An opportunity in danger of being missed

Apr 4th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

Two months after its election, Iraq’s parliament has finally chosen a speaker. But unless it now moves quickly to agree on a government, an opportunity to quench the still-raging insurgency may be missed

FOLLOWING the farcical scenes when Iraq's parliament met last week and achieved nothing, the parliament met again on Sunday April 3rd and—more than two months after Iraqis braved the bombs and bullets to elect it—finally chose a speaker. Hajem al-Hassani, currently industry minister in Iraq's interim government, is a member of the minority Sunni Arab community and an ally of Iyad Allawi, the (secular Shia) interim prime minister.

The Sunni Arabs enjoyed a privileged position under Saddam Hussein's regime. Most of the remaining insurgents in Iraq are drawn from Sunni communities, most of whose members either refused or were too afraid to vote in January's election. Since it is thus unclear who really speaks for the Sunnis, one of the main causes of the political deadlock has been disagreement over how they should be represented in the new government. The Shia Muslims and the Kurds, the communities with the largest number of parliamentary seats, had agreed that the Sunnis would get the speakership, as well as one of two vice-presidencies. But Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni tribal leader who is currently interim president and who had been lined up to become speaker, decided to decline the job.

Now that Mr Hassani has been selected, the parliament's next job is to choose a president and two vice-presidents, who will in turn choose a prime minister. The presidency is expected to go to Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, while the more powerful job of prime minister is likely to go to Ibrahim Jaafari, a Shia.

The various political groups in the parliament are, however, still arguing over the sharing-out of ministries, especially the all-important oil ministry. So it is by no means certain that the long period of stalemate is now over. However, the two main groups, the Shia-led United Iraqi Alliance and a coalition embracing the two main Kurdish parties, say they have resolved, at least temporarily, the biggest differences between them, and have deferred until later the thorniest one: the final status of the disputed city of Kirkuk.

Compared with the Shias or the Kurds (most of whom are also Sunni Muslims, though secular ones), the Sunni Arabs are badly divided. A number of groups representing them stood in the recent general election but barely a score of Sunni Arabs, scattered across a number of different lists, won seats in the 275-member parliament. So no one knows who would have done well had the vast majority of Sunnis not stayed away from the poll. Moreover, many local Sunni leaders say that their constituents will accept no one who fought against Saddam’s regime from exile or who participated in the governments which followed his demise. This rules out nearly all of those Sunni Arabs who were elected in January.

Still, Sunni leaders are belatedly trying to get their act together. Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein (a monarchist), Adnan Pachachi (a liberal), Mr Hassani (an Islamist) and a clutch of others have held a series of conferences with the aim of producing a coherent Sunni agenda. Sharif Ali, in particular, has won the blessing of at least some members of the Muslim Scholars’ Board, an influential but strongly anti-American Sunni clerics’ body. The Board told its people to boycott the election and is insisting that the new government should meet a string of demands, running from the rehabilitation of purged Baathists to the release of political prisoners and a withdrawal deadline for American troops, as the price of co-operation.

The Sunnis also demand not just the speaker’s post and a vice-presidency, but also a security ministry, either defence or interior. If a Sunni Arab had one of those key jobs, he might be able to persuade at least some of the insurgents to put down their arms. As it is, they appear—for the first time since the insurgency got going in earnest 18 months ago—to be on the defensive. Attacks in February dropped to 40-50 a day, their lowest level since the Americans first assaulted the rebel stronghold of Fallujah a year ago. While the rate has gone up a bit in the past few weeks, the rebels are no longer massing troops to overrun police stations or take over Iraqi towns wholesale.

In contrast, Iraqi government troops are fighting more aggressively, and the insurgents’ mystique is fading, thanks in part to popular television programmes such as “Terror in the Hands of Justice”, which shows broken rebel captives confessing to everything from contract killings to homosexual orgies. Iraqi police say this has led to a surge in the number of tips from citizens, who now take a more scornful and less fearful view of the guerrillas.

Many Sunni politicians who have embraced the new order (even though they have yet to be slotted into government) say that more insurgents now want to lay down their arms. That still excludes dedicated Islamists linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who claims to be Osama bin Laden’s main man in Iraq, and criminal and Baathist networks. But many Sunni Arab regular soldiers from Saddam’s era who took up arms in reaction to American raids and weapons searches in their homes may be thinking of giving up.

The success of the election has convinced them that they will not topple the new post-invasion political order; they would now rather make their peace with it. What is stopping them is fear for their and their families’ security. If they come out into the open and hand in their arsenals, they may be arrested by American troops or targeted for assassination by Shia militias. What might persuade them to give up is a trusted Sunni Arab military veteran sitting at the negotiating table as minister of defence or interior.

Iraq’s incoming rulers, however, seem loth to let that happen. The one of the two main Shia parties in the winning alliance, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, says there are already too many Baathist sympathisers in the new armed forces and intelligence service; and it wants to control the security ministries to purge them even more thoroughly. But if the Sunni Arabs and Shias cannot overcome these differences, the post-election window of opportunity for a negotiated settlement with at least some of the insurgents may close.

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