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A gentleman's agreement in
Iraq
By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - The "gentleman's agreement"
between the Shi'ites and the Kurds of Iraq
following their success in the January 30
elections states that political office will be
divided in the new Iraq according to confessional
and ethnic lines.
The premiership, being
the real decision-making job, will go to the
Shi'ites, who compose a 60% majority. The
presidency, which is going to become largely
ceremonial in the post-Saddam Hussein order, will
go to the Kurds, who make up 3 million of Iraq's
27 million. The Speaker of parliament, another
ceremonial job whose duties are confined to
heading and moderating parliamentary debates, will
go to the Sunnis, who dominated political life
under Saddam and feared isolation, or punishment,
in the post-Saddam order.
Although they
boycotted the January elections, the Sunnis are
back in the political arena thanks to the
appeasement efforts of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi,
who insisted that they be part of political life
in Iraq, claiming that they, too, suffered from
Saddam's dictatorship.
This "gentleman's
agreement" between the three main groups,
criticized by many Arabs as the "Lebanonization"
of Iraq, is in fact the safest formula to
guarantee proper representation and minimize
conflict between all parties in the new Iraq that
is being created.
It mirrors the National
Pact, another gentleman's agreement, formulated in
Lebanon in 1943, giving the presidency to the
Maronites, the premiership to the Sunnis and the
job of speaker of parliament to the Shi'ites. The
deputy prime minister and deputy Speaker of
parliament, for example, are Greek Orthodox. This
system helped guarantee the survival of democracy
in Lebanon during two civil wars in 1958 and
1975-90. If administered properly, it can do the
same for Iraq.
In Iraq, the
gentleman's agreement states that the presidency will go
to veteran Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani,
the premiership to prominent Shi'ite politician
Dr Ibrahim Jaafari, and the Speaker's post to
Hajim al-Hasani, a Sunni politician who currently
holds office as minister of industry under Allawi.
The US-educated economist accepted the job, after
much debate, on Sunday. His two deputies will be Dr
Husayn al-Shahristani (Shi'ite), one of the most
prominent opposition leaders under Saddam, and
Arif Tayfour, a Kurd.
The deputies are due
to meet again on Wednesday to name a president and
two vice presidents. After that they will select
the premier, and the National Assembly is then
charged with writing a new constitution by
mid-August.
The
parliamentary meeting of March 16 fell apart because interim
President Ghazi al-Yawer refused to head the new
assembly, demanding instead to become one of the
two vice presidents, a job that carries more
political weight and prestige than that of
Speaker.
The Iraqis must read the history
of Lebanon correctly to administer a new Iraq on
the Lebanese model of 1943. The troika that is
being created today reminds us of the troika that
emerged in 1943; Maronite Bshara al-Khury as
president, Sunni Riyad al-Sulh as prime minister
and the Shi'ite Sabri Hamadeh, who was elected
Speaker of the Lebanese parliament in 1944.
Yet if not administered correctly, this
democratic system can backfire on Iraq and lead to
chaos, just as it did in Lebanon. In the
mid-1950s, the Maronite presidency alienated the
Sunnis and Shi'ites of Lebanon, who were Arab
nationalists, by refusing to ally Lebanon to
president Gamal Abd al-Nasser of Egypt, the
godfather of modern Arab nationalism. They
demanded the removal of Maronite president Kamil
Sham'un, and when he refused, took up arms against
him and dragged Lebanon into civil war in 1958,
inviting intervention from outside forces such as
Syria, Egypt and the United States.
Tension continued to rise between the
Maronites, Sunnis, Shiites and Druze throughout
the 1960s, and broke loose in 1975 - more or less
over the same reasons. The Sunnis, Shiites and
Druze were allied to the Palestinian resistance
based in Lebanon, as part of their commitments to
Arab nationalism, while the Maronites were not,
claiming that Arabism, and the Palestinian cause,
were a burden to Lebanon.
On March 10,
1975, a group of Muslim politicians headed by
Sunni prime ministers Rashid al-Sulh and Saib
Salam, two of the finest and most popular Sunni
chiefs of Beirut, and Druze chieftain Kamal
Jumblatt, who was a fervent Arab nationalist and
who had fought against Sham'un in 1958, issued a
manifesto asking for a curb in the Maronite
president's constitutional powers.
Sulh,
Salam and Jumblatt resented the confessional
establishment of Lebanon and longed for more
power, arguing that by having the upper hand the
Maronites were trying to marginalize the Muslim
role in the state's decision-making. They further
asked for more equal representation between
Muslims and Christians in the armed forces,
claiming that 75% of the military establishment
were Christians.
Tripoli leader
Rashid Karameh (the brother of current Prime
Minister Omar Karameh) announced that in defiance of
the National Pact of 1943, he would run for the
office of president in the upcoming 1976
elections, and any Maronite wishing to nominate
himself for the premiership was welcome to do so.
The quarrel, fueled by outside parties, mushroomed
and led to the outbreak of civil war on April 13,
1975.
History can repeat itself in Iraq.
The Kurds, like the Maronites, might at one point
alienate the Sunnis and Shi'ites with their
policies, which are not committed to Arab
nationalism, but rather to the preservation of
their interests, power and autonomy as a Kurdish
community. Some Iraqi Kurds, like some Lebanese
Maronites in the 1970s and 1980s, have had contact
with Israel, believing that this would advance
their interests, although it alienated, and
angered, the Sunnis and Shi'ites.
