The
devil’s in the details. The neoconservative line
is that the Iraqi constitution will legitimize the US invasion of Iraq, and bring
forth a young republic to democratic alliances. They argue that it’s okay to
defer the question of sharia law and federalism, just get something voted on
quickly. They glorify the rushed process, comparing it to the Revolution of
1776 and the young United States’ struggle to ratify its own constitution,
which you might recall, deferred on the critical question of slavery, and set
in motion the civil war 75 years later. This question won’t take 75 years in
Iraq, they are already simmering.
Other “9/11
patriots” are already asking if American lives should be lost to establish a
new Islamic republic, and the religious right has already informed the White
House that a constitution without freedom of religion is not acceptable.
Such is the President’s dilemma now. He was more than happy to take the
credit for the military success of the invasion, but now that the harder work
of occupation and nation building have become an albatross around his legacy
and the reputation of the United States, we hear him speak less confidently
about the final outcome, deferring to the Iraqi’s choices (and thus their
failure, not his) to attain the goals spoken of in all the lofty speeches of
2002 and 2003, as well as his 2004 inaugural address. As Prof. Juan Cole said recently, “the war is over…and Iran won.” It’s tragic that the losers may still
be the Iraqi people. KwC Echoes
of Oslo
Iraq's Constitutional debate is a symptom of a country with an equally
profound identity problem By Mark Levine, In These Times, August 21, 2005 Mark LeVine is professor
of modern Middle Eastern history, culture and Islamic studies, UC Irvine, and
the author of Why They Don’t Hate Us:
Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil It is somewhat fitting that the complex and
tension-filled process of completing Iraq's first "democratically"
drafted constitution should occur at the same time that Israel is withdrawing
its settlers and soldiers permanently from the Gaza Strip. Both are taking
place in the context of a post-9/11, militarized neoliberalism that has created
conditions of chaos in Palestinian and Iraqi societies. In such an environment,
lasting political progress will require far more than what is symbolized by
these two potentially momentous events. In fact, as this
article was being written, the constitutional negotiators had been granted a
week's extension to finish their work, so it's impossible to present a concrete
discussion of the constitution's details. The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza was
indeed underway, but even there the prospects of peace remain dim unless Prime
Minister Sharon is willing to match that withdrawal with a near complete
relinquishment of the West Bank and a compromise on Palestinian refugees and
rights to Jerusalem. The
reality is that for the average Iraqi or Palestinian, the new constitution, or
the withdrawal of settlers and troops, will most likely not improve their lives unless they
constitute the first steps in a much broader process of demilitarization and the
creation of a real legal and political framework for peace, equality,
independence and sustainable development. Another fitting reason
for the coalescing of the two events is the potential for the Iraqi
constitutional process to repeat the understandable but disastrous strategy of Oslo--reach agreements on vague and
high-sounding principles, but leave the tough questions for a later date, when developments on the ground will
(hopefully) invest the reconciliation process with enough momentum for compromises
on issues that were off the table at the start. Despite the abject
failure of the Oslo method of conflict resolution, it is hard to imagine Sunnis, who have lost so
much they have little left to lose, Shi'ites, who have gained unprecedented
power and have little reason to compromise, and Kurds, most of whom want an
independent Kurdistan (and who can blame them?), making the hard compromises
that would be necessary to secure a united and peaceful Iraq. And so the
Oslofication of Iraqi politics will likely be the reality for the near future. But what are the most
contentious areas of concern? From mainstream press reports and discussions by
American policy-makers and politicians of various factions, it seems that they
include whether Iraq will have a truly federal (as opposed to centralized)
political structure, what the role of Islam will be in the formation of law,
how much equality women will have compared with the existing and quite liberal
laws passed in 1959, and whether Kurdistan will be allowed to absorb oil-rich
Kirkuk into its autonomous provinces. Indeed, as I traveled through Iraq in the
late winter and early spring of 2004, these issues were already foremost on the
minds of the various leaders, commentators, and average citizens with whom I met.
