Democracy or disintegration, Iraqis
decide By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - One day after the formal
presentation by a majority of Iraq's elected
leaders of their proposed constitution, opinions
here and in Baghdad appear divided over whether
the draft will lead to greater democracy or the
virtual, if not actual, disintegration of the
country.
While US officials predictably
put the most positive spin on the charter, which
will now be submitted to the Iraqi electorate for
a vote October 15, other analysts warned that its
provisions for regional autonomy will hasten the
country's descent into a sectarian civil war that
could eventually draw in neighboring states.
"I do not believe in this division between
Shi'ite and Sunni and Muslims and Christians and
Arabs and Kurds," the secretary general of the
Arab League, Amr Moussa, told the BBC on Monday.
... I find in this a true recipe for chaos and
perhaps a catastrophe in Iraq and around it."
Still others argued that the language
regarding the special place
of
Islam and Islamic law in the constitution may
worsen the plight of religious minorities,
particularly Christians, and women, despite
repeated pledges by the administration of US
President George W Bush that women's and minority
rights were among Washington's highest priorities
in Iraq.
"Religious minorities as well as
women will suffer under Iraq's proposed
constitutional architecture," asserted Nina Shea,
the director of Freedom House's Center for
Religious Freedom and the vice-chair of the
quasi-governmental US Commission on International
Religious Freedom, in an article published by the
right-wing National Review Online.
"We
fear greatly that this and other provisions are
the opening wedge for the imposition of a regime
of group rights, which are anathema to secure
individual rights and protections - a recipe for
wider civil strife based on narrow identity
politics," she and co-author Tom Cullinan wrote in
reference to the constitution's replacement of
civil law on personal status by religious law.
The fate of the new constitution, which
was delayed by two weeks of sometimes frantic but
ultimately unsuccessful US efforts to get Sunni
representatives to sign on, remains uncertain.
Under current law, the constitution is
automatically rejected if two-thirds of voters in
any three of Iraq's 18 provinces vote against it
on October 15. That provision was originally
designed by US officials to reassure Kurds, which
have big majorities in three northern provinces,
that they could effectively veto any charter that
did not provide them with significant autonomy.
As drafted, the new constitution indeed
guarantees that autonomy to the Kurds and, more
significantly, establishes the groundwork for
offering it to as many as nine provinces in the
overwhelmingly Shi'ite south.
But that
arrangement is anathema to many in the Sunni
community who favor a strong central government
if, for no other reason than the Sunni heartland
has few natural resources compared to the oil and
gas industries based in both the north and the
south.
The Sunnis, who are believed to
make up about 20% of Iraq's total population of
about 25 million, hold overwhelming majorities in
two western provinces and a smaller majority in a
third and thus, ironically, could conceivably
single-handedly defeat the charter in the October
referendum.
In addition, however, Muqtada
al-Sadr, the young Shi'ite cleric whose Mehdi
paramilitary forces have recently flexed their
muscles against rival Shi'ite militias, has also
indicated strong opposition to the constitution,
which he has reportedly called part of an "Iranian
plot" to assert control over the southern part of
the country through the region's largest political
party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution
in Iraq (SCIRI), and its Iranian-trained militia,
the Badr organization.
Muqtada's
popularity in teeming Sadr City in Baghdad,
combined with the large Sunni population in the
capital, could deliver Baghdad province by the
requisite margin into the "no" column come October
15, thus virtually assuring the charter's
rejection.
Some analysts in and out of the
administration argue that the possibility of the
constitution's rejection may be a blessing because
it may encourage more Sunnis to participate in the
political process, if only to assure the charter's
defeat in the referendum.
Since the
January 30 elections, persuading the Sunnis to
participate in the process has been a top priority
for a Bush administration which, guided by its
military commanders, has become increasingly
persuaded that the war in Iraq has no military
solution.
Indeed, the visit earlier this
month to Baghdad by Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, as well as a telephone call by Bush to SCIRI
leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, were aimed above all
at persuading him to compromise with the Sunni
leadership.
If the constitution is
defeated in the referendum, Fareed Zakaria, former
foreign affairs managing editor and editor of
Newsweek International, told ABC News' This
Week Sunday, "Sunnis [will] have demonstrated
that they have real power. And they'll be
re-incorporated. That ... is the good news
scenario.
"The bad case scenario," he went
on, "they're not able to defeat it [the
constitution] ... [then the Sunnis] retain all the
alienation, all the antipathy, and forge ahead not
defeating it peacefully, but defeating it the way
they're trying now, which is violently and through
civil war."
Indeed, some believe that the
way in which the Sunnis were marginalized in the
constitution-drafting process - as well as the
charter's provisions on regional autonomy and
against the participation of former Ba'athist
officials in government - may already have served
to fuel the insurgency.
For several weeks,
Sunni leaders have argued that they only joined
the drafting process - at the risk of
assassination by insurgents who have opposed their
participation - on the understanding that a
consensus document would be the result, only to be
sidelined in the last two weeks by deal-making
between the Kurds and Shi'ites.
Indeed,
many analysts, including administration officials,
predicted that insurgent violence was likely to
intensify, while one Sunni delegate, Husain
al-Falluji, told reporters that the constitution
was a recipe for Iraq's violent partition that
would "serve American interests".
While
some US officials dismissed such remarks as
posturing by Sunni leaders who were cowed by the
insurgency and do not represent their community
anyway (despite having been hand-picked by the US
embassy), in fact, calls for partitioning Iraq
have been growing louder in Washington, notably
among some neo-conservatives.
In a widely
noted column in the Los Angeles Times last week,
former Justice Department official John Yoo, now
with the American Enterprise Institute, argued
that the administration was "spending blood and
treasure to preserve a country that no longer
makes sense as a state. The US might get closer to
its goals in the Middle East," he wrote, "if
everyone would jettison the fiction of a unified,
single Iraq."
