bail his homie out of jail

Of the package of three laws which finally made it through the Iraqi Parliament last month, the amnesty law was the one most important to the Sunni leadership.  It emerged in its final form after months of haggling, and serious questions about its scope and applicability.  When it was passed, I warned that we wouldn't know its real significance until we saw how it was implemented:  in a spirit of national reconciliation, or in a spirit of sectarianism.   The first official figures on the prisoner release have now been released, and they make for some potentially troubling news. 

The good news:  Supreme Judicial Council spokesman Abd al-Sattar al-Birqadar today announced that in less than a month the number of prisoners released under the amnesty law has now reached 13,860, with about 5354 prisoners judged to not merit release under the terms of the amnesty.  This is approaching a respectable proportion of the total prisoners in Iraqi jails, usually estimated between 20-40,000 (nobody seems to know for sure) - many of whom have never been charged or tried, and who complain of all kinds of abuses.  It does not include the 23,000 prisoners which the United States maintains in its own prisons (which is itself 45% higher than a year ago as a little-noticed component of the surge strategy).

The bad news:  according to the breakdown by province published on this Iraqi website,  the Shia appear to be benefitting disproportionately from the amnesty.  Because the chart does not identify the sectarian affiliation of those released, I am using majority-Sunni provinces and majority-Shia provinces as a proxy, which is not perfect but seems reasonable (let me know if you don't think this is a reasonable proxy, of course).  I left out the two Baghdad jurisdictions, as too mixed to offer any useful proxy, and Kirkuk for the same reason.  The Kurdish provinces have refused to participate in the amnesty despite the objections of Tareq al-Hashemi and are not included in the chart. 

According to the chart, Shia-majority provinces have seen 7,058 prisoners released and  1,163 rejected.  Sunni-majority provinces have seen 923 prisoners released and  862 rejected.  That means that 88% of the prisoners released have come from Shia-majority provinces, and that 86% of the files reviewed in Shia-majority provinces result in release compared to 52% in Sunni-majority provinces.  Considering that it is generally assumed that Sunnis make up a large majority of the population of these prisons, the disparity becomes even more glaring.  If these figures are accurate, then it appears that the implementation of the amnesty is going to stoke rather than assuage sectarian tensions. 

Again, a few warnings.  These numbers do not include the two Baghdad courts, which might follow a different pattern, or might not.  The chart itself might be a fabrication, even though it comes out at the same time as the official announcement  - the website does not offer a source, and someone could be spreading disinformation to fan sectarian resentment.  The identities of those in prison might not neatly map on to the provincial court which reviewed the files.  Some provincial courts might move more quickly and efficiently than others, and the Sunni-majority provinces might catch up.  But for now, if the numbers are accurate and the proxy is reasonable, then the amnesty does not appear to be shaping up the way that the advocates of national reconciliation had hoped.

PS - sorry nothing on Basra right now - soon, hopefully.  But Reidar Visser is always a good source for all things Basra, and he has some thoughts.

Comments

[Nur al-Cubicle]

Thank you, AA, for addressing the prisoners/amnesty issue once again. BTW, do we know what sort of re-education the largely Sunni prisoners in US camps receive? Is it different from re-education for Shi'a?

Nothing can be discussed having to do with Iraq without addressing it within the context of ethnicity and religion (same as Lebanon). Of course the Shi'a will be sprung (because the Shi'a + the Kurds control official executions, the government itself, the Parliament, the army, the police, the oilfields...) and the Sunni will languish, unless the US starts building prisons run by al-Sahwa. After all, there are potentially 80,000 available Sunni prison guards already on the payroll ($300 a month).

[bb]

AA - could you give us a translation of the names of the provinces and the number released from each?

[thomas]

This could potentially be a problematic way of analyzing the implementation of the general amnesty law. Overall, there seem to be too many confounding variables which would make this way of looking at it problematic. It's hard to say how many Sunnis are arrested and sent to Shi'a dominated neighborhoods/provinces... I think this might happen quite a bit. Why lock them up in a Sunni-majority area where their friends will come in and let them out, when you can just lock them up in another neighborhood or province dominated by Shi'a?

I think it's much simpler to just look at the overall number of released detainees. As you mentioned, 13,860 is a huge number, especially since there's between 20,000 and 40,000 total detainees. I've often seen the figure that about 80% of the detainees are Sunni. Even if there are a lot of Shi'a being released, with 13,860 being released, there's definitely a significant number of Sunnis in that number of released. Take this for what it's worth.... but if there are only 20,000 detainees, and 20% of them are Shi'a, this means all 4,000 Shi'a can be released and there's still a huge number of Sunnis being released. This doesn't mean that the amnesty law is being implemented successfully and in the spirit of reconciliation, but it's just to say that the number of released is significant, and that the number of Sunnis released is also significant, just based on the fact that the number released is more than 13,000. I'm actually surprised that the number is so high.

Once this law got beyond the likes of Maliki and the Presidency Council, it seems that Birqadar has been doing all that he can to get things moving. He's helped get courts set up, general amnesty application forms for relatives of detainees filled out, and a couple weeks ago he gave instructions to demand that courts look into files of those included in the law even if no requests were made to the courts by the families of the detainees. While it's too bad that Maliki seems to refuse to use this law as a gesture of reconciliation, things do seem to be slightly moving along, even if it is below the radar. I wouldn't underestimate the number released thus far.

[JJackson]

Thanks for the link (re Basra) and I look forward to your thoughts - when you have time.

[Zathras]

Do we know the rough proportion of Shiites to Sunni Arabs in Iraqi and US custody, respectively?

On the fighting in southern Iraq, the more I read about it the more I think the beginning of wisdom may be Reidar Visser's comment that "...there are probably few spots on this planet where the search for mono-causality is more futile than Basra."

[aardvark]

yeah, Reidar is good.
thomas - those are great comments, and very thought-provoking (esp on Belqadar who seems to be doing the best he can in a tough situation). Thing is, when you arrange the chart according to "most prisoners released", there's no way to avoid the stunning fact that every single one of the Sunni-majority provinces is at the bottom and that Sunni-majority provinces are the only ones where the ratio between amnesty and rejection is relatively even. We'll soon see if Sunni politicians start complaining - thus far, they've mainly been attacking the Kurds for not going along with the amnesty over federalism issues, and Basra has of course been dominating the agenda the last few days.