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It's time to talk turkey in
Iraq
By Ehsan Ahrari
The fact
that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) - the
ruling body of Iraq - and the Iraqis are living on
entirely different planets was never more vivid than
during President George W Bush's "stealthy" surprise
visit to Iraq on Thanksgiving Day. As the American media
were gloating over the fact that Bush made it to Iraq
and back unnoticed and unhampered by any hiccups,
influential Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani
reiterated that the provisional government of Iraq must
be chosen through elections. That development, and the
manner in which Bush left for, arrived at, and returned
from Iraq, also spoke volumes about the shape of things
in that country.
On the positive side, Bush's
appearance as the commander-in-chief with the
beleaguered American troops in Iraq - and sharing turkey
with them - was indeed morale boosting. But it has
virtually no positive effect on anything that is
transpiring in Iraq. As the Washington Post observed,
"... the nature of the president's trip inadvertently
revealed a great deal about the true state of affairs in
Iraq. The fact that the president of the United States
had to travel in an unmarked car to a secret flight,
land and depart in darkness and was unable to tell even
members of his family that he planned to visit Baghdad
hardly speaks well for the security situation."
As far back as June 28, Sistani made clear his
opposition to an unelected body - the Iraqi Governing
Council (IGC) - writing a constitution. To him, and
rightly so, such a modus operandi for creating a new
constitution goes against the very grain of democracy.
Ironically, the resident of a non-democratic Iraq had to
give lessons in democracy to the devout believers in and
practitioners of democracy, the CPA, and, through it,
the Bush administration. However, there are other
reasons why that lesson needed a vocal reiteration on
November 30, at a time when the American president was
poised to capture the limelight emanating from his
secret visit to Iraq.
L Paul Bremer, the head of
the CPA, was driven by the desire to keep the IGC under
control, thereby ensuring the emergence of a
Western-style secular democracy in Iraq. Any initiation
of the electoral process - a tedious one, indeed, for a
highly unstable situation in Iraq - would have
jeopardized, even undermined, the American control, and
the attendant predilection for shaping the future mode
of the Iraqi polity. That was one reason why Bremer
stacked the IGC with Iraqi expatriates, who were
handpicked largely because they parroted the American
preference for secular democracy. However, once those
expatriates started undergoing an unwitting process of
acculturation to the Iraqi social and political milieu,
they became progressively inclined toward favoring
Sistani's edict of June. Perhaps a cynical way to look
at the change of mind of those expatriates regarding the
issue of conducting elections is to depict it as an
integral aspect of their own maneuverings for gaining
acceptance of the Iraqi populace.
The
explanations underlying these maneuverings
notwithstanding, an incontrovertible fact is that
Bremer's disregard of Sistani's position of June is
generally considered as a powerful reason for the
growing Iraqi anger toward the CPA. As one anonymous
member of the IGC observed, "We waited for four months,
thanks to Bremer. We could have organized this
[transition] by now had we started when Sistani issued
his fatwa [religious ruling]. But the Americans
were in denial."
Bremer's inability to grasp the
significance of Sistani's message of June was also an
outcome of the isolation of all the personnel of the
CPA, even from those Iraqis who haven't been part of the
expatriate membership of the IGC. Besides, Bremer did
not want a Shi'ite cleric "dictating the terms of Iraq's
political future", said sources close to the discussion
among the US officials.
Therein lies the rub.
Today two entirely divergent perspectives are about to
come into conflict. The Sistani perspective assigns
primacy to Islam. As he noted in his fatwa,
"there is no guarantee the council [IGC] would create a
constitution conforming with the greater interests of
the Iraqi people and expressing national identity, whose
basis is Islam, and its noble social values". The
opposing force is the fervor of Bush regarding the
future of Iraq. Even though Bush's strategy on Iraq has
been going through too many changes, there is little
doubt that it is aimed at establishing a secular
democracy that would be linked with the US through
economic assistance and military bases. In other words,
it is aimed at permanently neutralizing Iraq's role as
an independent Arab state that could challenge the
American dominance in the region. Besides, it is
well-nigh impossible for the US to swallow the reality
that a Shi'ite cleric could sway so much power that the
American occupiers have to seek his consent to major
policy positions regarding the future of Iraq.
Consequently, even after Sistani's June position
regarding elections became clear, Bremer attempted to
change it by sending like-minded persons on the IGC to
persuade him. He even sought a Shi'ite position of
support countering that of Sistani's, but to no avail.
Bremer clearly expressed his frustrations about his
inability to persuade Sistani to look at things in Iraq
his way. He once wondered out loud before a group of
American visitors, "Is the political structure of Iraq
going to be in the hands of one man?" The answer seems
to be yes, and it is not Bush, but Sistani. Now the US
endeavors to transfer sovereignty to the IGC, and then
hold indirect elections for a body to write the
constitution, are in a state of limbo.
In the
meantime, the security situation in Iraqi remains an
unknown factor. What about the Iraqis, what do they
think about Bush's stealthy and brief visit to their
country? In general, one can only surmise that they
don't think much of it, and that many of them view it as
an election ploy, a photo-op for Bush that will be used
in the impending presidential campaign. For Iraqis at
large, Thanksgiving Day means nothing. They were still
attempting to celebrate the end of the holy Islamic
month of Ramadan as best as they could, wondering
whether the continued US occupation of their beloved
homeland would bring better days than they have
encountered since April, when the Saddam Hussein regime
was brought down.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
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