Real politics inside Iraq? ~Part 2

Just a few more indicators to add to what I wrote about here Sunday…
Juan Cole posted today news from Az-Zaman that:

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has decided to send a representative to Kurdistan to discuss the differences between him and the Kurdish leadership over Kurdish desires for a loose federalism that would give them substantial autonomy within Iraq. Sistani’s spokesman said that he wanted to reduce the feelings of anxiety and being slighted expressed by the Kurdish leaders and in the Kurdish street at Sistani’s stance.

In that same post, he also noted that,

Veteran diplomat and superb Arabist Christopher Ross, who is in the Coalition Provisional Authority’s Outreach Department, has indicated a desire to meet with radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr for talks about the fate of the Mahdi Army militia. Previously the CPA had refused to deal with Muqtada directly, accusing him of having had rival cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei killed in April of 2003.
Ross’s request for a meeting may well be a sign that a more pragmatic set of officials from the State Department is beginning to take charge of such policies from the Neocon establishment that had dominated the Coalition Provisional Authority (and which had generally screwed up Iraq royally). On June 30, the real transition will be from Defense Department dominance of Iraq to State Department responsibility for Iraq.

I really like that last judgment he articulates there!
Still in the column for “indicators of useful internal contacts inside Iraq”, I see that Reuters is reporting today that:

Interim [Iraqi] President Ghazi al-Yawar, recently returned from the Group of Eight summit in the United States, said he welcomed Sadr’s recent decision to create a political party that could take part in Iraq’s first democratic elections in the new year.
“I kept on saying consistently that if I were in his shoes I would try to go to the political arena instead of raising arms,” Yawar told reporters outside the Iraqi government building.
“He has supporters, he has constituents, he should go through the political process and I commend this smart move on his side.”

In the column for “indicators of distinctly unuseful internal contacts inside Iraq”, meanwhile, is the following Reuters report:

Hundreds of angry Shi’ite Muslims marched through the streets of Baghdad on Tuesday vowing to avenge the killing of six Shi’ite truck drivers in the restive Sunni town of Falluja…
“This is a crime that the residents of Falluja committed against our innocent sons who ran trucks. They were not translators, nor spies,” said tribal leader Khaled Latif Matar Sihail, referring to the frequent killing by insurgents of Iraqis who work with the U.S.-led occupation.
“They are restarting an old feud, a sectarian feud. We now demand blood from the residents of Falluja for our innocent sons.”

I confess I don’t have the resources to conduct any systematic tracking/counting/analysis of the incidence in Iraq of what Swisspeace, in its excellent tracking system for potential global trouble spots, calls “domestic cooperation events” or “domestic conflict events”. And I don’t, sadly, yet see any indications that Swisspeace is publishing regular analyses based on the application of their system to Iraq.
Still, it is definitely worth noting that there ARE numerous events inside Iraq that seem to signal the potential for the emergence/strengthening of workable political relations among the country’s different groups.
Let’s hope that the State Department folks, if indeed it is they who are in charge after July 1, work to foster those relations rather than pursuing the “divide and rule” policy that was infamously advocated by Martin Indyk in April 2003.
…And while I’m still writing about this “possible signs of hope” subject that I launched here Sunday, I want to thank all the Commenters who got a really good discussion started on the Comments board over there. Sorry I haven’t really jumped into that discussion yet. (I had to drive to DC and back yesterday.) But I really enjoy being a consumer of your discussions.