Unusually united as the bombings continue

Jun 22nd 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

America and the European Union have hosted a summit in Brussels on the future of Iraq. Discussions of security, politics and the economy come at a time of intense daily violence across the country. But the Iraqi delegation found the other nations at the meeting unusually united

IRAQ’S government came to Brussels with a confident air this week. The transitional administration met on Wednesday June 22nd with more than 80 other countries at a conference sponsored by America and the European Union. But the foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, stressed before the conclave: “For us the conference is not a donor conference…We are not going to give them our wish-list, we are going there to give them our vision.” Iraq’s leaders presented a plan to move forward on political stability, the economy and security. Nearly a year after the transfer of sovereignty, on June 28th 2004, Iraq’s government wants to be taken seriously.

But the foreign minister’s confidence could look to some like wishful thinking. Much of Iraq is a mess. In recent weeks, rarely a day has gone by without a suicide-bombing, or several, claiming lives in the double digits—over 1,000 people have been killed since the beginning of May, mostly Iraqis. Police and army recruits are the most common targets, but unlucky civilian passers-by are frequently caught up in the carnage. American forces, mostly concentrating on protecting themselves and spread too thin to secure the whole country effectively, are still having a hard time winning Iraqi hearts and minds. Even Baghdad, which has the heaviest presence of American troops, sees regular bombings. Dick Cheney, the American vice-president, has been widely mocked for saying recently that the insurgency was in “its last throes”. Even President George Bush, who remains optimistic on Iraq, has avoided associating himself with that comment.

Everyone agrees that for security to be effective it will have to be brought by Iraqis themselves. But training of troops is slow. Some 169,000 members of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) are in uniform. But they are poorly equipped, barely motivated and abysmally led, to the frustration of their American trainers. Few units can operate effectively above platoon level (that is, a few dozen troops). This is largely because the higher military and security leadership—the generals and colonels who are needed to run larger units—are inexperienced owing to the removal of most former Baathists from their ranks. Nonetheless, there is progress. Desertion rates are down, and perhaps 40% of units are nearly ready to operate with minimal American support. And a hard core of special-forces units is operating fairly well.

Progress on politics would help stiffen the security forces’ spines. Iraq still does not have a fully representative government. Elections in January gave Iraqis the first government they had chosen freely in decades. But the Sunnis, who dominated under Saddam Hussein and make up the backbone of the insurgency, largely stayed away from the polls. The current, transitional government is thus mostly composed of Shia and Kurdish parties, further fuelling Sunni disaffection.

Last week, at long last, there was an inter-communal breakthrough. Sunni leaders agreed to take 15 seats on the 71-member constitution-writing council, in exchange for a promise that decisions will be taken by consensus. But this will make it hard to finish the job by August 15th, as is envisioned. Several issues are contentious. One is the role of Islam. The Shia party led by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the prime minister, would like to make Islam the backbone of Iraqi law. But more secular-minded Iraqis worry that their country will become a stifling theocracy like Iran.

The other divisive issue is federalism. The Kurds in the north want a good deal of autonomy for their provinces. They would also like to keep a provision in the Transitional Administrative Law (the current, temporary constitution) which allows any three provinces to veto a law. Both the Kurds and the Sunnis are dominant in at least three provinces, giving each of Iraq’s three main groups a veto. The majority Shia are opposed to extending any such veto into Iraq’s permanent constitution.

All these disagreements make it likely that the constitution-writers will take advantage of a provision that allows for the extension of their August deadline. This would push back a referendum on the constitution (scheduled for October) and national elections (December) as well.

Together again, at last?

If these clouds have a silver lining, it is that, for the first time in quite a while, the countries sitting round the table this week are unusually united in their goals for Iraq. In America, polls are showing a slide in support for the war, and growing calls (now from Republicans too) for a plan to bring the troops back. So the Bush administration is eager to show some progress. The EU has just had an ill-tempered summit on its own proposed constitution, which ran aground after referendums in France and the Netherlands, and on its budget. So Europe, too, is hoping to show some internal and international unity by beefing up its commitment to fixing Iraq (though there will be no new troops).

Other Middle Eastern countries, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia, also mostly sought to put on their best face, having just endured a public dressing-down by Condoleezza Rice, the American secretary of state, for the lack of democracy in the region. Mr Zebari asked Iraq's neighbours to restore diplomatic relations with his country, which Jordan and Egypt promised to do. (Syria was less well behaved: its foreign minister grouchily traded barbs with Ms Rice over responsibility for Iraq's troubles.) Finally, Kofi Annan, who opposed the war in Iraq, attended hoping to show that the United Nations he leads can still be relevant there. On the eve of the summit, he published an optimistic article in the Washington Post, “There’s Progress in Iraq”, that read in parts like it was written by a Bush administration official, and afterwards he pronounced the meeting a “watershed”.

So what will come of the summit? As Mr Zebari noted, it was not a donor’s conference and any talk about new aid will come at a later meeting in Amman. But all of the participants agreed to speed up delivery of their already promised aid to Iraq—the Iraqis estimate that only 10% of this has been disbursed so far. They also got a commitment in the final communiqué to speed up relief of debts accumulated under Saddam, though the details remain to be worked out. In exchange, the current government promised to end popular but economically distorting subsidies, such as that on fuel. This is meant to impress multilateral institutions like the World Bank, which want to see something like a functioning market economy before they will agree to new loans. Most controversially, the Iraqis said they plan to concentrate reconstruction projects in the country’s less violent areas, namely the Shia south and the Kurdish north—which, some worry, could exacerbate Iraq’s tensions. This is as clear an indication as any that there are no easy answers to the problems facing the newly democratic but deeply insecure nation.

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