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Charles Clover
Iraq has hosted no less than three momentous handovers of power by the US-led coalition since the end of the war in 2003, each accompanied by slightly higher expectations that a more sovereign and more legitimate Iraqi state could finally emerge to start mending the fractured society.
The success of January's parliamentary elections, whose results were announced last week, is likely to depend on the extent that the winners can share power, and create the climate for a political solution to the country's bloody insurgency.
The incoming parliament, and the government it appoints, is likely to enjoy far more legitimacy than other governing bodies set up by the US-led coalition in the wake of the war. But the elected parliament still has many of the flaws of the 2003 Iraq Governing Council and the 2004 Iraqi interim government. The same Iraqi exiled politicians installed by the US at the end of the war will remain the main power brokers in the new assembly.
The biggest challenge the new parliament faces is devising ways to include Sunni Arabs in the political process.
The Sunnis form the backbone of Iraq's insurgency, and most boycotted the elections.
This has left them with virtually no representation in parliament, though many Sunni figures have nonetheless made it clear that they have not given up on politics as a means to press their political agenda, and expect to be involved in the writing of Iraq's constitution later this year.
But their inclusion will have to be at the pleasure of the Shia, who have endured a grim historical legacy of oppression by successive Sunni dominated governments for the past 80 years.
As expected, the Shia translated their demographic majority within Iraq into an election victory for the United Iraqi Alliance, comprised mainly of Shia religious parties, who won 48 per cent of the vote.
Shia politicians have emphasised that they have no plans to monopolise the top posts in the incoming government, though the Alliance leaders have said they will not accept a prime minister from outside their group.
Jawad al-Maliki, a member of Daawa, one of two Shia parties that form the bulk of the Alliance list, said: "We must include everyone in the political solution, the Sunnis, the Kurds, and all groups that want to work with us to create a constitution and a future for Iraq."
He added that they were currently negotiating with a number of Sunni figures to bring them into the constitution writing process.
One US official said that it was likely that the committee that ultimately writes the constitution, to be chosen by parliament, would include Sunni figures who chose to boycott the elections.
"There are ways to plug in people from a variety of communities in the constitutional advisory committees, depending on what vehicle is ultimately chosen by parliament for writing the constitution," he said.
The process of writing the constitution, however, is likely to bring many of the divisions in Iraqi society to the fore.
Kurds, who fear domination by the Arab majority in Iraq, fear the new constitution will fall short of granting them the autonomy they wish in a federal system.
Largely to assuage Kurdish fears, US administrators had given them an effective veto over the constitution, built into the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) of March 2004, which states that if three Iraqi provinces object to the draft constitution in a referendum planned for later this year, the document will be scrapped.
Shia politicians, however, have said they do not recognise this right. Sheikh Jalal al-Din al-Sagheer, a high-ranking Shia cleric, is one of several Alliance members who disputes the three-province veto clause: "Of course this is unacceptable. There is not such thing as democracy in which the minority decides, and the majority plays no role."
Maliki also criticised the TAL, and questioned its usefulness in the wake of the elections, saying "there are many paragraphs in this law which should not be present" and added that "the body which we have elected has more legitimacy than this document."
Kurds, for their part, have the second largest share of parliament, with a joint list by the two main Kurdish parties taking more than 25 per cent of the vote.
They are pressing not only for a muscular form of federalism in the constitution, but also want the oil rich city of Kirkuk to be included in their region, something that both Shia and Sunni Arabs strongly oppose.
Another contentious issue is likely to be calls for the US-led coalition to withdraw from Iraq, or at least name a timetable for withdrawal.
The Alliance campaigned on this issue, and an Alliance brochure from January 10 lists "setting a schedule for the multi-national forces to withdraw from Iraq" in between "providing security" and "respecting human rights" as key points of their political platform.
The sentence was, however, later watered down suggesting there may be more leeway in discussions between the US and the incoming Iraqi administration.
The Association of Muslim Scholars, a group of Sunni clerics largely sympathetic to the insurgency, has described a withdrawal timetable as a precondition for their support in ending the bloody revolt.
US President George W Bush said last month that US forces would withdraw if asked to by an elected Iraqi government, though he added that this was unlikely.
The role of Islam in the constitution, meanwhile, is likely to pit secularists in Iraq against their better organised counterparts in the clergy, who have demanded that Islam be the official state religion, and that it be one of the main sources of legislation.
Shia clerics are also likely to be joined by their Sunni counterparts in calling for the creation of a clerical body tasked with vetting new legislation according to Islamic principles.
Sagheer said the Alliance would seek the creation of a "State Shura Council" of Muslim clerics that was independent of the government and had authority to overturn legislation which was not in accordance with constitutional principles of Islam.
Sorting through these differences will be the monumental task for the incoming parliament. The biggest danger, according to Dr Wamidh Nathmi, a Sunni political figure whose party boycotted the elections, is that the numerous sectarian differences will be resolved by staking out powers for each group. This, he said, would place Iraq's nationhood in jeopardy.
"Surely the constitution should not be written on a sectarian basis, because if it is, we will wind up like Lebanon, where sectarianism lasts forever."
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Source: Internet, exclusive to FE
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