For example, when I
met Sheikh Harith al-Dari, the leader of the Sunni Muslim Ulama Council, he
menacingly threatened massive violence against the Kurds (not to mention
killing "all the infidels") if Kurdistan was given too much
independence and the United States didn't quickly leave the country. More
seemingly moderate religious leaders and commentators--Shi'ite as well as
Sunni--were equally up in arms over the threat of extensive Kurdish autonomy,
which they viewed as a pretext to independence. Yet Kurds will accept nothing
less. This leaves only one option for finishing the Constitution: Leave the
status of Kurdistan, and Kirkuk in particular, vague enough so that it can be
interpreted according to the desires of each side's constituents. But the interests
of the two constituents--Arabs and Kurds--will likely be as irreconcilable in
two years as they are today. Kurdish national interests will always trump their
broader, and for decades, forcibly imposed, "national" Iraqi
identity. What is interesting here then is not the
Kurdish position, but the Shi'ite one. No doubt a compromise will be reached over the recently
announced desire by some Shi'ite leaders for the Shi'ite southern half of the
country to be granted a similar level of autonomy as desired by the Kurds. This
would effectively guarantee them the lion's share of the country's oil
revenues, and leave the Sunnis with the crumbs of the national petroleum pie
(there are few oil fields in Sunni Iraq). Such a position, however, is a
significant departure from the near unanimity between Sunnis and Shi'ites over
the need for a continued strong central state in Iraq as a measure of security
against the eventual fragmentation of the country that I heard during my time
in the country sixteen months ago. Whatever language is
approved in order to paper over the emerging Sunni-Shi'ite split over
federalism in the near term, it
is clear that the U.S. program of neoliberalizing Iraqi political culture, and
thereby weakening the central state (which is, of course, good for foreign
corporations seeking to gain access to much of the resources presently under
state control), has had its intended effect. The problem is, the main
beneficiaries of an autonomous Shi'ite mega-province in the south could well
wind up being Iran, not the United States. Yet considering how destructive and intrusive
the heavily centralized Baathist state was for most Kurdish and Shi'ite Iraqis,
who can blame them for supporting a weakened centralized state as a guarantee
for their security and prosperity? This is the conundrum that the constitution
or subsequent legislation must eventually solve: How to rein in an historically
oppressive state while preserving the level of services and distribution of
wealth that once made Iraq the envy of the developing world? Turning to the role of
Islam and the status of women in Iraq, during the last year, most religious
leaders have consciously fudged their position on Islam's role in Iraq's future
constitution. Equally fudged has been the related stance on whether women
should be given full legal equality to men or be subject to the majority
interpretations of shar'ia, or
Islamic law, that limit their rights and enshrine male patriarchal domination
in various ways (rights to divorce, inheritance, freedom of movement,
punishments for adultery, etc.). They knew that this was a key issue of concern
for western governments, media and human rights organizations, and that
advocating for too strong a political role for Islam and too many restrictions
on women's freedoms would raise the ire of politicians and feminists around the
world. Thus Article 12 of the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL),
written under the strong influence of the American occupation authorities
(CPA), specifically gives women broadly equal rights to men, preserving a
social and political position first achieved with the 1959 Constitution.
However, now that Iraq is technically sovereign and religious leaders are the
most powerful political force in the country, the male dominated political-religious
establishment has much more leeway to impose a de
facto, if not de jure,
system of discrimination against women. By this I mean that even if political pressure--internal as well as
external--forces them to leave the relatively liberal interpretation of Islam
and women's rights in the TAL largely intact, unless there is a powerful change
in the culture, such rights and freedoms will likely be honored in the breach
rather than as the norm. As women around the Middle
East--indeed, around the world--are well aware, laws mean little if the culture
continues to support their oppression. Whatever the
constitution says, if women don't have the ability to participate in the
public sphere and international pressure to ensure their rights doesn't remain
steadfast, then the social rights they enjoyed under Hussein's otherwise brutal
and oppressive regime will be lost in the process of Iraq's becoming a more
"democratic" and "free" country. It is hard to describe the stifling sense
of fear that pervades every day life in Iraq since the U.S. invasion and
especially since the explosion of the insurgency in late 2003 and early 2004.
For women, the violence has slammed the door of the public sphere shut, as the
risks of taking to the streets and even traveling alone are too great to enable
systematic political activism and campaigns. The closure of the public sphere
has meant that the only people who could regularly take to the streets for much
of the occupation were young, angry and armed religious men. Such a situation is not conducive to
building a progressive political culture, and will not change--no matter the
wording of the constitution--unless the insurgency and the U.S. presence winds
down in the near future.
The violence and the
role of the U.S. presence in it raise another fundamental question barely
touched upon by the discussions surrounding the constitution: What if the violence and chaos that have
taken over Iraq (and which has become a similarly powerful dynamic in
Palestine) are not merely the result of massive U.S. incompetence and
ill-planning, but actually a structural necessity for the achievement of U.S.
strategic aims in the country--that is, the retention of permanent military
bases and the wholesale liberalization of the Iraqi economy? The idea of "sponsored" or "managed"
chaos as a defining
characteristic of contemporary neoliberal globalization has already been
demonstrated by scholars working on Africa, the former Soviet Union, and other
locations along the "arc of instability" that happens to contain some
of the world's most resource petroleum rich and politically unstable countries.
