BAGHDAD - Iraq's new
minister of the interior, Falah al-Nakib, and his staff
were so taken by surprise by the unexpected handover of
sovereignty by the US-led occupation on Monday that they
failed to make it to the brief ceremony.
They
stayed in their office, an air-raid shelter meant for
one of Saddam Hussein's daughters, and watched it on
television.
But when they heard the news that L
Paul Bremer, the American administrator of the Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA), had left the country, they
kissed and shook hands, says Sabah al-Ali, a close
adviser to the minister and his former brother-in-arms
in the fight against Saddam. The CPA was the occupation
mechanism that ran the country since the invasion in
April last year.
"It was such a relief for us,"
said al-Ali. "Bremer was the supreme leader of our
country in a period that was very tragic and in which
may bad things happened to Iraq." Bremer left for the US
in a military transport plane immediately after the
handover ceremony in Baghdad.
There was also a
very practical side to the relief felt in the interior
ministry. "While Bremer was around he still exercised
ultimate authority," said al-Ali. "We never knew when
one of our instructions would be countered by him."
The handover of sovereignty to the new Iraqi
government headed by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi went
ahead two days ahead of the scheduled date, June 30. It
marks a formal end to 15 months of occupation after the
US-led invasion last year.
The reason for moving
the date forward seems obvious to people in Iraq, and
few questioned the wisdom of it. In a country racked by
violent attacks and debilitating instability, many
ordinary Iraqis saw it as a smart move as June 30 would
have been an invitation for insurgents to mount attacks.
The new government seems to be able to count on
an initial measure of sympathy from a population that
has been shaken by a prolonged period of instability.
Restoration of public order is seen everywhere as the
key to the new government's success or failure.
Even so, there is very little tolerance for the
continued presence of American and other foreign troops
after the handover. The US will keep at least 138,000
troops in Iraq (augmented by about 20,000 from other
countries) for the foreseeable future, he said. Fourteen
permanent or semi-permanent military bases have been,
and are being constructed to house them. These forces
have, by an 11th hour edict of Bremer, complete immunity
from Iraqi law and Iraqi courts.
Saad Jawad,
professor of political science at the University of
Baghdad, sounded pessimistic about the chances of
success of the new government of Prime Minister Allawi.
"On the one hand the ministers are still tied to the
Americans for many things they need, and on the other
they will be blamed if things go wrong," he said. "This
government is neither elected nor independent," said
Jawad. "Everything will depend on whether the Americans
will give them everything they need to do the job."
The interim government will be in charge until
Iraqis vote in a general election, which must take place
by January 31 next year, according to a UN Security
Council resolution.
Allawi's government will not
have the power or the authority to change the interim
constitution or even amend the Transitional
Administrative Law. Additionally, Bremer created and
appointed an electoral commission that can ban political
parties; gave five-year terms to the new hand-picked
national security adviser and national intelligence
chief; and appointed inspectors-general with five-year
terms over every one of the 26 Iraqi government
ministries.
The new government will still depend
on the former coalition forces, now renamed the
Multi-National Forces, for most security operations. The
newly reconstituted Iraqi security forces, police,
national guard and army now number some 200,000. But
they have only been provided light arms, and even for
communications and other logistics they still depend
mainly on the US army.
The problem is that
opponents of the government will escalate their efforts
to see it fail, as has happened already in the run-up to
the handover. And it is hard to see how the newly
formed, inexperienced and somewhat under-equipped Iraqi
government can succeed where US forces failed.
Al-Ali had the same response to this as most
ordinary Iraqis who responded to this question. "We know
our own people. Iraqis are much better at controlling
Iraqis than outsiders are. We can succeed."
Choppy waters ahead Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty reports that a key problem for the
new government will be how to safeguard its members from
assassination. The run-up to Monday's handover has seen
a cascade of attacks on Iraqis cooperating with the new
government and of direct threats against top leaders.
One group of insurgents released a recorded
threat against Allawi in mid-June. In it, the group vows
to murder Allawi the same way it disposed in May of Abd
al-Zahra Uthman Muhammad (aka Izz al-Din Salim) - a
member of the former US-appointed Iraqi Governing
Council - in a suicide bomb attack.
