Delaying the Inevitable

25 September 2006



Iraqis Cut Deal on Postponing Federalism

The Iraqi constitution is a federal one that allows three or more provinces to form a semi-autonomous region. This scares the Sunnis who will face an all-but-independent Kurdistan and a 9-province Shi’ite bloc, with a rump for the Sunnis under which lies almost no oil at all. Naturally, the Sunnis have threatened to boycott parliament over this, and yesterday, the other ethnic groups through their political parties agreed to put it all off for a couple of years.

The deal creates a 27-member parliamentary committee to review the constitution and then go forward with the federal regions. Any law implementing the constitutionally allowed regions would not take effect for 18 months after being passed. Thus, if the law were passed today, such regions couldn’t legal come into being until mid-2008. This, in a nation suffering civil war, is an eternity and much on the ground can change in that time.

The Sunnis are pushing to have one of their own as chairman of the review committee, and it would be good politics to give them that job. The Kurds and the Shi’ites have the votes to ram anything they want through the parliament, so giving a Sunni the responsibility might just buy some quiet. Alaa Makki, a leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, may well get the job. He told the Washington Post “The main issue is the union of Iraq -- that Iraq stays as one Iraq -- and this should lead to articles in the constitution that properly reflect that on the subject of finances, natural resources, oil, the army, police formation and language.” Any law that comes out of a committee he heads has a fair shot at working if the Kurds and Shi’ites will let it.

This doesn’t mean the problem is solved. Dhafer al-Ani, a spokesman for the Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni bloc in parliament, said, “We still need a miracle to save the country. The process of sectarian cleansing is still going on, and the violence is not waning, and this may serve those proponents of federalism who want to make the people believe that living together in a unified country is not possible.”

Those who believe in “getting things fixed once and for all” will have a hard time understanding why this delay, which puts off the inevitable division of Iraq into three parts (like Gaul), is a good thing for all concerned. With a year and a half to work on the arrangements even after the law is passed, revenue sharing and other issues can be addressed. They may not be. The Iraqis, though, have dealt with their problem in as pragmatic a way as possible – with no help from America. Apparently, they are learning to get along with Washington’s help.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.


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