Iraqi editor seeks U.S. support for secular rule

After watching his Iraqi countrymen and the United States fight along increasingly ethnic and religious lines, Samir Adil believes the only way his country can achieve stability is by creating a government blind to church and race.

The Baghdad resident arrived Wednesday for a two-week tour of the Northeast and South, culminating with a four-day visit to Washington, D.C. There, he hopes to gain support for the efforts of the Iraqi Freedom Council, which is striving to install a secular government in Iraq.

Adil, president of the IFC, will speak at 6:30 p.m. today at Castleton State College's Herrick Auditorium.

"We know it's a hard job, but we're working to get thousands to join," he said in a phone interview. "The majority of people in the Middle East want a secular government, but the nationalists impose religious governments on the people."

The IFC support base is comprised largely of student, labor and human rights organizations interested in pursuing nonviolent solutions for uniting and stabilizing Iraq, Adil said.

The 42-year-old newspaper editor blamed Iraqi's turmoil on the politically ambitious wing of the Islamic faith and the U.S. occupation, which he said is creating more problems than it's curing.

"Iraq is an international battlefield," he said.

During his tour of the United States, Adil said, he wants to offer a perspective on life in Iraq that Americans aren't getting.

"Our movement has a chance to talk about the situation in Iraq — a situation not reflected in the media," he said.

What Americans don't know, he said, is that Iraqis are less concerned with freedom and prosperity than they are about their immediate safety, which he said is constantly in danger from both sides of the conflict.

"Civil war actually started in the country two years ago," he said. "You can be killed at some checkpoints just because of your name. If you're Sunni, you can go. If you're a Shiite, they kill you and throw you in a ditch."

He said, "The international (terrorist) groups at work in the country are attacking innocents, too, but the occupying forces don't care about the people in the country. I've seen tanks in Baghdad just watching the situation unfold without ever intervening."

That's not to say that Adil misses the regime of Saddam Hussein. In 1992, Adil, who worked underground as a Communist Party member, was imprisoned for six months and tortured so severely over the course of 25 days, he said, that he has lost part of his hearing and some mobility on his left side.

But Adil said he doesn't believe progress can be made while the U.S. occupation lasts and he fears the American presence could permanently unravel the threads holding the country and its different factions together.

Contact Brent Curtis at brent.curtis@rutlandherald.com.