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COMMENTARY
Bush's self-serving Iraqi
timetable
By Ronald Bruce St John
(Posted with permission from Foreign
Policy in Focus)
At first glance, the
mid-November agreement between the Bush administration,
signed by L Paul Bremer for the Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA) and Jalal Talabani for the Iraqi
Governing Council (IGC), is a positive step. It provides
for a three-stage transition to a sovereign Iraqi
government. The devil is in the details. Key clauses in
the agreement make implementation difficult, if not
impossible - and may hamstring future prospects for a
united, democratic Iraq.
In the first stage, the
IGC, in close consultation with the CPA, is to draft and
approve before end-February a "fundamental law" setting
out the scope and structure of a sovereign Iraqi
transitional administration.
This will prove a
daunting task for a IGC that has yet to metamorphose
into an effective decisionmaking body. Many of its
members are former exiles with little legitimacy and no
popular local constituency. Iraqis also criticize the
upfront involvement of the CPA, arguing that popularly
elected representatives should decide the framework of a
new Iraqi government.
The second stage of the
agreement provides for the "election" of a transitional
national assembly before end-May. In the third stage,
this assembly will elect an executive branch and appoint
ministers to constitute a provisional government. If
this aggressive schedule can be met, the new government
will assume full sovereign powers for governing Iraq by
end-June, symbolically ending the US occupation months
before the US presidential election.
While the
agreement calls for the election of members to the
transitional national assembly, there is no mention of
popular elections. Instead, assembly members will be
selected by caucuses - not a direct vote - in each of
Iraq's 18 governorates. Under the plan, the participants
in the caucuses will have to be approved by 11 out of 15
members of an organizing committee selected by the IGC
and the members of US-appointed councils at provincial
and local levels.
The selection process is all
too reminiscent of the ill-fated approach the US used to
appoint neighborhood, district and city councils in
mid-2003. Meant to be the vanguard of democracy in Iraq,
these local councils have performed unevenly, at best.
Most have no budget, no authority and no power. Paid by
the Americans and often ignored by the IGC, local
council members are often dismissed by fellow Iraqis as
impotent lackeys of the occupation force.
Criticism of the plan
The US plan for
the creation of a sovereign Iraqi administration has
been criticized by Shi'ite leaders, especially Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq 's most powerful Muslim
cleric. The ayatollah has also called for a fundamental
law that recognizes Iraq as an Islamic state and ensures
no Iraqi law will be permitted to conflict with Islamic
law. While he does not want clerics running the
government, Sistani wants Islamic law to be the law of
the land.
Shi'ite leaders have tremendous clout
in Iraq. Selected by the people, some observers have
suggested Sistani is the sole legitimate force in Iraqi
politics today. The Shi'ite calls for direct, popular
democracy are difficult for the White House to ignore
because they are exactly what the Bush administration
has said it wants to bring to Iraq. Shi'ite spokesmen
favor direct assembly elections in mid-2004, arguing
direct elections are more realistic and will increase
the legitimacy of any future government.
American authorities resist the idea of national
elections, arguing a detailed census followed by
preparation of a voter roll would be time-consuming and
vulnerable to manipulation and violence. The Ministry of
Planning responded to their concerns in early November
2003 with a detailed, 10-month plan to count Iraq's
entire population and create voter registration lists,
opening the way for national assembly elections in
September 2004. To date, American planners have rejected
this relatively quick census plan as still too slow.
Critics of the latest American plan emphasize
that direct elections would also reduce dissatisfaction
with the IGC's performance. The council has become a
symbol, not of unity, but of the ethnic and sectarian
divisions within the country. And it threatens to
institutionalize a form of confessional politics,
similar to the failed system that produced the Lebanese
civil war. Given the council's lack of popular support,
Iraqis are rightly concerned with a caucus process in
which the IGC can have a significant impact on the
outcome.
The creation of a sovereign Iraqi
transitional administration touches on the future
identity of Iraq as a state and a nation. The Shi'ites
have demanded national elections, which will almost
surely bring them to power since they constitute
approximately 60 percent of Iraq's population. The
Sunnis and Kurds, both minorities with some 20 percent
of the population each, fear elections would lead to
Shi'ite domination, further marginalizing them.
The challenge
The difficult challenge
facing the CPA is to help the Iraqis create a
constitution that fairly and democratically balances the
role of the Shi'ite majority with the Sunni and Kurdish
minorities. The agreed on solution must be acceptable to
Iraq's neighbors and be granted legitimacy by the United
Nations if it is to endure. The design of the
fundamental law and the method chosen to form the
transitional national assembly are critically important
to this total process because they will establish
precedents for representative government in Iraq.
The Bush administration, wrongly focused on a
speedy transfer of sovereignty to a friendly Iraqi
government, has its priorities upside down. The real
priority in Iraq today is an electoral process that
ensures a legitimate government, valid in the eyes of
Iraqis and the rest of the world.
The White
House is concerned a summer of electioneering in Iraq,
followed by elections in the weeks before the US
presidential election, could reinforce the American
public's image of conflict and confusion in Iraq, making
it difficult for President George W Bush to declare
victory in what has become the central issue of his
presidency. On the contrary, Washington 's real concern
should be that a hasty turnover of power next July to
whatever slapdash body is formed could result in civil
war by November.
What needs to be done? The
declared goal of the Bush administration is to create in
Iraq the most democratic government in the Arab world.
To achieve this goal, the occupation authorities need to
listen to all Iraqis, involving as many as possible in
the creation of a durable democratic system. This means
forming alliances with moderate Shi'ite groups,
reconstituting Iraqi army units, involving the
international community, and organizing elections for a
provisional government.
The sooner the IGC is
replaced by a more representative, independent and
legitimate government, the better. If the Bush
administration takes the time to do the job right, Bush
might just end up with the victory in Iraq he so
desperately wants - and needs, in spite of himself.
Dr Ronald Bruce St John is a
regular contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus and the
author of Libya and the United States: Two Centuries
of Strife (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).
(Posted with permission from Foreign
Policy in Focus)
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