Iraq Still Confusing Me
Apparently, the Americans managed to get a new set of officials in place that is different from the people who would have been the first choice of Brahimi of the UN. Brahimi wanted to get away from the "old" IGC, and move to "technocrats" or people who weren't so identified with one narrow group. The U.S. instead has gone with the old IGC, minus Chalabi and Pachachi.
Chibli Mallat says in an interview:
"Brahimi tried to send most of the IGC home and get his man (Adnana Pachachi) in as president of Iraq. They resisted, and now we have a second-tier group, with even less legitimacy than the previous one, and without Pachachi. So everyone got severely mauled, and this is exactly what I wanted to prevent by preserving the IGC--which wasn't perfect, but hard to improve upon."
(Mallat still defends Chalabi, and has lots of interesting things to say. One can paraphrase that he is shocked at the terrible mistakes the U.S. has made, yet some pretty good outcomes are still possible. Via Hit and Run).
To their credit, the Americans also gave the mullahs less of a role than one might have expected.
Yet Sistani still seems to have a veto to a certain extent--for example, over the possibility of a built-in veto for the Kurds.
The announcement that many militias are going to be disbanded, or integrated into official governmental units, is good news--but it does not cover all the militias, and it has been announced before.
Should Sadr have been allowed to run for office?
|