What would prevent the Sunnis or Shi'ites in Iraq,
50 years from now, from rising against the
Kurds, just as they rose against the Maronites
in Lebanon in 1975? Can the new Iraqi leaders
prevent any regional (Syria, Jordan, Kuwait or
Saudi Arabia) or non-Arab players (Turkey, Iran)
from interfering in their affairs today, just as
Syria, Egypt and the US interfered in Lebanon in
the 1950s?
When a constitutional document
was proposed by president Hafez Assad of Syria to
Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt in 1976, demanding
more representation for the non-Maronite
communities, it was turned down as too little and
too late. When asked by Assad what he wanted,
Jumblatt replied, "To get rid of the Christians
who have been on top of us for 140 years."
The Iraqis must not make the same mistake
of the Lebanese in 1943. The Kurds and the
Shi'ites must not alienate the general population
to a stage where they would rise against them. The
National Pact froze political power and
representation at a specific point in history,
where it happened that the Maronites were a
majority in Lebanon.
Today, the Shi'ite
Muslims are a majority in Lebanon, yet the
presidency remains with the Maronites. If put up
for a popular vote, Hezbollah secretary general
Hasan Nasrullah would win more votes than any
Maronite politician. The gentleman's agreement in
Iraq safely assumes that the Shi'ites will remain
a majority in Iraq. This is a fact. Yet the Sunnis
and Kurds are likely to change in number within
the coming years. The Kurds might drop to being
outnumbered by the Sunnis (they are fairly equal
today). Would this mean that a Sunni gets to
become president of Iraq? Or a Kurd can be elected
to become Speaker of parliament? The gentleman's
agreement of Iraq must adjust to shifting power
balances in the post-Saddam order, to avoid the
dangers that the National Pact of Lebanon faced in
1975.
The Kurds are antagonizing everyone
in the Iraqi political arena with their bold and
ambitious demands, armed with the interim
constitution of ex-US administrator L Paul Bremer,
known as the Transitional Administration Law,
which is rejected in principal by the Grand
Ayatollah of the Shi'ites, Ali al-Sistani, because
of its secularism.
In addition to
disagreeing on who the new speaker of parliament
would be, the Iraqi politicians who assembled on
March 16 argued on several other crucial points.
The main concern of the Kurds is that their
autonomy will be threatened if the Shi'ites
capture the state in Iraq. One main concern to all
parties was the role of Islam in the new
constitution, with some favoring a secular state,
like the one under the Ba'ath, and others, mainly
the clergy, insisting that Islam be made an
official religion and the source of jurisdiction.
The Shi'ites and Sunnis are opposed to a
Kurdish demand that 25% of oil revenues be
allocated to the Kurds, that they be given a veto
power in parliament, while arguing with them over
the communal identity of the minister of oil. Some
want him a Shi'ite, others want him a Kurd. Other
debatable portfolios are defense, interior and
finance. The Kurds are also demanding to keep
their militia, the peshmerga, to defend Iraqi Kurdistan,
and requesting that their autonomy be extended
to include Kirkuk, a city that is an
oilfield. The Kurds, who won 75 of the 275 seats in
the assembly, came in second in the January
elections, preceded only by the Shi'ites, who won
a slim majority of 140 seats.
Giving Kirkuk to the Kurds would alienate everyone:
the Sunnis, the Shi'ites and the small
Turkmen community in northern Iraq. Allowing the
Kurds to keep the peshmerga would also
create problems, making it virtually impossible
for the new regime to disarm any militia. In
Lebanon, for example, when the war ended in 1990,
everybody accepted that Hezbollah remain armed
because it was not using its weapons against the
Lebanese but against the Israeli occupation in
south Lebanon. The peshmerga
, unlike Hezbollah, is not a resistance
movement anymore, now that the Saddam regime is down. It
is the protector of the Kurds, inasmuch as the Mehdi
Army of Muqtada al-Sadr or the Badr Brigade of
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim are protectors of the
Shi'ites. Nothing justifies maintaining the
peshmerga and disarming other militias,
other than pure favoritism toward the Kurds. This
is not democracy, and the Shi'ites and Sunnis will
not accept it.
"It's time for the patient
Iraqi people to be treated with the dignity that
God has given them," were the words of the new
Speaker of parliament, Hajim al-Hasani. This is
correct, and it can only be done by giving equal
representation to all sects and ethnic groups in
the new Iraq that is emerging. The only way to
achieve this is a Lebanon-style democracy. It is
dangerous and destructive to think that one group
should rule Iraq in the years to come, or have a
highly favored status, either in reward for its
support in the US war against Saddam, or in
compensation for having suffered under Saddam.
Kurdish demands, if permitted to get out
of hand, can have a very negative effect on the
democratic culture that is emerging, and wreck the
"National Pact" of Iraq. Everybody suffered under
Saddam, Sunni, Kurd and Shi'ite, and therefore
everybody should be rewarded equally in
post-Saddam Iraq.
More or less,
that is what is being done today. So far, those
to show the highest wisdom have been the
Shi'ites, who have repeated their calls for calm,
democracy and cooperation with all in the
post-Saddam order. They are seconded by the Sunnis, who,
after a misguided decision to boycott
the January elections, have finally plunged
themselves back into the political system, shaking
off accusations that they were beneficiaries of
Saddam's regime. Last on the list, alas, because of their wild
ambitions, are the Kurds.
Sami
Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.
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