WP: Draft Constitution Would Fundamentally Change Iraq

[Pirate Smile]

Draft Constitution Would Fundamentally Change Iraq
Sunni Demands Rejected, Making it Unlikely They Will Accept Charter

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 22, 2005; 10:42 AM

BAGHDAD, Aug. 22 -- Shiites and Kurds were sending a draft constitution to parliament on Monday that would fundamentally change Iraq, transforming the country into a loose federation, with a weak central administration governed by Islamic law, negotiators said.

The draft, slated for action by a Monday deadline, would be a sweeping rejection of the demands of Iraq's disaffected Sunni minority, which has called the proposed federal system the start of the breakup of Iraq. Shiites and Kurds indicated they were in no mood to compromise.

"We gave a choice -- whoever doesn't want federalism can opt not to practice it," said Shiite constitutional committee member Ali Debagh. Debagh acknowledged the Sunni minority would be unlikely to accept such a draft in a national vote scheduled for October, saying, "We depended upon democracy in writing the constitution and will depend upon it in the referendum."

Sunnis, who had complained of being shut out of talks in recent days, said they still were negotiating. "I don't think there will be a constitution tonight," said Salih Mutlak, the most vocal Sunni moderator.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/22/AR2005082200101.html

[Pirate Smile]

1. more

"U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad kept up days of pressure on negotiators to complete the constitution, giving his sanction to the provisions on Islamic law, negotiators said.

Washington has been pushing hard to stick to a timeline on government-building that would allow for a significant troop withdrawal as soon as early next spring.

Key provisions of the draft would formalize an already autonomous Kurdish state in the north, under a federal system. The rest of the country also would be allowed to form federal systems -- opening the way for the demand by the dominant Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq to create a southern Shiite sub-state out of up to half of Iraq's 18 regions.

Sunnis and others say such a state would be under heavy influence from neighboring, Shiite-ruled Iran."

[maddezmom]

3. my gut feeling is this is going to get worse...civil war is on the horizon

Some Sunnis, complaining that consensus had been breached, said that was not enough to satisfy their demands that "federalism" be left out of the charter altogether.

"We reject the political process as it is now," Sunni Saleh al-Mutlak told reporters outside the parliament chamber.

"We will not be silent," Soha Allawi, another Sunni Arab member of the drafting committee, told Reuters.

"We will campaign for public awareness to tell both Sunnis and Shi'ites to reject the constitution, which has elements that will lead to the break-up of Iraq and civil war," she said.

more:

http://go.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=834983§ion=news&src=rss/uk/worldNews

[Teaser]

5. on the horizon?

Civil war has been happening at least since January. It's just that no one in this country cares about all the tit for tat killings that go on in Iraq every day. Only big explosions get attention.

[maddezmom]

6. point taken...it's hell on earth now

but it's going to get much worse.

[fishnfla]

32. Oh man if the Sunnis get shut out, the insurgency is gonna bonfire

putting out the fire with gasoline

[aquart]

4. Islamic law?

Oh, all our rightwing Christians signed on for that? Won't that be a happy day for them.

[brooklynite]

23. Looks like a comfy fit to me...

...wives submitting to their hudsbands...

...criminalization of homosexuality...

...religious interference in policy making...

What's for the Southern Baptist Convention not to like?

[54anickel]

2. That's going well - NOT! Nice goin' Shrub, lots of progress being

made in the ME these days. I here recruitment for "Bib Forgotten" is way up thanks to this little adventure.

[sabra]

7. Iraq draft says laws must conform to Islam

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/BAK263454.htm

Iraq draft says laws must conform to Islam - text
22 Aug 2005 17:36:48 GMT

Source: Reuters

BAGHDAD, Aug 22 (Reuters) - A draft constitution for Iraq to be presented to parliament on Monday makes Islam "a main source" for legislation and ban laws that contradict religious teachings, a text made available to Reuters showed.

"Islam is a main source for legislation and it is not permitted to legislate anything that conflicts with the fixed principles of the rules of Islam," read a draft provided by Shi'ite Islamist drafting panel member Ali al-Dabbagh.

....

