How Many Angels CAN Fit On The Head Of A Pin..?

Fiddling while

Baghdad burns

Iraqis need time and patience to come up with the right constitution. First we must stop the civil war.

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
Sunday August 28, 2005
The Observer


In 1453, the Ottoman armies were marching towards the gates of Constantinople while inside the city walls, the Greek Orthodox priests and a delegation of Latin Catholic cardinals were trying to come up with a Manifesto of Understanding between the two sects before forming an alliance that would fight the marching Muslim Turks. The clerics were engaged in futile discussions on issues such as how many angels can stand on the end of a pin and whether the angels were males or females.
They never found out the answers as the Ottomans soon overran the city.

Sunni, Shia and Kurdish Iraqi politicians and clerics, sitting in the fortified green zone behind huge, concrete blast walls and besieged by escalating waves of violence, have indulged themselves in the same sort of futile discussions to define the shape of their country, the role of religion and the influence of the clergy on family and state matters.

This is not to suggest that federalism and human rights are as banal as determining the angel's gender, but when the whole country is falling apart, when dozens of Iraqis die every day, when the insurgency is stronger than ever and the sectarian violence is already referred to by many as a civil war, and when inter-Shia violence is spreading throughout the south of the country in the midst of all this, it is simply unrealistic to be debating huge, important issues that will shape the future of Iraq.

The Americans and the British have argued for a long time that if the Iraqis adopt a democratically written constitution for the first time in their history and if the Sunnis are convinced to join the political process, they will deprive the insurgents of their main base of support, help bring back home American troops and ease the mounting pressure on President Bush.

But now the same process that was supposed to bring peace is threatening a full-scale civil war between the Sunnis, Shia and Kurds. The Shia politicians have dismissed the Sunni negotiators as ex-Baathists who don't represent the majority of the Sunni community, and the Sunnis are waving the stick of civil war every time they give an interview after yet another session of unsuccessful discussions.

So what went wrong? And why might this constitution ignite fierce political and violent battles across Iraq?

Three factors have shaped the political process in Iraq throughout the last few months and have contributed to the failure of this American-sponsored political process.

The Iraqi politicians who emerged victorious from the January elections started suffering the same 'reality disconnect' that their backers, the American, have been suffering from for the past two years. It is the huge gap between the realities in the streets in Baghdad, not to mention anywhere else in country, and the Byzantium of the green zone where they have settled.

A few weeks ago, a Kurdish parliamentarian told me, as we stood in the middle of the Iraqi parliament in the green zone, that 'we [politicians] don't know what's happening in the streets outside and the people outside don't care about what are we doing here because of the violence they are suffering from'.

Pointing at the parliamentarians around him, he said: 'They will all be fighting for the last seat on the American helicopter fleeing the green zone when the American leave. For us, the Kurds, we will just go up in the mountains.'

And this disconnect has found its way through the constitutional debate. Does it matter if Islam is 'the main' source of legislation or only 'a' source, when Shia militia in the south of Iraq are enforcing hijab on women, banning alcohol and transforming the south into 'Iran lite'? The role of Islam in the legislation seems irrelevant if those parts of the Sunni west that are under the control of the insurgents have become Taliban land.

It is the same with federalism. The Shia want a mini-state in the south with powers such as those enjoyed by the Kurds. Meanwhile, Sunni negotiators are zealously defending the concept of central control at a time when the country is actually under the control of militias, insurgents and warlords.

The second factor is rushing the political process and attempting to impose deadlines on the Iraqis merely to suit what is politically convenient for the Bush administration. Six months' delay? No, that is really bad for the American image, so then a week and then three days and then one, as if the most important questions facing the future of Iraq can be solved within few days.

Iraq is run now by the 'Transitional Administrative Law' or TAL, a mini-constitution that was agreed upon last year. Why not let the country function under the TAL for another year and give time for proper discussions and a debate about federalism? After all, most of the Iraqis don't even know the meaning of federalism.

But it is not right to put all the blame on political convenience on the Bush administration. The Shia, who, with the Kurds, won an overwhelming majority in the January elections, had at that time a historic opportunity to stretch out their hands to the Sunnis and work to bring them into the political process that they had decided to boycott. Instead, everything they did just contributed further to Sunni alienation.

They appointed people with connections to Iranian-backed militia to run the security services. Soon after that, sectarian violence against the Sunnis committed by security forces started to escalate. Only under pressure from the Americans did they agree an additional 17 Sunni seats on the 55-member constitutional committee, instead of the two originally appointed.

The political process has failed as a result of greed, isolation and partisan use of the constitutional process.

The Americans and their Shia and Kurdish allies are unable to crush a Sunni-dominated insurgency and will resort to more violence while the Sunnis, isolated from mainstream politics and lacking a solid and effective leadership, will slide further into the hands of extremists who denounce any participation in politics.

The constitution may get through the required process of votes and referendums, but Iraqis will not have the democratic constitution they hoped for after decades of tyranny and oppression.

· Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is an Iraqi writer and commentator