Now get drafting

Iraq's constitution
May 19th 2005 BAGHDAD
From The Economist print edition

It may be easier for Kurds and Shias to get along than to satisfy Sunni Arabs

WITH Iraq's government at last up and running, parliament is getting down to the business of drafting a permanent constitution. But while that could take another nine months of wrangling, the spectre of sectarian violence still looms. In the past week, the bodies of some 15 Sunni Arabs who were members of the influential Muslim Scholars' Board or related to them, including four preachers, have been found ditched, mostly on the edge of Baghdad. In turn, the bodies of some 50 others, mainly Shias, have been found in similar places, they too apparently victims of sectarian killings, many with bullets in the back of the head, execution-style.

More than a score of car-bombings have hit Baghdad alone since the government took shape three weeks ago, killing nearly 500 Iraqis, though this week the rate went down a bit. In return, relatives of the Scholars' Board, which has generally endorsed the insurgency (but some of whose members say the insurgents should now stop fighting and engage in peaceful politics), accuse Iraqi interior-ministry commandos of targeting Sunni families suspected of links to the rebels.

On her first visit to Iraq since becoming secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice this week urged the new government, dominated by Shias and Kurds, to reach out to the disaffected Sunni community. And the new defence minister, Saadoun al-Dulaimi, himself a Sunni Arab, said that counter-insurgency troops, presumably including the Americans, should not barge into mosques, even if insurgents seemed to be seeking refuge in them, for fear of sowing further sectarian hatred.

The 55-strong constitution-drafting committee has been drawn from the main parties in proportion to their tally of seats. So the dominant Shia-led United Iraqi Alliance has 28 members; the Kurdish coalition has 15; the mixed Sunni-Shia secular nationalist party of the outgone prime minister, Iyad Allawi, has eight; four other spots have been filled by a Communist, a Turkmen, a Christian and a Sunni Arab.

According to the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), the interim constitution approved by unelected Iraqi politicians last year, the parties have until August to produce a draft of a permanent version, to be presented to parliament for approval, then submitted to a popular referendum. If approved, a fresh general election will be held under the new constitution—and the Iraqi government that emerges will no longer be deemed transitional.

If the committee cannot produce a draft by August, it can ask for a six-month extension, but the Americans want the job done sooner rather than later. This, they argue, would sustain the political momentum and make the insurgents realise that Iraq's new system is there to stay. Moreover, the sooner the new elections, the sooner that Sunni Arabs, who make up the bulk of the insurgents and who largely stayed away from the poll in January, will have a chance to take part in peaceful politics.

Many Iraqis say this timetable is unrealistically tight. A controversial clause in the TAL allows two-thirds of the voters in at least three of Iraq's 18 provinces, notably the trio that makes up the Kurdish region in the north, to veto a proposed constitution. This means that pretty well every main party will have to agree to the draft for it to have a chance of being endorsed.

There is much mistrust between the two major blocks—the Shia alliance, led by religious parties, and the more secular-leaning Kurds. But they have made progress. Both have agreed to use the TAL as the basis for the draft, even though some Shia Islamists had previously argued that they had accepted the document only under American pressure and that it had given too much ground to the Kurds. But thanks to earlier debates over the TAL and during the formation of the cabinet, some of the most divisive constitutional issues may already have been resolved. For example, many Shia Islamists now accept the TAL's wording that Islam should be a source rather than the source of Iraqi law.

It also provides a road map for settling the dispute over the status of the northern province and city of Kirkuk, a big cause of discord between Kurds and Shias. During Saddam Hussein's Arabisation of the area, which peaked in the 1990s, Kurds were ejected from the oil-rich province and replaced by Arabs, mostly from the impoverished Shia south. But the main Shia leaders now seem to accept the TAL's blueprint for resettling both Kurds and Shias (with compensation) in their original homes.

Committee members expect the issue of federalism to spark the fiercest debates. The Kurds, who have enjoyed de facto independence in their northern autonomous zone since the Gulf war of 1991, are willing to discuss the sharing of revenues from the northern oilfields but do not want people in the capital meddling in their internal affairs. Most Shias say they must draw the line at anything that might lead to the partition of Iraq. Between these two views, however, lies quite a lot of room for manoeuvre. Though initially hostile to the idea of federalism, Shia public opinion may be coming round to it, largely due to the efforts of Shias from the oil-rich but impoverished southern province of Basra, who want to ensure that their riches are no longer siphoned off to the capital.

The Americans, meanwhile, are anxious to get more Sunni Arabs involved in writing the constitution. One problem is that the Sunni Arabs, themselves divided, have yet to articulate what kind of system they want, except to rule out any kind of federalism that would leave their oil-poor provinces starved of funds. Other Sunni groups have yet to sound willing to engage in the necessary give-and-take of constitutional debate. The Muslim Scholars' Board has rejected in advance any version based on the TAL or any other “western” model; it says it will draw up its own constitution based solely on Muslim legal tradition.

So far, then, there are signs that Shias and Kurds may resolve their differences over a constitution. But any hope that the Sunni Arabs will easily join the debate, so undercutting the insurgency, is a long way from fulfilment. Meanwhile, the chance of sectarian warfare may be increasing.

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