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Iraqi Update: October Edition(Iraq Links) Iraqi Update: October Edition-1October 16, 2005
But passage of what?
Essentially, Iraqis are being asked to vote for a process, not a constitution. That's a concession by the Bush Administration to objective reality, since the political conditions they have created in Iraq will not brook a reasonable agreement. None can be reached, so the interim government has done what governments always do in such situations: postpone the hard choices, while attempting to crush whomever is perceived as the immediate obstacle to reaching a settlement.
Those of you interested in the details of the constitution (or Iraqi response to it) are advised to read Riverbend's post on the matter (1, 2, 3). Riverbend begins by saying, in efeect, "this constitution is illegitimate because the constitutional committee is illegitimate...BUT..." But, of course, any governing entity that follows the occupation will be illegitimate; the thread of legitimacy is broken, and while River never says as much, I personally fear the only thing that gave previous regimes "legitimacy" was that the violence that brought them to power was ostentatiously indigenous to Iraq.
Riverbend reads Arabic and has scrupulously read not merely the constitution, but multiple drafts of it. She points out that the constitution mentions "we the peoples of Iraq," then "we the peoples of the two rivers," which is disturbing to me as well as to River. In a word, I suspect the formula is contrived to (a) imply that there are multiple peoples in Iraq, and hence the constitution belongs to multiple nations (of Iraq); and (b) imply that there is, in fact, no longer a discrete "Iraq," but actually a region that might well belong to Iran. One assessment might be that the ministers who negotiated this constitution are not really US puppets after all, since they know that the US is going to abandon them sooner or later. True, the US will retain sovereign army bases, much like Guantanamo in Cuba; but the mere existence of these bases will have little to do with the inner political life of ost-occupation Iraq. Hence, the predicament of the current administrators of Iraq is like that of US citizens caught inside New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: they wouldn't be allowed to leave, they wouldn't be allowed to avail themselves of the US government's abundent resources, they won't have access to anything that might allow their survival or success; but other than that, they can do whatever they want.
"Whatever they want," therefore, includes Iranian control, including the de-facto annexation of large portions of Iraq. This is analogous to the Croatian and Serbian partition of Bosnia, which remains a reality on the ground, despite vociferous denials by all official sources. Returning to River: she is concerned about the "no anti-Shari'a" provision (my term), a now-common formula in SW Asian constitutions. The provisions accord respect and autonomy to the Marja’ia (clergy), but don't restrict their influence in the political process.
Another issue is the ban against basing or transit rights for foreign troops. This is forbidden...unless the parliament grants an exception (two-thirds majority). This article appears in some drafts, but not in English translations published in the NYT. Also, the new constitution creates a special category that includes women as a peculiar category of society (along with the elderly and children), proclaims that the state protects them, then leaves the determination of what this means to a future parliament. RIver is understandably anxious because the former status, under which women were simply Iraqi citizens, is gone. In post 2, she elaborates on this a little bit more. The movement headed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, SCIRI (which Riverbend utterly despises as a puppet, quisling-militia, and white guard), has made its influence felt by abolishing the 1970 Personal Status Law. She wonders at the passiveness with which women have tolerated this, but elsewhere iterates the extreme danger and ennervation of Iraqi civil society.
Yet another issue is the prospect of secessionist confederations. This is the most puppet-like features of the constitution. It allows a group of provinces to form a federation within the Iraqi federation of provinces. I believe it was intended to accommodate the Kurds, especially since it includes such meagre requirments: one tenth of the population of each province, or one third of the parliamentary representatives of each province. However, if the constitution really were drafted by sincere negotiations, then the Kurds would not have been mollified with any such provision, since the non-Kurdish majority would reject such a patently anti-Iraqi provision. Regions are not secession, but one wonders why a province would want laws in common with, say, two other provinces. For example, several US states ban capital punishment. There is no reason for them to form an "anti-capital punishment region"; they merely passed laws that coincide. On the other hand, if such a confederation existed, and they also passed a host of laws similar in effect to those of, say, Canada, then I expect the object would be ideological: these states would be, in effect, saying they were part of Canada... This would, of course, expose liberal voters in the rest of the country to the charge that they aren't really Americans, which would of course hinder further progressive legislation in the USA.
As River says, it's reasonable to suppose this measure is intended to mollify separatists [the Kurds?] by granting them independence in all but name. No one would have an interest in doing this except for the PNAC group that hijacked the US government into invading Iraq in the first place. In fact, the constitution spells out that Kurdistan is already a region, which includes two governorates that are, in fact, highly disputed. This is not the constitution created by hours of haggling by diverse interests. Part of it might be, but that part is remarkably inconclusive. The part that is decisive is utterly unacceptable to any sovereign nation.
AND?
Some writers have dismissed the entire process as unworthy of anyone's attention. The Iraqis are being victimized by the extralegal activities of the Iraqi regime--an the US government. What about this extralegal regime, that ignores the constitution?
