COMMENTARY Iraq Act II: Toward
transfer of sovereignty By Ehsan
Ahrari
No matter what follows after the
Iraqi Governing Council's (IGC) formal adoption of an
interim constitution - signed on Monday - Iraq is entering a
new, crucial, but highly uncertain phase. A number of
heady issues regarding Iraq itself, the Middle East in
general and about the future US presidency could be
decided on the basis of how things shape up in Iraq in
the coming months.
Shi'ite Muslim members of the
IGC say that they plan to sign the interim constitution
unchanged. The announcement came following talks at the
weekend in the holy city of al-Najaf with clerics,
including the influential Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani, who had concerns about the document relating
to minority Kurds in Iraq's north.
First and
foremost of the important issues at stake is the role of
Islam in Iraq. For the US, it is just another issue
whose primacy is being trivialized by making it as one
option related to the style of government and the basis
of law, the other option being secularism. For the
Iraqis, the issue cannot be reduced as a choice between
Islam versus secularism. Rather, it is an alternative
between allowing moderate Islamists to establish a
moderate Islamic democracy in their country, versus the
election of extremists, who would create a hardline
Islamic state. The majority of Shi'ites in Iraq don't
appear to lean toward the Iranian model. They only
insist on having the opportunity to become a dominant
ruling group by a democratic process. Sunnis, to be
sure, want no part of even a moderate Islamic government
headed by the Shi'ite majority. However, given the
current realities of power in their country, Sunni
Iraqis would most likely begrudgingly accept a moderate
Islamic democracy.
However, the very possibility
of holding elections in Iraq is currently in limbo. They
will no longer be held before the handover of
sovereignty to Iraq on June 30 as originally planned,
and could be delayed to as late as next year. Between
now and that time, Iraqi insurgents, Islamists and other
terrorist groups will continue to run rampant, and will
do their utmost to destroy the chances of the emergence
of a stable Iraq. How to guarantee their defeat appears
to be a highly unsolvable puzzle for the American
occupiers. The mayhem of the most somber day for the
Shi'ites - Ashura or the 10th day of the month of
Muharram - has proven that fact quite convincingly for
all forces of sanity in and out of Iraq.
The
second issue related to Iraq is how the Kurds as an
ethnic group will behave in the coming months. The
chances of their avoidance of extremism are quite good
for now, because by carrying out any act of terrorism
they have the most to lose. For now, the emergence of a
federal Iraq - something that the Kurds prefer - might
not appear terribly bright. However, by remaining very
much part of the conventional power tussle in Iraq,
Kurds have much to win. Incidentally, initial Shi'ite
resistance to signing the draft constitution centered on
fears that Kurds might be granted some sort of special
deal regarding autonomy, and although they have put
aside these concerns for now, the problem has certainly
not gone away.
Third, the future of democracy in
Iraq is also related to the prospects of evolution of
democracy in the entire Middle East. The Bush
administration has deliberately couched it in that
framework. The chief irony related to this variable is
that in reality there may not be much of a linkage
between the emergence of democracy in Iraq and the
establishment of democracy in other Middle Eastern
states. Indeed, it can be argued that the universal
significance of democracy doesn't require such a
linkage. However, if Iraq were to become a failed state
any time in the foreseeable future, the chances of the
emergence of democracy elsewhere in the Middle East
might also become remote. The autocrats of the region
want nothing better than to see the failure of democracy
in Iraq, after which they would declare, once again - as
King Fahd of Saudi Arabia stated in 1997, that democracy
was not part of the culture of Islam - and that
democracy is an alien notion for the world of Islam.
Fourth, events in Iraq will make or break the
chances of reelection of President George W Bush. His
administration has established a rather clever strategy.
Those in charge of developing a winning strategy for
Bush seem to be doing everything in Iraq to enhance the
prospect of his reelection. At the same time, they are
making sure that there is enough wiggle room to deny
that presidential electoral politics is playing any role
in whatever they are doing. The most recent evidence of
that strategy is the US's decision to send a team of
legal experts to Iraq to build a case against Saddam
Hussein, and then work assiduously to start his trial
around September or October of this year, only weeks
before the presidential election. Imagine the publicity
bonanza stemming from that event of global attention.
That will virtually reassure the prospects of reelection
for Bush. Needless to say, the potential nominee of the
Democratic Party, John Kerry, would feel most helpless
if Bush could pull off a trial of Saddam around election
time.
It was very easy for the lone superstar to
start a war. But what followed from that war proved
largely beyond anyone's control. Bush is hoping to stem
the tide of deleterious spillover effects from his
decision to invade Iraq for his prospects of reelection.
But the Middle East has proven through centuries that it
operates purely on the basis of its own logic, or, as
some say, the lack thereof.
(Copyright 2004 Asia
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Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria,
Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