Kurds had complained that U.S. diplomats, who have insisted that women and minorities should enjoy equal rights, had conceded ground to the Islamists in order to meet Monday's deadline for passing a draft constitution in the legislature.

edit: added 3rd paragraph

[aquart]

8. Yes? Teachings of which SECT of Islam?

Because each division has different teachings and interpretations. That's why they are not the same sect. La, la, la. Do you break your egg on the big end or the little end?

Ah, we're brilliant. We've engineered the situation so well that now they HAVE to kill each other off. Just what we wanted.

[Teaser]

16. You get to pick your court

If a plaintiff wants hist case to be tried in one kind of court, he (emphasis on he, I'll bet) that's what he gets.

A recipe for insanity.

[saigon68]

29. No equal rights for Women

As in "hey little "girls"" get into those BURQAHS

[Lochloosa]

9. Great...we have just created another country that will hate us...

But hey...it will give Jeb a reason to invade...:sarcasm:

[Chipper Chat]

10. Isnt that code language for "Theocracy?"

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[maddezmom]

13. yes, and possible civil war

good going bushco :eyes:

[VegasWolf]

21. No, I think it's explicit language for theocracy. nt

[aquart]

34. YES! We have turned a secular state into a theocracy.

Gosh, we're smart.

[sabra]

11. added another paragraph...

[rodeodance]

14. bush said over and over to the Vets--we were fighting for liberty--but not

liberty for women, gays or other groups.

[KyndCulture]

12. but but but the weed just said we stopped all the hateful people...

:sarcasm:

[PurityOfEssence]

15. This could put Junior into single digits...

It's certainly going to cost him SOMETHING.

I wonder how all the fundies over there on missions like this little development. We haven't heard too much about them lately, but there was a time when there were some serious organizations over there...

Presuming that most of the current 36% who like this guy are evangelicals, it'll be interesting to see the reaction.

[rodeodance]

17. no, I think his 'base'--a little over 30% will continue to support him.

[WildClarySage]

20. They will support him because theocracy in Iraq is almost

what they want for us. A theocracy based on fundamentalism. Just substitute the word 'Islamic' for 'Christian', and it's their own wet dream for America.

[Gemini Cat]

38. That's right, they will support him.

The wet dreams of the Christian fundies and the nightmare(s) for the rest of the world. This is exactly what they want.

[Stockholm]

26. Bush will be receiving a gift basket from some very happy mullahs!

He is a uniter

[rfkrfk]

35. where are the 'Sharia' courts, set up?

this draft constitution is just bs.

[barb162]

18. This was totally predictable, that's the sad part

[gratuitous]

19. Yes, it was totally predictable

Unfortunately, the folks who totally predicted it are shut out of the nation's airwaves, not given camera or mike time, almost as if there was some unspoken agreement among broadcasters to deny air time to anyone who can credibly say, "As I noted in late 2002 or early 2003," this is exactly what I thought would happen. The price of admission seems to be support for Chimpy and his ill-considered bit of imperialism at some point in the past.

[barb162]

25. Yeah, I remember telling everyone before the war started,

this country is going conservative islamic and/ or it's going to split in 3 groups, terrorists are going to come in, etc. And everyone said, yeah, yeah, yeah. The clearest thing was that the largest group of people were conservative Islamic.

A billion dollars a week and almost 2000 American lives and many more times that in Iraq lives and this is the result. The insanity level is too high for me. The fact that we will have American soldiers, men and women, getting shot up to defend sharia is too much. The women and secular educated are in for trouble.

[Dudley_DUright]

30. If I were a well educated Iraqi, I would get my well educated ass

out of there as fast as my well educated feet would take me.

:yoiks:

[barb162]

33. I have read they have been getting out by the thousands but

no one can really verify numbers. I think a lot of them go to Jordan. If the intellectuals, educated and professionals leave, it's just gonna get worse and worse. Our tax dollars and American blood are paying for this. Sometimes I think I am going to lose it.

[karynnj]

22. if you don't want federalism you can opt out

isn't that seceding? Would they allow it without a civil war?

[Pirate Smile]

24. Yeah, I don't get that part either. "OK, we opt out." It isn't like your

company's 401k program.

