Bush and Abu Risha
http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2007/09/bush-and-abu-ri.html
Bush meeting with Sattar Abu Risha, Anbar (as published in dozens of Arab
papers)
It's kind of lost in the shuffle of the coming battle over the various
Iraq reports, but I find myself morbidly fascinated by the photos and
reports which have circulated in the Iraqi press about Bush's meeting in
Anbar with the controversial head of the Anbar Salvation Council Sattar
Abu Risha. The pictures themselves speak volumes: look at Bush's
shit-eating grin and Abu Risha's detached contempt, and figure out which
is the supplicant in this scenario.
An hour with Bush was really quite a coup for Sattar Abu Risha. The head
of the Anbar Salvation Council has a rather unsavory reputation as one of
the shadiest figures in the Sunni community, and as recently as June was
reportedly on his way out. As a report in Time described him,
Sheikh Sattar, whose tribe is notorious for highway banditry, is also
building a personal militia, loyal not to the Iraqi government but only to
him. Other tribes — even those who want no truck with terrorists —
complain
they are being forced to kowtow to him. Those who refuse risk being
branded
as friends of al-Qaeda and tossed in jail, or worse. In Baghdad,
government
delight at the Anbar Front's impact on al-Qaeda is tempered by concern
that
the Marines have unwittingly turned Sheikh Sattar into a warlord who will
turn the province into his personal fiefdom.
In June, Abu Risha's position in the Anbar Salvation Council came under a
fairly intense internal challenge. As the Washington Post reported at the
time,
Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman, 35, a leader of the Dulaim confederation, the
largest tribal organization in Anbar, said that the Anbar Salvation
Council would be dissolved because of growing internal dissatisfaction
over its cooperation with U.S. soldiers and the behavior of the council's
most prominent member, Abdul Sattar Abu Risha. Suleiman called Abu Risha a
"traitor" who "sells his beliefs, his religion and his people for money."
That's our guy. That's the pillar of America's Sunni strategy, and a key
player in Fred Kagan's fantasy life.
And I didn't even mention the widely discussed, sensational rumor that he
had skipped town with $75 million in American cash - which evidently
wasn't true, or else was just a "misunderstanding" which has been
"resolved", but does speak to endless circulation of unpleasant rumors
about the guy's corruption and mercenary behavior. I wish I could have
been there as Abu Risha nodded along sagely while Bush promised to funnel
large-scale American economic development funds in Anbar, perhaps offering
the services of his own highly professional office in seeing to the
disbursement of the funds. It's kind of humiliating to watch an American
President get rolled by a two bit, corrupt petty shaykh.
But that's not even the worst of it. According to one widely disseminated
account of their meeting, Bush acted shocked when Abu Risha complained
about Sunnis being killed in Baghdad because of their names, claiming he
had never heard of such things. It's impossible to know the accuracy of
this account, since it comes out of an Iraqi press not known for its
fealty to professionalism or standards of evidence. But if true, what an
astonishingly depressing admission of ignorance of one of the most
important aspects of the Iraqi situation: he has never heard of the
ethnic cleansing of Baghdad.
Posted on September 07, 2007 at 12:38 PM | Permalink
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