The voice is
believed to be that of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian
militant alleged to have links with al-Qaeda. His group
and multiple other insurgent organizations show no sign
of ending their resistance to efforts to build a new
post-Saddam order.
But many analysts say equally
tough challenges for Iraq's new government may come from
within its own ranks. That is because the interim
administration comprises representatives of factions
that over the past months have acted as rivals as often
as they have as partners.
Until now, the
parties' experience working together has taken place in
a setting largely controlled by the CPA, which is now
disbanded.
Abdel Saheb Hakim, an Iraq expert and
human rights activist in London, notes that Iraq has no
precedent for power-sharing in its political history to
guide the interim government. "There is no such
experience in Iraq's history. In the past, all the
governments have been dictatorships and the Iraqi people
have no [prior] experience with democracy except a very
little primitive democracy during the royal era
immediately after Iraq gained independence under King
Faisal II," Hakim said.
The government comprises
representatives of Iraq's majority Shi'ite Arab and
minority Sunni Arab and Iraqi-Kurd communities. Since
Iraq's independence in 1932, its governments have been
dominated by the Sunni Arabs to the resentment of the
other groups. The current government has a Sunni Arab
president, Kurdish and Shi'ite vice presidents and a
Shi'ite prime minister.
In an effort to ensure
rivalries within the government remain peaceful, all
participating parties agreed in early June to disband
their militias. Allawi said that their members will be
integrated into Iraq's security forces. "The vast
majority of such forces in Iraq - about 100,000 armed
individuals - will enter either civilian life or one of
the state security services, such as the Iraqi armed
forces, the Iraqi police service, or the internal
security services of the Kurdish regional government,"
Allawi said.
But the groups have yet to be
incorporated into national security forces, and it
remains uncertain how they will react in serious power
disputes. Overall responsibility for Iraq's security and
stability is in the hands of the US-led multinational
force.
The seriousness of the power-sharing
challenge was underlined in Kurdish unhappiness with the
United Nations' resolution on June 8 endorsing Iraqi
sovereignty. The resolution failed to include a
guarantee sought by the Kurds that will maintain their
present level of autonomy.
Some Kurdish parties
have suggested they reserve the right to not cooperate
with any Iraqi government that seeks to reduce their
level of autonomy. The present level is endorsed by the
Transitional Administrative Law adopted by Iraqi leaders
under the CPA. But final resolution of the issue has
been left for the writing of Iraq's constitution in
2005.
Faraj al-Haydari, an official of the
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), put the Kurdish
position this way in an interview with RFE/RL in Baghdad
last week: "There is an administrative law. This law
should be implemented. If it is implemented, we will
have achieved what we want. If it is not implemented, if
it is canceled, we will take different measures than we
are taking now."
With all participants in the
interim government intent on ensuring they do not lose
ground in the run-up to Iraq's first round of elections
in January, the political jockeying in the months ahead
could be intense.
The January elections will
choose a transitional national assembly, which in turn
will select a transitional administration to lead the
country to direct election of a representative
government by the end of 2005.
But how patient
the Iraqi public will be with political infighting in
Baghdad remains to be seen. Al-Hakim says that today,
Iraqis' greatest concern is security: "The Iraqi people
now are concerned about their security, which is the
first priority, more than the political situation. As
far as the cabinet [of Allawi is concerned], I can't say
anything [to praise it] unless this government achieves
the most important goal of the Iraqi people, which is
security."
The deep desire for order is the
result of more than a year of insurgent suicide and car
bombings, plus widespread lawlessness, including
kidnapping for ransom. The instability has frightened
the public and hindered reconstruction efforts that
could generate jobs and lower the country's near-50%
unemployment rate.
Some analysts warn that if
the insecurity continues, new populist leaders could
rise on promises to secure local areas by paramilitary
means. If so, these leaders would be outside the
US-approved political establishment and could pose still
more challenges to central authority.
But both
Iraqi and US officials are counting on the handover of
power to build public confidence in the new government
and more representative ones in 2005. They hope that
will embolden ordinary citizens to identify insurgents
to security forces and enable them to finally crush
them.