[rfkrfk]

36. federalism, I think, is their code word for a province joining a region.nt

[Gloria]

27. Related---Iraq at the Gates of Hell-- A Times

From the current World Media Watch

1//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong Aug 20, 2005



http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GH20Ak01.html



IRAQ AT THE GATES OF HELL

By Ashraf Fahim
(Ashraf Fahim is a freelance writer on Middle Eastern affairs based in New York and London. His writing can be found at www.storminateacup.org.uk)


(SNIP)

Iraqi nationalism now appears to be dissolving as fearful Iraqis seek safety in confessional bonds. Patrick Cockburn has written vividly in the London Review of Books of Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad living in terror of Shi'ite death squads that operate with apparent government sanction, and of Shi'ite neighborhoods traumatized by the unending wave of suicide bombers. "The bodies of Sunnis are being found in rubbish dumps across Baghdad," wrote Cockburn, "... the commandos rarely try to conceal their responsibility for killings. They arrive in full uniform, a garish green and yellow camouflage, at the homes of former Sunni officials and arrest them. A few days later the bodies - sometimes savagely tortured, with eyes gouged out and legs broken - turn up in the morgue."


(SNIP)

Given all this grist, how might the dark mill of civil war begin turning in Iraq? It might simply develop out of a continuing, steady rise in the vicious cycle of revenge killings. Alternatively, a sudden breakdown of the political process could lead each sect to quickly assert its interests by force: the Kurds attempting to seize Kirkuk, for example, or Arab Sunnis and Shi'ites fighting for control of the mixed Sunni-Shi'ite towns south of Baghdad - all of which would entail ethnic cleansing. Further ideological and interdenominational divisions would also arise. Inter-Shi'ite rivalries were recently on display in the southern town of Samawa, where supporters of SCIRI and influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr clashed. Muqtada espouses a brand of Iraqi and Islamic nationalism that could lead his Mehdi Army to side with those opposed to federalism if civil war did erupt.

And then there are the neighbors. As professor Juan Cole, an expert in Iraq and Shi'ism, recently wrote in the Nation: "If Iraq fell into civil war between Sunnis and Shi'ites, the Saudis and Jordanians would certainly take the side of the Sunnis, while Iran would support the Shi'ites." In essence, a civil war would see the eight-year Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s replayed on Iraqi territory. To complicate matters, any Kurdish success would draw in Turkey. Beyond Iraq, a civil war could destabilize the Gulf, and thereby the world economy. Sunni-Shi'ite tensions could be kindled in states like Bahrain, Kuwait and most importantly, Saudi Arabia , where an occasionally restive Shi'ite population forms a majority in the eastern part of the country (where all the oil is).

This situation presents the US with an unenviable quandary. If civil war does break out it will be blamed regardless - either because of the provocation of its enduring presence or the vacuum left if it withdraws precipitously. To an extent, the Bush administration has only itself to blame for Iraq's simmering sectarian tensions. Iraq was hardly a model of communal harmony under Saddam Hussein. But US support for sectarian political parties and the creation of a political system centered around confessional quotas has significantly elevated identity politics. If the administration intended to divide Iraq's communities in order to make them more malleable, its success could come at a very high price.

The joke in Iraq before the invasion was that Iraqis actually wanted the gates of hell to be opened so they could get out. But even Iraqis' stubborn gallows humor is fading as the prospects for a better future after Saddam diminish. Every hour the violence continues there are countless new scores to be settled, new hatreds born and old ones reinforced, and a greater likelihood that Iraq will disintegrate.

Yet there are slivers of light amid all this darkness. Reports out of Ramadi tell of Sunni Arab tribesmen bravely fighting off insurgents who had come to drive away their Shi'ite neighbors. In the testing days ahead, that kind of unity will have to be the rule rather than the exception if Iraq is to survive.

[54anickel]

28. I believe it will fundamentally change the entire ME, and not in the way

ShrubCo planned on. Meanwhile Saudi Arabia creeps ever closer to civil war as well. Interesting times - thanks again, Shrub.

[VegasWolf]

31. I believe the the US bombing the holy fuck out of Iraq has fundamently

changed the country. Just my thought, but I am sticking with it!

[rfkrfk]

37. the purpose of this constitution is to save face

as the Sunnis are cut out of the oil deal.

Long term, I predict either,
breakup, or, a meaningless central gov't.

The vast majority of Kurds and Shia want oil to be controlled regionally.