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WASHINGTON — Lost
amid the news of all the bloodletting in Iraq is an
important political development: The Kurds have
switched sides. In the first parliament after the
first set of elections, they allied themselves with
the Shiite slate to produce the current
Shiite-dominated government led by Ibrahim al-Jafari.
Now the Kurds have joined with the opposition Sunni
and secular parties to oppose the Shiite bloc. The
result is two competing coalitions: (a) the
Kurd-Sunni-secular bloc, which controls about 140
seats in the 275-seat parliament and would
constitute the barest majority, and (b) the Shiite
bloc, which itself is a coalition of seven
not-always-friendly parties, and which controls 130
seats, slightly less than a majority.
If only it were that simple, Iraq would have a new
secular-oriented government. But to protect
minorities and force the creation of large governing
coalitions, the Iraqi constitution requires a
two-thirds majority to form a government.
If we had that requirement in the U.S., we might
still be trying to settle the 2000 election. In
Iraq, the result is stalemate, which could lead to
disaster if the whole system disintegrates because
of the impasse. Or it could lead to a
more-effective, less-sectarian government than
Jafari's.
The key question is who is going to control the two
critical ministries: Interior and Defense. In Iraq,
as in much of the world, Interior does not control
the national parks. It controls the police. And
under the current government it has been under
Shiite control and infiltrated by extreme Shiite
militias. Some of these militias launched vicious
reprisal raids against Sunnis after the bombing of
the Golden Mosque in Samarra, jeopardizing the
entire project of a national police force exercising
legitimate authority throughout the country.
The main objective of U.S. Ambassador Zalmay
Khalilzad, who worked miracles in Afghanistan, is to
make sure that the Interior Ministry is purged of
sectarianism by giving it to some neutral figure,
perhaps a secular Sunni with no ties to the Baath
Party. Similarly with the Defense Ministry, which
controls the army. The army has, by most accounts,
handled itself well following the mosque bombing and
subsequent riots, and has acted as a reliably
national institution. It is essential that it not
get into sectarian hands.
Political success in Iraq rests heavily on these two
institutions. Which is why these
negotiations,tiresome and endless as they seem, are
so important.
The immediate issue is the prime ministership. An
internal ballot among the Shiite bloc chose, by a
single vote, another term for Jafari. The critical
vote putting him over the top was the faction
controlled by Moqtada al-Sadr, the radically
anti-American and pro-Tehran cleric whose home base
is the Shiite slums of Baghdad. For Sadr, a weak and
corruption-ridden government that allows conditions
to deteriorate would be the perfect prelude to his
gaining power.
Not all parts of the Shiite coalition are happy
either with Jafari's ineffectiveness or with his
political dependence on Sadr. Splits are already
appearing in that uneasy alliance. But the Kurds are
the most important challenge to Jafari. They are
wary of Sadr and unhappy with Jafari, under whom
everything — services, security, trust — is
deteriorating.
Admittedly, part of their calculation is sectarian.
Jafari has impeded Kurdish claims on Kirkuk and
infuriated the Kurds by traveling to Turkey (which
opposes all Kurdish ambitions) without their
approval.
The Kurd-Sunni-secular bloc wants a new prime
minister who will establish a national unity
government. Because the U.S. wants precisely the
same outcome, the Kurd defection is very good news
in a landscape of almost unrelenting bad news. The
other good news is a split in the Shiite bloc, with
a near majority that favors a more technocratic
prime minister and is chafing at Sadr's influence.
Additionally, the Sunni insurgency is in the midst
of its own internecine strife between local ex-Baathists
who are not particularly religious and want power,
and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's foreign jihadists, for
whom killing Shiites combines sport and religion,
and who care not a whit for the future of the
country.
The security situation is grim and the neighboring
powers malign. The one hope for success in Iraq is
political. The Kurdish defection has produced the
current impasse. That impasse has contributed to the
mood of despair here at home. But the defection
holds open the best possibility for political
success: an effective broad-based national unity
government which, during its mandatory four-year
term, presides over an American withdrawal.
seattletimes.nwsource.com
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