Ire in Iraq as Allawi neglects Shias in US-prepared congress speech

By: Hamoud Kufi

BAGHDAD, Iraq: Iraqi interim President Iyad Allawi, in his speech to US congress, neglected repression committed against Shias in Saddam regime, causing rage and anger among Iraqi media and Shia people, who constitute majority in Iraq.

They considered this oblivion on the part of Allawi as neglecting millions of widows, orphans and victims.

Allawi in his address to a joint meeting of the 108th Congress of the United States on Capitol Hill in Washington, September 23, 2004, mentioned extermination of the Kurds at the hands of despot Saddam but he did not point to oppression that the ousted system practiced against the Shias in the last decades and at the hands of several presidents. Allawi did not point at that hundreds of thousands of Shias, the followers of Ahlul Bayt (AS), were victims of hundreds of the mass graves.

“Well over a million Iraqis were murdered or are missing. We estimate at least 300,000 in mass graves, which stands as monuments to the inhumanity of Saddam’s regime. Thousands of my Kurdish brothers and sisters were gassed to death by Saddam’s chemical weapons,” the Prime Minister said.

“Millions more like me were driven into exile. Even in exile, as I myself can vouch, we were not safe from Saddam,” he added.

The journalist Hassanein Abd Al-Mohsen, 40, from Holy Najaf, wondered, “how Allawi neglected the Shias misfortunes in front of the Congress?” He added that it has appeared clearly that Allawi does not represent the Shia majority but he is supporter of American interests in Iraq.

Some Iraqi newspapers have also mentioned this neglect with regret.

Professor Jasim Al-Emari in an article expressed regrets saying “How Dr Iyad Allawi forgot all these massacres, and he recalled only sufferings of Kurds, which - if were not little - but they could not be measured by sufferings of Shias?”

Al-Iraq Al-Jadeed newspaper from Basra wrote that no one in the world should doubt that the Shias are the most victims of the successive governments in Iraq despite that they represent the overwhelming majority.

Dr. Safaa Al-Mousawi, 53, from Baghdad University said: “Allawi's statements raised my wonder… how he says that he is happy, for America became the most secure while Iraq became the most destruction! Is America his homeland or Iraq?!”

Meanwhile, US President Bush came under fire after the Washington Post reported that the American government and a representative of Bush's reelection campaign helped draft Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's speech to Congress last week.

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