US helps reconciliation of Iraqi groups with prisoner release

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article6801297.ece

Britain has always been relatively powerless to resolve its longest-running hostage crisis in two decades because the United States holds the trump cards.

Its decision to release all members of Asaib al-Haq demonstrates the changed political landscape in Iraq, where the Government is trying to reach out to former militant groups and bring them back into the fold, while the US is trying to wind down operations and pull out of the country.

Asaib al-Haq, or the League of the Righteous, is an extremist Shia group that broke away from the Mahdi Army — the largest Shia militia in Iraq — led by Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric.

It was regarded by the American military as an Iranian-backed “special group” that continued to use violence even after Hojatoleslam al-Sadr ordered his followers to lay down their arms. Iran denies involvement in militia activity in Iraq.

Asaib al-Haq now appears to want to become involved in the political process.

Representatives of the group met Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq, recently. They declared that they had renounced violence and wanted to discuss closer political co-operation with Baghdad.

This reconciliation process coincides with a pledge by the US military to hand over all its detainees to the Iraqi authorities for release or prosecution as part of a security agreement with Baghdad.

That even includes high-value suspects such as Qais al-Khazali, a leader of Asaib al-Haq, who is accused of involvement in an ambush in early 2007 in which five US troops were killed.

The key to the release of Peter Moore and the bodies of his two guards will be the freeing of Mr al-Khazali, the most high-profile figure in US detention linked to the kidnap group.

Eight other men, including a member of the Lebanese Hezbollah, are also on the list of detainees whose release is being demanded by Asaib al-Haq.

The kidnappers have shown already that they respond when their demands are met. The bodies of two other security guards were handed over to the British Embassy only days after a tenth detainee requested by the gang was delivered in June to the Iraqi authorities, who set him free.