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That
free Iraqis are taking another week to write their
new constitution is no great cause for alarm. There
were a few glitches 200 years ago in Philadelphia
too. The reason to worry is that the talks are
stymied on the issue of federalism, which is crucial
if Iraq's ethnic factions are going to coexist in a
single country for the long run.
At least the last-minute brinksmanship doesn't
appear to be about religion, despite repeated alarms
in the U.S. about the rise of a Shiite "theocracy."
Most of the Iraqi framers seem to agree with
constitutional language asserting that Islam will be
"a" -- not "the" -- principle source of legislation.
This is not so different from the vague appeals to
divine providence found in some of America's
founding documents, and certainly is no reason to
fear Iranian-style clerical dominance. On both
family law and women's rights, as well, compromises
appear to be within reach.
The really tough disputes are over federalism and
its corollary of sharing oil revenues. "Get those
right and everything else falls into place," one
Iraqi insider tells our Robert Pollock, who is
reporting from Baghdad. By federalism we mean a
political system modeled more or less on the U.S. of
America, in which power is shared between a central
government and the provinces. The name "United
States of Iraq" was actually proposed inside the
Iraqi meetings, and no wonder given the terrible
experience that Kurdish and Shiite Iraqis had under
Saddam Hussein.
The Kurds have enjoyed de facto self rule in the
north under the protection of a U.S. no-fly zone
since the mid-1990s, and they aren't about to give
up their hard-won autonomy now. Many Shiites also
find the idea of a weaker government in Baghdad
attractive, given how they were victimized by
Sunni-dominated Iraqi governments going back to the
1920s.
The dilemma is that most of Iraq's oil wealth is
found in areas claimed by Shiites and Kurds. And
some leading Iraqi ethnic politicians have been
asserting a right to keep all the oil revenue in
their regions. Kurdish chieftain Massoud Barzani
wants to control the northern city of Kirkuk, while
Shiite politician Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is pushing for
nearly complete control of the oil fields in the
south.
Thus strong regional governments, if allowed too
much control over oil, risk leaving an Iraq with a
rump Sunni province, and could create the perception
of a legitimate grievance where none now exists for
the Sunni-dominated insurgency. Sunni delegates have
threatened to walk out of the charter talks over the
issue.
The best suggestion we've heard for cutting this
Gordian knot comes from the much-maligned Ahmed
Chalabi, who is now Iraq's deputy prime minister
with special responsibilities for oil and
infrastructure and has emerged as a major
constitutional broker. He has bucked some of his
Shiite and Kurdish allies by insisting that ultimate
control of Iraq's natural wealth must remain in the
hands of the central government, while also
suggesting constitutional language that the wealth
be owned by all Iraqis in "equal measure." In other
words, the oil would be managed by the central
government in the interests of all Iraqis wherever
they live, but not owned by it.
Mr. Chalabi hopes that the "equal measure" concept
will pave the way in practice for the creation of an
oil trust, under which Iraqis would from birth have
accounts established in their name. Iraqis would
receive their full and equal share of oil revenue
and the government would have to vote to tax it
away. Mr. Chalabi sees this as a way of breaking the
"oil curse" that has turned so many oil-rich nations
into corrupt tyrannies.
It's entirely possible that this oil-revenue
compromise still wouldn't be enough to win over many
Sunnis. Some of those negotiating over the charter
are ex-Baathists who hope to regain the reins of
power in Baghdad. Others may not sign anything that
devolves power, lest they make themselves even
larger insurgency targets than they already are.
More important than which individual Sunnis sign the
constitution, however, is whether it can win enough
support from Sunni provinces in an October
referendum. Many average Sunnis may welcome a
federalist charter in the privacy of the voting
booth as a way to protect themselves from being
dominated by the Shiite majority.
A federalist system of power sharing is the only
possible solution if Iraq is going to hold together
as a single nation. The job of the U.S. here isn't
to choose sides but to promote an Iraqi compromise.
The Chalabi oil-sharing proposal has a better chance
of doing so than anything we've heard in a long time
out of the State Department.
www.wsj.com
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