Iraq's constitution - a unifying farce

Paul McGeough, the SMH's redoubtable Middle East expert writes, "The result of Saturday's national referendum won't be known before Thursday but it appears a new constitution has been endorsed. Not that it's going to make much difference. It will give hope to American diehards who will claim the process and the document are proof of democracy at work. But, sadly, the reverse is the case.

"This is a Clayton's constitution - a conflicted, contradictory unity bill for a country tearing itself apart, accepted in a vote dictated by the fault lines of Iraqi history. Here are some of the elements of the constitution that mock notions of national unity and invite civil war.

"The regions (read Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni) are to have their own military forces; existing oilfields will be managed federally but all new fields are to be controlled by the regions; the built-in religious conflict is a time bomb - Islam is to be a basic "source" of legislation; and no law "may contradict the established provisions of Islam".

"The Kurds have negotiated to have themselves put beyond the reach of the Iraqi Supreme Court; women in the north will have different rights to those in the south; and issues of divorce and inheritance are to be a religious and geographic lucky dip.

"Laid out in its separate parts, this is a document that denies the very notion of Iraqi citizenship.

"As the Sunnis continue to have difficulty accepting what it means to be a minority in the land they have ruled for decades, there is a growing view among analysts that the Kurds and the Shiites are humouring the Americans by going through this process. At the same time they are very clear about the power that is theirs.

"In the wake of the 2003 invasion, the Americans insisted on a timetable of rapid-fire elections in the new Iraq, each staged six months or a year after each other and the next - a national election on December 15 - only weeks after Saturday's vote. Even in a peaceable community new to democracy, that's not enough time between outings for sensible debate. So the forces that are pulling the country apart become the default electoral mind sets - religious, ethnic and tribal.

"The risk this week is that as Iraq's former Sunni overlords sit back to contemplate, as they will see it, how they have been dudded by democracy, more might turn to an insurgency that shows no sign of going away despite repeated US claims of "victory".
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/iraqi-experiment-splitting-at-the-seams/2005/10/17/1129401197205.html

There are those who have all along said the ancient fault lines will split the British gerrymandered Iraq into three parts once the brute force of either a Saddam or an occupation army turns loose of control. If that is to be the case, we can hope that this constitutional process, while not creating a democratic Iraq, at least gave the country the time, structure and process to gradually move apart without further civil war.

To my way of seeing things, that is the best result the ill-fated invasion can hope to accomplish, and, by golly, I have to hope for a satisfactory result nothwithstanding the disaster that got us this far; it would be too cruel to hope for less than a satisfactory result for all those people trying to salvage lives and community from the mess that has been made. So, if it goes without too much more bloodshed, it will have to suffice as a satisfactory solution. Of course, it will look nothing like what we were told we would get. And of course, an unsatisfactory result is still a possibility, god forbid.

Addendum
The complexity of the Iraq situation is perhaps oversimplified by the "three regions" approach of Paul McGeough (see, Tribal Ignorance: What you think you know about Iraq's factions is all wrong, http://politics.slate.msn.com/id/2128193/), but, apart from appreciating the nuance, you have to wonder what analytical gains you get by trying to model the population in too many different dimensions.