From Baghdad to Philadelphia?
Iraq needs a new constitution. The country is under U.S. occupation. The U.S. will "substantially withdraw," or something, on July 1. This seems to mean there will still be a lot of U.S. troops, but they won't be so visible--e.g. they won't be in a palace in Baghdad.
The U.S. says there is no time for a real election by July 1. So there has to be another non-elected council, like the present Iraqi Governing Council. (Maybe the official name is "Interim"). The present Council, I'm pretty sure, is the second; the first didn't last very long.
Update: the U.S. plan is to have legislators chosen by 18 regional caucuses. Full elections are supposed to come in 2005. I'm still looking for more details.
Update: The Washington Post: "Under the Bush administration's plan, which was approved by Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council on Nov. 15, caucuses would be held in Iraq's 18 provinces to choose representatives to a transitional assembly. The assembly would then choose the provisional government to which the U.S.-led occupation authority is to transfer sovereignty by July 1."
Update: this account in another Washington Post story has its funny side:
"After weeks of quiet overtures and secret letters to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, administration officials say they are baffled over exactly what he wants--and even more confused about what it will take to get him to back off his demand for direct elections.
"On substance, the United States is not even sure how well Sistani understands the complicated U.S. plan to hold 18 regional caucuses to select a national assembly, which would pick a government to assume power when the occupation ends. Complicating the problem is the fact that there is no precise equivalent in Arabic for "caucus" nor any history of caucuses in the Arab world, U.S. officials say.
"Through intermediaries and in letters from Bremer over the past two months, the U.S.-led coalition authority has tried to explain its plan, which it calls 'election by conference' in Arabic. But Sistani's responses have been limited and often vague, U.S. officials say.
"Sistani has refused to see any U.S. official, and Washington is not sure how many of the indirect communications have reached the aging and reclusive cleric, U.S. officials add. The United States is still looking for people who know Sistani well enough to act as go-betweens for the negotiations or to explain Sistani's thinking."
The Shiites, a majority of the population, want an election, and representation by population. There have been large demonstrations on this point inspired by one Shiite religious leader: Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, head of the Hawza al-Ilmiya, "a historic center of Shiite learning in the holy city of Najaf that produces clerics serving across Iraq and the Shiite world." Al-Sistani is obviously one candidate for democratically elected "leader" (President? Grand Ayatollah?) of Iraq.
My main source is MSN.com.
There are obvious objections to simple majority rule in the near future. The Sunnis have had the upper hand for decades. They don't want to lose all power, and they probably fear retribution, including confiscation of property, from other groups. There seem to be two "candidates" who are Sunni: Nizar Khazraji, a former chief of staff of the Iraqi army, hero of the Iran-Iraq war, wanted in Denmark for war crimes commited against the Kurds in Iraq (? I don't know the story); and Adnan Pachachi, a former Iraqi foreign minister who quit in the late 1960s, and proudly says he never supported Saddam, and (therefore) he enjoys substantial support among the Shiites.
The Kurds have received a lot of attention. There have really been two Kurdistans in the north of Iraq, protected by the U.S. no-fly zone after 1991, and there are two prominent Kurdish leaders today: Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP); and Jalal Talabani, "chief rival to Barzani," the secretary general of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
Al-Sistani is not the only potential Shiite leader. The famous or notorious Ahmed Chalabi is another. His brief bio is a hoot: "Ahmed Chalabi is president of the London-based Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella group of exiles. Chalabi, a Shiite, relies on close ties to the Pentagon. He was convicted in absentia for bank fraud by Jordan in 1992." As far as we can tell, he is the favourite of the brain trust in Washington.
Finally, there is Muqtada Al-Sadr: "in his 20s, is son of al-Sistani's predecessor as grand ayatollah, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, who was killed by Saddam's regime in 1999 and is now revered by many as a martyr. Witnesses said al-Sadr's followers were behind the killing of prominent cleric Abdel Majid al-Khoei, an al-Sistani ally, in Najaf on April 10.
It is difficult to tell how Bremer, or anyone in Washington, actually expects this to work out. [Update: they seem to be asking the UN for some kind of help]. The Kurds have been granted some kind of autonomy in Kurdistan, but not in Kirkuk--a city which they regard as theirs, and which Saddam deliberately settled with Arabs (Sunnis?) in recent decades. Are the Kurds going to try to take Kirkuk back by force? Would that be the trigger that would cause Turkey to intervene? [Update: There is also a substantial Turkmen minority in Kirkuk].
Syria has a Baathist government, at least nominally close to the former Saddam regime. Will Assad intervene on behalf of the Sunnis? Will Iran intervene on behalf of the pious, non-Chalabi Shiites, or on behalf of a specific mullah? To what extent are Iran and Syria already driving events?
The Bush Administration has mentioned "democracy" roughly a million times. That primarily means majority rule. Yet the pious, non-Chalabi Shiites--probably a majority of Iraq--seem to be the Iraqis that the U.S. will least want to work with--the closest to Islamic fundamentalism and the mullahs of Iran, the least Westernized and secular.
Presumably part of the U.S. Constitution might help: an upper house which gives equal representation to states or regions, and a lower house which is based on rep by pop. Of course, the U.S. Senate has caused problems over the years, but it has also allowed for some useful compromises. There is already concern in Iraq that giving some kind of autonomy to each major region will put minorities in a region at risk.
Update: Details on the transition plan are here. There is a reference to federalism (as well as a bill of rights, and independent judiciary), but not to an upper house with a federal organizing principle.
The 18 "caucuses" are to take place within "governorates". Huh?
Update: Slate quotes from the LA Times, including this quote from a director at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "Beneath the new interest of the United States in bringing democracy to the Middle East is the central dilemma that the most powerful, popular movements are ones that we are deeply uncomfortable with."
Update: from an article in the new Newsweek: "In the immediate aftermath of Saddam's overthrow, Syrian President Bashar Assad looked like the most vulnerable of Iraq's neighbors, and he probably still is. Damascus not only has to contend with its new neighbor, the United States, but with its old one, Israel. So Assad has turned to Turkey. He quickly handed over several terrorists who'd tried to find refuge in Syria after the bombings of two Istanbul synagogues last November. And on a state visit this month, he emphasized a common goal on which Ankara and Damascus strongly concur: the need to keep Iraq's Kurds from establishing an autonomous, much less an independent, homeland. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that he and Assad were "in complete agreement." (Turkey, Syria and Iran all have Kurdish populations that might try the same thing if the Iraqis succeed.) The uncertainties raised by the Iraq effect--including the status of the Kurds--have brought these old enemies closer together."
This article suggests that two nasty regimes--Libya and Syria--are being allowed to come in from the cold with no serious internal reform. Iran's religious conservatives are tightening control--just when reform began to seem possible--because they know the U.S. needs them to achieve a smooth transition in Iraq. Unintended consequences, one might say.
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