BAGHDAD — The Sunni Muslim paramilitary leader's campaign slogan holds the promise of imminent rescue: "Hold on, we are coming."
But the aspiring parliamentary candidate, Mustafa Kamal Shibeeb, may not be in a position to deliver on his slogan: He's a fugitive, with murder charges hanging over his head from events at the height of the U.S. troop buildup two years ago.
Already, police commandos have tried to grab him twice, only to be blocked by an Iraqi army unit, with tacit support from U.S. forces.
Shibeeb's story reveals the volatility of today's Iraq, where Sunni-Shiite tensions are just one of the conflicts at play. His vulnerability illustrates how the Iraqi government and security forces remain subject to competing political and tribal pressures, and score-settling, that risk igniting new violence.
If Shibeeb is jailed, it could leave a power vacuum in Dora, a region of sprawling urban neighborhoods and pristine farmland that served as a launching pad for suicide attacks into Baghdad before Shibeeb asserted control.
His incarceration also could be seized upon as further indication of the limits of reconciliation in Iraq, where Sunni former military commanders and insurgents are viewed with suspicion and sometimes targeted because of old grudges or political rivalries.
Shibeeb believes he's being pursued now because of the country's electoral season and his enemies' wish for vengeance, an assessment shared by other leaders of the Awakening movement that supported the Americans during the troop buildup, Sunni politicians and some U.S. military officers.
"This is a matter of political conflicts, those who want to keep occupying the arena," Shibeeb said, rifling through a bulky briefcase and wearing a leather ammunition belt slung over his chest and a 9-millimeter Smith & Wesson pistol tucked in a hip holster.
With stocky shoulders and a touch of gray in his mustache and hair, Shibeeb barks his creed, in a rebuke to critics who accuse him of slaughtering people during his war with Al Qaeda in Iraq: "My slogan is not to kill. I am a man of peace. . . . Even in the battle, if I have the chance to spare someone's life, I would do that."
Shibeeb faces arrest over an incident in October 2007 when men under his command say they came under fire and killed five known Al Qaeda in Iraq gunmen in battle.
