Key insurgents vow to reject Iraq peace plan

Times Online reported Ira'sS main insurgent groups intend to reject a peace plan that Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, will present today in an attempt to halt the country’s spiral of violence. Maliki is expected to go before parliament with a 28- point plan for national reconciliation aimed at defusing the Sunni insurgency and sectarian conflict in which thousands of people have died. The prime minister is believed to be ready to offer the Iraqi insurgent groups inclusion in the political process and an amnesty for prisoners who renounce violence and give up their weapons. His package of measures is also reported to include the promise of a United Nations- approved timetable for withdrawing the coalition forces and action to curb Shi’ite death squads. Representatives of 11 Iraqi insurgent groups told The Sunday Times yesterday that they would reject the peace offer because they did not recognise the legitimacy of the government.

The only government the will recognize is one imposed by force. Maliki should select one of the 11 groups that will not accept the plan, and announce that it will be wiped out. He should announce that the other 10 groups will get another chance to accept the plan once he completely wipes out the one selected, but that if they want to be the next one selected for total destruction, they should continue their attacks while he is wiping out the selected group.

If he words it correctly, he might not even have to wipe out the first group. Once they have changed their shorts they just might decide the peace plan suddenly looks a lot better than the first thought.

A senior commander authorised to speak on behalf of other groups warned that they would continue to fight. “As long as there is an occupation and an illegitimate government, the resistance and insurgency will continue,” he said.

CQ blogged That puts an end to the entire notion of negotiated peace with the insurgents. If they will not recognize the elected government as legitimate, then they will recognize no arbiter for a truce. The position leaves the insurgents outside the political process and in the sights of both American and Iraqi security forces. At the rate that their intel has improved, these groups may soon regret their stance.

This will come as a victory for Talabani, Maliki, and the new Iraqi government. Fourteen million people voted to put this government in power, which gives it a legitimacy that the sorry band of Iraqi deadenders will never win by blowing up security forces and civilians. The government has faced pressure to offer some sort of national reconciliation to the native insurgents, especially from the Sunnis in the center of the country. When Maliki makes this plan public, he will have given the best offer possible while maintaining self-determination for the Iraqi people. Their rejection takes the pressure off of the national government to be the prime mover for that reconciliation, and it will undermine what sympathy still remains for the insurgents.