among Sunni Arab leaders. Sunnis, he says, have been harboring Islamic extremists from abroad as well as allowing themselves to be drawn into criminal behavior.

“One of the mistakes we made was to take care of the outlaws from other countries,” he said. “The one that comes from outside Iraq doesn’t care about how many Iraqis he kills.” He and others say his words of peace have soothed those so angry at the Americans that they’ve considered joining the resistance.

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“It’s a right to defend their country,” he said. “But when they come to me and say this, I try to calm them down. I tell them, ‘We need bridges. We need schools. We need new weapons to defend our borders. We need food for the country. If we fight, who is going to build, who is going to manufacture?’ ”

Naimi never got a chance to offer such words to Yusuf, the son of his cousin. As Naimi tells it, Yusuf, an accomplished horseman and marksman, was angered by the death of a relative, allegedly killed by U.S. soldiers during a raid on the Mosul-area village of Abi Tamam.

U.S. soldiers surrounded the village and began conducting raids, Naimi said.

Relatives said Yusuf suddenly became quiet and secretive.

“My husband never talked about these things,” said Azhar, Yusuf’s widow.

One day last year, his friends came to his house and told him U.S. troops were nearby. Yusuf left the house, later arming himself with a machine gun, Naimi said. The next morning, his family was summoned to retrieve Yusuf’s bullet-riddled corpse from a nearby road.

Naimi, then in Baghdad, heard about the death from Yusuf’s mother. He rushed to Mosul and began preparing a summit at the tribal diwan, a large hall with cushions on the ground and a special setting in the middle for the sheik. First, visitors drank small, porcelain cups of bitter, thick-brewed coffee.

“The coffee represents the hospitality of the tribal sheik,” he said. “It’s always very good.” Dinner and more coffee followed before the serious talk began.

“There are the hard cases,” Naimi said. “If there is a big loss in the family, they will want revenge.” In such instances, Naimi appeals to reason as well as faith.

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“Your son that was killed, your brother or uncle, was killed for freedom,” he counsels. “But I hope that you do not die. I know that your life does not mean anything right now because you have lost loved ones. But this is our fate and we believe in it. Respect your religion and respect God.”

Under tribal tradition, it is the responsibility of the younger brother to avenge his brother’s death. Naimi recalled training his eyes on the brother, Faysal, as he spoke.

“Your son and grandson are going to come to the world,” he said. “But if we fight, they will not find schools when they come. They will not find water and electricity or factories to work in and this is the end of the world.”

He urged those assembled to calm down.

“I know that you are brave and can kill many Americans,” he said. “But I know that there are other people who can represent you in the government. They will let your voice reach officials and they will secure your rights.”

A year after his brother’s death, Faysal said he had not joined the resistance and remained committed to peace. But the hoped-for promise of a U.S. withdrawal is the only thing that keeps him from taking up arms, he said.

“Of course, whenever I see Americans I remember my brother’s death and I want to chop them up to pieces,” he said. “It’s a tradition to seek revenge for anyone that gets killed and we cannot keep silent about a subject like this.

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“But in return, [Naimi] has promised me that Americans will leave my land. If they leave, maybe I will forget them and forget some of my wounds.”

Late last month, angry over a constitution that Naimi and other Sunni Arabs consider a recipe for dismembering Iraq, Naimi said he would continue to urge peace.

“I will keep telling them not to fight,” he said. “But I feel I have less and less to offer them in return.”

A special correspondent in Mosul contributed to this report.

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