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Intractable differences between factions could
destroy the nation as it attempts to write the
document.
With the announcement Sunday of the results in
Iraq's historic election, the winners must now form
a government and write a constitution. At the first
task, the Iraqis seem destined to succeed. Writing a
constitution, however, may tear the country apart.
Iraq's biggest winners were a list of Shiites
assembled by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani that
garnered about half the votes in the national
assembly and a unified Kurdish list that won 26%,
but this understates the country's ethnic and
religious divisions. In fact, about 80% of Iraqis
voted for parties that represented their own ethnic
or religious group, including Christian and Turkmen
parties. And Sunni Arabs, who make up 20% of the
population, expressed their own identity by not
voting at all. In fact, only two parties made any
real appeal beyond their own ethnic or religious
group — interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's party
and the Communist Party. Neither party can be
considered "national"; they won negligible votes in
the Kurdish regions and no more than 20% of the Arab
vote.
Even though Iraq is fractured, the election results
should make it relatively easy to form a government.
Under Iraq's interim constitution, a two-thirds
majority of the national assembly is required to
choose the president and the prime minister. That
means a coalition between the Shiite and Kurdish
lists would be sufficient, and, in fact, the Kurds
are proposing a power-sharing deal that would give
them the figurehead presidency and some key
ministries (as well as some policy concessions) in
exchange for their supporting a Shiite prime
minister and government. Although some Shiites have
argued that their electoral majority allows them to
ignore the U.S.-written interim constitution (which
the Bush administration negligently failed to make
binding), doing so would lead to a Kurdish pullout
from Baghdad and possibly provoke secession. Thus, a
deal along the lines sought by the Kurds seems
probable.
Both Shiites and Kurds want to erase the vestiges of
Saddam Hussein's Sunni-backed regime. They will be
tough on the insurgency — using the Kurdish
peshmerga and Shiite militias rather than the
ineffective U.S.-created new Iraqi army — and will
accelerate the de-Baathification process suspended
by Allawi. Because Kurdistan is already functionally
independent from the rest of Iraq, the Kurds have
little incentive to block Shiite efforts to
Islamicize Arab Iraq. In return, the Kurds expect
Baghdad not to interfere in their affairs and to
support Kurdish demands to control the oil-rich city
of Kirkuk.
But what will happen to such a coalition when it
comes to writing a constitution, a process that
demands opposing sides to look past their
differences and agree on a single, defining
document?
Kurds and Shiites have radically different visions
for Iraq's future. The Kurds are secular and
pro-American and look to Western democracy for their
political model. The Shiites want to make Islam the
principal source of law and, although insisting they
will not copy Iran's overtly clerical system of
government, clearly see Iran as a friend and
inspiration.
How to deal, for example, with Kurds who are proud
of the progress that women have made in their region
and Shiite clerics who want religious law written
into the constitution — law that includes provisions
for daughters getting only half as much inheritance
as sons? Even more problematic, Kurds and Arabs do
not share a commitment to the idea of Iraq. Sunni
Arabs have always been nationalistic, and the
Shiites may become nationalists now that they are
rulers. But the Kurds do not want to be Iraqi at all
and will not accept a constitution that restores any
central government authority over their region.
The neoconservative architects of U.S. policy on
Iraq talk about the creation of an Iraqi
constitution as if it were going to be a version of
the American experience in Philadelphia in 1787,
with divisive issues settled by a series of grand
compromises. But some differences are so profound
that a forced compromise could actually contribute
to the breakup of the country (as indeed was true of
the Philadelphia compromise on slavery).
Clearly, a constitution acceptable to all three of
Iraq's main constituencies would be the best of all
possible worlds, and it's not inconceivable that the
Iraqis could somehow achieve it. But the question
for Iraqi leaders — and the Bush administration — is
how hard to push for a governing document when it
could destroy a fragile but functioning government
already in place.
On Iraq's two most divisive issues — Kurdistan's
status and the role of Islam in the state — there is
a modus vivendi: Kurdistan is de facto independent,
while the Shiites enforce Islamic law in their part
of the country. A Shiite-Kurdish coalition
government can make this arrangement work; a
protracted constitutional fight over religion and
Kurdish rights could tear Iraq apart.
http://www.latimes.com
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