Reaching out to the insurgents

Iraq

Jun 30th 2005 BAGHDAD
From The Economist print edition

The Americans are groping towards a plan to embrace more Sunni Arabs

AMERICAN and Iraqi officials are working on two fronts to contain the country's insurgency, which is largely Sunni Arab. In Baghdad, members of parliament are close to a deal that would sharply bump up Sunni representation in the committee to draft a permanent constitution. And, behind the scenes, American soldiers have been negotiating with representatives of some insurgent groups, though what kind of deals are on offer remains murky.

The constitutional drafting committee, which at first included only two Sunni Arabs among its 55 members, is now expected to have 15 of them as full members, whose agreement must be won before any document can be approved. Virtually all Iraqi politicians, who pretty well ran the show under Saddam Hussein, now agree, at least in principle, that the Sunnis should have a big say in writing the constitution. Every senior American visiting Baghdad, along with America's new ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been urging the new government to “reach out” to all of the country's ethnic and religious groups and be “inclusive”. It remains questionable, however, whether the committee's new make-up, still not quite finalised as The Economist went to press, will provide the needed boost to finish a draft constitution by mid-August, as scheduled, or whether a six-month extension will be needed, as the current constitution allows.

In any event, the committee must work fast. Yet arguments over federalism, the role of Islam in state affairs, and de-Baathification (at what level should former officials of Mr Hussein's party be barred from office?) will be as hard as ever to resolve. Many Sunnis say that banning high-ranking Baathists from public life would disenfranchise many of their natural leaders. Most Sunnis also reject the Kurds' demands for autonomy as well as their claim to the disputed province of Kirkuk. And now, as part of a deal to embrace more Sunnis, it will probably be agreed that the committee must make its decisions by consensus—a tall order in a country where sectarian divisions have been sharpening.

Follow the Shia and Kurdish example

While the main Shia and Kurdish parties, despite some public posturing on the issues, have learned over years of exile politicking to accommodate each other, the Sunni Arabs have on the whole been less familiar with the new pluralism, tending to make maximalist demands and playing on the importance the other groups now place on keeping them inside a bigger political tent. And whereas the Shias and Kurds have more cohesive and established parties voicing their claims, the Sunnis tend to be more fractious among themselves. One reason for the last-minute hiccup over the constitutional committee's make-up was an intra-Sunni row over Sunni regional representation. And it is still unclear whether parliament, dominated by Shias, will approve the Sunni list, especially if former Baathists are on it.

When it comes to the idea of direct talks with the insurgents, those two problems—over who should represent the Sunni Arabs, and the Shias' distaste for making deals with their former persecutors—look even more acute. Last week, Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, seemed to confirm reports that American officials in Iraq had met rebel commanders face to face. In fact, American officials have been meeting various self-proclaimed rebel interlocutors almost since the counterinsurgency began two years ago. But Mr Rumsfeld's breezy language (“I think there probably have been many more than that”) did appear to indicate a new level of negotiations. Some prominent Sunnis such as Ayham al-Samarrai, an electricity minister after Mr Hussein's fall, have come forward with a political front to voice insurgent demands but have yet to be endorsed by any specific insurgent group.

Even if serious talks did begin, agreement would be hard. Sunni politicians consistently say that the rebels' most basic demand is a timetable for American withdrawal—the last thing that President Bush, this week sounding as tenacious as ever, would give. Even a short confidence-building truce would be hard to arrange. Dozens of different groups stage attacks, so it would be nigh-impossible to tell whether one particular insurgent group had ceased fire or not. Several spokesmen for the insurgents say they could prove their influence over the gunmen by arranging for all attacks in a particular town or province to stop for a while. Americans officials say that such a method has never been tested.

Meanwhile, the violence goes on, worsening politicians' tempers. Over 1,300 people, mostly Iraqi civilians, have been killed in the past two months. The Shias are disgusted by the apparently random nature of many of the attacks. The Sunnis are particularly angered by the recent round-ups of thousands of civilians in the capital, many of whom are held for weeks by Iraqi security forces and tortured before being let go with a warning not to support the insurgents. As Mr Rumsfeld says, the insurgency could last many years—even if a lot more Sunnis do gradually come on-side.

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