USIP: Track 2 Reconciliation

"I spent the morning with yet another group of visiting Iraqis at the USIP. This one has been gestating for a long time: it was the first public appearance of members of the track 2 reconciliation initiative overseen by Ambassador Richard Murphy, with Randa Salim of the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue and the Italian organization Palmo (?) over the last year and a half. The panel featured Fryad Rwandzi (a Kurdish member of Parliament), Omar Abd al-Sattar (a Sunni member of Parliament from the Islamic Iraqi Party), and Sheikh Balasim Yahya (described as a leader of a popular support committee in Diyala from the Tamimi tribe). A representative of Dawa pulled out when the Dawa party collapsed last week in order to fight his political wars in Baghdad.

Since there has been some feverish speculation about these meetings in some of the Arab media and on a few blogs, I was glad that this initiative finally went public and the real story can finally be told. It's a lot less glamorous or nefarious than it has been built up to be. Like most track 2 dialogues, it seems to have been useful as a forum for dialogue outside the formal reconciliation process overseen by the Maliki government where ideas could be explored away from public scrutiny - building common ground rather than necessarily negotiating specific agreements. And like most track 2 dialogues, I suspect that the greatest impact was probably on the participants themselves... not a small thing, to be sure, but neither the grand conspiracy nor the great hope that many had projected on to it. Based on my conversations with him over the last year, this is just as Ambassador Murphy expected."
Abu Aardvark