SO WHAT'S THE LATEST, LATEST BLUEPRINT?
BAGHDAD AND KARBALA
From The Economist print edition 26-2-04
Por su interés y relevancia, he seleccionado el artículo que sigue para incluirlo en este sitio web. (L. B.-B.)
The United Nations has blown a hole in the Americans'
latest plan without exactly suggesting what to put in its place
IF THE Americans expected the United Nations to solve their problems, they will have to think again. Instead of proposing a plan of his own for Iraq's transition to democracy, the UN's secretary-general, Kofi Annan, has deferred judgment over who should govern Iraq when the Americans hand over sovereignty or when the Iraqis should go to the polls. It's your mess, he—in effect—told Paul Bremer, American proconsul in Iraq. You sort it out.
Having already changed plans twice, Mr Bremer is wary of preparing yet another blueprint that could become obsolete almost as soon as it is published. But the UN's fact-finding team, led by Lakhdar Brahimi, who spent a week in Iraq earlier this month, has just about skewered Mr Bremer's plans for “caucuses” to select a transitional national assembly that was supposed, in turn, to produce a provisional government to take over from the Americans by July 1st. By declaring the caucus idea unworkable, the UN has blown a hole in Mr Bremer's accord, signed on November 15th, with Iraq's American-appointed Governing Council.
Of the ten deadlines listed in that agreement, seven now seem unlikely to be met. But Mr Bremer is trying to stick to three key dates. He insists that an interim constitution, known as “the basic law”, should be agreed on by February 28th; that the American-run Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) should formally cease to run Iraq by June 30th; and that sovereignty should be handed over to an Iraqi provisional government the next day. With so much of the November agreement in tatters, can Mr Bremer persuade his Governing Council appointees to honour the rest of the commitments, even if the timetable slips?
Over the past week, Mr Bremer has energetically lobbied its 25 members to agree to a single version of the basic law's multiple drafts before this week's deadline. Two issues have been especially tricky: the definition of Kurdish self-rule; and whether Islamic canon law should be “a” or “the” source of legislation—a matter, if unresolved, that could rupture relations between mosque and state.
Vowing to fend off the possibility of an Islamic theocracy, Mr Bremer went on the offensive, flying to the Shia Muslims' holy city of Karbala in an effort to break the ayatollahs' apparent veto power. He oversaw the replacement of the local council backed by the ayatollahs with a new one that includes women and tribal leaders, who are seen by the CPA as a secular counterweight. In response, the local representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most influential cleric, used the mosque loudspeakers to dub the new council “illegitimate” and told his flock to use next week's big pilgrimage of Ashoura to protest against the American appointments.
After getting death threats, many of the new councillors suspended their work. Mr Bremer had hoped that Kurdish leaders, who are vehemently secular, might back him against his religious opponents. But for reasons of political expediency they have stayed aloof. If the Arabs want to go fundamentalist, say the Kurds, all the more reason for their own secular laws to prevail in the north.
Moreover, seeing the Shias flex their muscles, the Kurds have responded in kind, demanding their own legal system, government, and national guard. For good measure, they also want a fixed share of Iraqi oil and a budget for a resettlement plan to restore a Kurdish majority in the oil-rich region just south of their autonomous zone. If Mr Bremer says no, they say, they will refuse to sign a basic law by the present deadline of February 28th.
Mr Bremer is hesitating. In the November agreement, the CPA is due to sign a “status of forces” agreement next month with the Governing Council, to regulate the presence of foreign troops in Iraq. The Americans had hoped to find a home for the forces they withdrew from Saudi Arabia last year. But already the council is baulking at the Americans' insistence on signing a document that would allow for an unlimited number of American troops in Iraq for an unlimited period and subject to American, not local, law. Fearful of yet more squabbles with the council, Mr Bremer cites American lawyers who now say that only a sovereign government, after the handover at the end of June, has the legal authority to sign such an agreement. So another date looks like slipping.
But the biggest question of all is what government will emerge on July 1st. The UN mission scotched plans for choosing a body by then, either by elections (not enough time) or “caucuses” (too unpopular). An election, it said, would take at least eight months from the moment the legal and institutional framework is agreed on. This week, in a helpful shift, Mr Sistani said he would accept such a delay if a direct election were held by the end of this year.
By default, Mr Bremer may have few options but to extend the life of the only national Iraqi show in town, the Governing Council. Many of its members have hoped for as much, even though the agreement they signed in November stipulated that “the transitional assembly will not be an expansion of the Governing Council”.
Since many of the council's members are likely to do badly in a direct election, they welcome a chance to use their patronage. They propose that each of the 25 members appoint ten members, so creating a 250-strong assembly, with each member representing around 100,000 Iraqis. The assembly could then vote for a leadership, though even that is open to dispute.
The Kurds want a three-man presidency comprised of a Kurd, a Shia Arab and a Sunni Arab; the Shias want a five-man presidency comprising three Shias, a Sunni Kurd and a Sunni Arab, to underscore their demographic ascendancy; and the Sunni Arabs have put forward a compromise four-man presidency consisting of two Shias, a Sunni Kurd and a Sunni Arab. Taking a leaf out of multi-sectarian Lebanon's parliamentary book, some suggest a Sunni president, a Shia prime minister and a Kurdish speaker.
Do Iraqis care? Many would rather live in a less-than-democratic but prosperous and stable state, like Kuwait or Dubai, than suffer the tension of a delicate democratic balance demanded by Iraq's peculiar demography. Moreover, the Governing Council is hardly representative, since it has no members hailing from the large swathe of country along the Tigris valley north of Baghdad, the Sunni powerbase of Saddam Hussein. If the present Governing Council took real power, the insurgency in some of the unrepresented towns, such as Mosul, Tikrit, Ramadi and Kut, might get a lot nastier. Party and provincial militias, which already rule many of Iraq's streets, could take the law into their hands.
With the benefit of hindsight, Mr Bremer might have sold the idea of caucuses if he had managed to persuade the Shia clerics that he was an honest broker (a pity he didn't use the Arabic term “shuras”) and if the Bush administration had sought the UN's help a lot sooner. The November plan did not mention that body.
So who will pick up the pieces? Mr Annan suggests that the UN could nudge Iraq towards a general election by the end of this year or very soon after. Perhaps the ayatollahs may view him as a more honest broker than Mr Bremer. But with the insurgency once more growing, trying to build a democracy in Iraq is looking like an even more daunting challenge.