(Part 2 | Permalink | Iraq Links)
In The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the Baron has made a bet with the Sultan of Turkey: he, the Baron, will present the Sultan with a bottle of tokay from the Austrian Empress's own cellar that surpasses the Sultan's best, OR, he loses his head. To get the bottle, he dispatches his faithful servant Bertholdt, who can run extremely fast. However, en route, the fellow falls asleep under a tree and the deadline approaches. The Baron approaches his other faithful servant, and says, "I say there, Adolphus, I need you to find out if anything has happened to Bertholdt. If he doesn't return immediately, I'll lose my head!" "And?" Adolphus's sang-froid is amusing, but we are in the position of Baron Munchausen. So let's have a look at the latest developments in Iraq. SOME IMPORTANT WEBLOG POSTS Christopher Allbritton (Back 2 Iraq 3.0, 1, 2) posts on the election day, which was relatively "quiet" in the sense that no massacres occurred that particular day, and surprising in the sense that large numbers of Sunnis turned out to vote against the constitution, as opposed to staying home and boycotting the elections. B2I 3.0 emphasizes the sectarian character of the elections: Arab Shi'a are supporting it because they've been commanded to do so by the marjariyah, while the Sunnis oppose it for reasons discussed here. Personally, I suspect the real dichotomy here is between Iraqis who publically and socially identify as members of a Shi'a polity, and those who do not. One way of analysing public opinion is to collect points of view and associate these with cohorts, then estimate the distribution of these cohorts in the subject population. So, for example, suppose you want to know about public support for President Bush in the USA. You could simply ask large population samples, compile the data, and then publish a context-free figure: 40% of US nationals approve of the President's job performance. Or you could survey opinions and correlate them to income, educational status, racial identification, sex, or geographical region (e.g., US nationals with incomes below the median have a very low approval rating of the president; those with high incomes, a high approval rating; collated another way, there is an almost inverse relationship between support for the president and years of schooling achieved). Then, the research reconstructs general attitudes based on the distribution of these cohorts in the US population at large. In the case of the USA, the most profusely surveyed population on earth, there's little reason to do this, since the first method is assumed to be the more reliable. In the case of Iraq, where reliable polls are well-nigh impossible, it's my strategy for estimating what Iraqis think. This allows me to cull the websites that purport to be Iraqi, such as "Iraq the Model," or the fake "River Bend" website (that initially strove to impersonate the actual River). Movement conservatives can declare that these somehow are authentic representatives of Iraqi public opinion, countering the testimony of hundreds of angry Iraqi critics of the occupation. I suspect there's something fishy about ItM, but it's obviously not as crude a matter as the faked Riverbend site was. At the very least, it cannot be said to represent a significant cross-section of Iraqi opinion since we know the vast majority of Iraqis are badgered and harried into the minimal level of cooperation with the regime they proffer. We know that the Coalition has taken up the habit of bombing infrastructure and zones under its nominal control, and this has personally devastated almost every singe extended family in the country. Finally, all occupied population develop a compulsive and unreasoning hatred of the occupying power. There are no exceptions to this rule. And the anti-occupation websites unanimously resent the reflexive distinctions drawn between Shi'a and Sunni Iraqis (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Yes, there are massive constituencies around both confessional divisions, but both are highly reactive; in other words, both expect a civil war to erupt as soon as the US forces withdraw, so both are working on establishing credibility among their neighbors. Please note the object of the rival communities is to defeat the other, not establish their own optimum national foundation. That, of course, is impossible; only the self-identified Iraqis can do that. The Shi'a know perfectly well that any vision of Iraq that excludes the Sunni, is a vision of civil war and foreign domination. Likewise, the Sunni rejectionists who believe the Shi'a a re traitors and/or heretics, are the proximate enemies of Iraqi patriots. So let's be done with this "the Shia think"-"the Sunni think" nonsense. Personally, I suspect the Shi'a who purport to be acting as Shi'a, are doing so not from personal conviction but because they are so pessimistic about the future of a confessionally neutral Iraq. B2I (linked above), Road to Iraq (1, 2, 3), al-Jazeera, and others are writing about the incongruity of the vote counts and the populations. Figures provided by several governorates required "re-examination, comparison and verification because they are relatively high compared with international averages for elections" of this kind, a statement by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq said on Monday. MUNCHAUSEN'S HEAD Baron Munchausen's wager, that he could top the tokay of the Sultan or lose his head, is not a wager I would have encouraged. For his part, Munchausen was offered as much treasure as "a strong man can carry," i.e.., the entire contents of the Sultan's treasury. In order to get the contents of Selim Sultan's treasury, he had to (a) furnish the Sultan with a bottle of tokay, and (b) that tokay had to surpass the Sultan's own tokay. "Those are my stakes! Name yours!" exclaimed Munchausen. Lamentably, the tokay is far away and I don't think it's anything to write home to Scheherazade about. In this allegory, we the people of the six rivers (the Colorados, Columbia, Hudson, Delaware, and Mississippi) are Munchausen, and the people of the two rivers (Euphrates and Tigris) are Selim Sultan. This time, however, it is they, not Munchausen, who cannot collect on the wager. At the heart of the problem is the transition. A reasonable Munchausen would seek at any cost to save face: here's the bottle, are you not amazed that your dearest confidant has contrived to get it here in lightning speed? I don't need all the gold and jewels in your vault, just a hundred kilos or so. Selim doesn't really want to behead his boon companion; excellent tokay will suffice. But our Bertoldt isn't reasonable: he's not merely taking a nap, he's in headlong flight to someplace utterly remote from the Hofsburg. Let Munchausen rifle his pockets for tokay, Bertoldt isn't getting involved. And the manservant employed to haul the treasure away is already hefting the entire contents of the treasury. This isn't looking so encouraging. (Permalink | Iraq Links) |