The main thrust of this
argument is that the coming "Age of Peak Oil" makes it strategically
necessary for the United States to maintain a long-term military presence in
Iraq, and thus have
unrestricted influence over its vast oil. In an environment where the vast
majority of Iraqis do not want either of these things, creating a situation of
violence and instability becomes a logical, and perhaps the only feasible way,
to secure them. Ironically, this
dynamic interacts with the constitutional negotiations precisely by being
largely absent from the discussions and debates over it. Lost in most of the
public discussions around the constitution is whether it will prohibit or allow
any foreign country (in this case, the United States) to have permanent bases,
which is clearly opposed by the vast majority of Arab Iraqis. But as long as
the violent insurgency continues, the Shi'i majority government cannot risk
asking the United States to leave. Therefore, a serious but manageable
insurgency becomes the most viable way to ensure that by the time the Iraqis
work out their differences, the United States has half a dozen or more
permanent bases constructed and has ensured that legal impediments to their
presence are no longer an issue. The other crucial
issue that has largely been absent in most mainstream discussions of the
constitutional negotiations has been the establishment of a legal structure
under the Coalition Provisional Authority that made possible--in fact,
mandated--the wholesale privatization of the country's economy. In Naomi
Klein's now famous description in Harper's: In one place on Earth, [neoliberal] theory
would finally be put into practice in its most perfect and uncompromised form.
A country of 25 million would not be rebuilt as it was before the war; it would
be erased, disappeared. In its place would spring forth a gleaming showroom for
laissez-faire economics, a utopia such as the world had never seen. Every
policy that liberates multinational corporations to pursue their quest for
profit would be put into place: a shrunken state, a flexible workforce, open
borders, minimal taxes, no tariffs, no ownership restrictions. The early policies of the CPA--firing hundreds of thousands
of people, opening the countries borders completely to foreign trade
tariff-free--not to mention at least a half a dozen "orders" handed
down by L. Paul Bremer (particularly Orders 39, 40, 49 and 18), made this
process possible. In particular, the orders mandated the privatization of
state-owned enterprises; allowed 100 percent foreign ownership of businesses
except oil; offered foreign firms the same privileges as domestic companies;
allowed unrestricted, tax-free transfers of profits out of the country; and
placed the duration ownership licenses at 40 years. From my discussions with Iraqi academics, politicians and
activists, it was clear that most understood that these orders would not be to the
benefit of the Iraqi people, but few either felt they had the power to fight
the United States on this issue in the near future, or had the ability to
devote much time to raising public awareness of them in order to build support
for their repeal during the negotiations over the constitution. As Iraqi
economist Sabri Zire al-Saadi explained in April 2004, "Little attention
has been given to the role of economic policy"--perhaps true for Iraqis,
but certainly not for the American neocons most behind the invasion of Iraq. In fact, however, an initial draft of the constitution did
return Iraq to something resembling a social welfare state that would have
guaranteed maternal and child health benefits, child care, the role of the
state in guaranteeing education, and most important, that natural resources
belonged to the state. But it appears that these provisions were removed or
severely watered down. While most news reports will skip over them, their final
form could well determine the future of Iraq. Most Iraqis in public life know this. But Iraqis couldn't spend much time on
issues such as economic policy or the question of permanent bases precisely
because it's an all-consuming task just to stay alive in the midst of a
burgeoning insurgency, U.S. violence and mismanagement of the country's
infrastructure and democratic transition, and a potential civil war. Indeed, this dynamic also has affected
the way the Arab and even Iraqi press has reported on these issues, as a review
of the main international Arab and Iraq papers during the negotiations' final
period revealed little discussion of them. And so today, as the constitutional negotiations (hopefully)
come to a close, not even those most closely following these issues have any
idea how, if at all, they will be addressed, and whether the language that is
ultimately agreed upon will change the dynamic on the ground. The United States
aggravates the situation through its continuing control of the vast bulk of
reconstruction funds, which are then channeled to corporations with ties to the
Bush Administration and their Iraqi clients. What is sure is that what U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad
describes as the "the new order" created during the tumultuous summer
of 2005 will in many ways be the same as the old one. If so, Iraqis like their
Palestinian counterparts will likely not be joining their leaders in
celebrating the accomplishments of one single event. Mark LeVine is professor
of modern Middle Eastern history, culture and Islamic studies, UC Irvine, and the
author of Why They Don’t Hate Us: Lifting
the Veil on the Axis of Evil (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2005) |
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