Muslims and Liberals

St. Louis Post – Dispatch
June 17, 2004
    

COMMENTARY – A FORUM FOR OTHER VOICES, IDEAS AND OPINIONS Mustafa Malik, a Washington journalist, has researched ethnic and religious movements in the Middle East as a research associate with University of Chicago Middle East Center.

DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ

President Bush has hailed Iraq’s unfolding democratic process, which will produce, he said, “a stable … and peaceful country in the heart of the Middle East.” I wonder if Iraq will survive this process.

Under the U.S.-sponsored arrangement, which has been endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, Iraq’s interim government would hold elections to a 275-member parliament by next January. The parliament then would adopt a constitution by a simple majority and put it to a nationwide referendum for ratification.

The sticking point is the Iraqi Kurds. Living mainly in the north, they make up 23 percent of the Iraqi population and fear that an Arab majority in parliament (and in the country) could deny them the regional autonomy for which they have been struggling.

A majority of the dozens of Kurds I interviewed during two research trips in the 1990s favored reunification with the rest of Iraq only if granted “autonomy,” which was defined differently by different people. And a minority wanted an independent “Kurdistan.”

To ensure Kurdish autonomy, the occupying Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq agreed to a legal framework that gave the Kurds a veto over the adoption of the country’s constitution. But that veto expires with the June 30 transfer of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government. Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and others have tried to assure the Kurds of their awareness of their yearning for autonomy, but everyone knows such assurances mean little.

Significantly, the leaders of the two Kurdish political parties, Jalal Talabani and Masud Barzani, have vowed to shun the central government over this issue but not the elections. The situation is reminiscent of our nightmare in the old Pakistan.

In 1970, Pakistan was a multiethnic country with regional political parties. The main party in East Pakistan, the Awami League, had tried for years to obtain “provincial autonomy.” Spurned consistently by the central government, it made autonomy its central campaign issue of parliamentary elections agreed to by dictator Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan and won all but one seat in East Pakistan and none in any of the four West Pakistani provinces.

The Awami League then claimed that its sweeping victory in East Pakistan meant a popular “mandate” for the secession of the province; it launched a rebellion against the central government. The army cracked down, alienating most East Pakistanis and leading to the birth of independent Bangladesh.

Like the old Pakistan, Iraq is an ethnic quilt into which Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds were bound together by British colonialists. The Shia Arab majority has been struggling to end Sunni Arab domination, but the feud doesn’t seem to threaten the existence of the state.

Kurdish regionalism does, however, especially if the limits of Kurdish autonomy remain undefined prior to any elections. The two Kurdish parties would campaign on the issue of autonomy and are all but certain to capture just about every seat in the Kurdish region. They then could claim that their sweeping victory amounts to a mandate to preserve their current de facto independence. The Arab majority is unlikely to accede to such a demand, and a civil war could be the result.

One format for the resolution of the Kurdish demand for autonomy would be a conclave of key Kurdish and Arab leaders, with the U.N. as host, and the time for that is now. Any understandings reached then could be incorporated into the constitution when parliament meets next year.

The Iraqis would do well to follow the footsteps of America’s founding fathers. Aware of the perils of constitution-making by an elected parliament, they had the job done by 55 wise unelected men.