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| Tuesday, 9 March 2004 |
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Iraq: the spectre of ungovernability Asia watch by Lynn Ockersz
While the brutal killing of some 180 Shiite worshippers in bomb blasts in Iraq recently prefigures the unprecedented segmentation of Iraqi- politics on sectarian lines in the days ahead - besides pointing to the heightened law and order challenges faced by the US-installed, post war governing structures in that country - the current problems bedevilling the installation of an interim constitution paint, on the other hand, a grim picture of an emerging, deeply, ethnicized Iraqi polity. Accordingly, identity-based, explosively divisive ethnic politics will be Iraq's lot even if Western plans to hand over power to the Iraqis is to take place on schedule. Essentially, what was envisaged was the early introduction of an interim constitution which would have seen Iraq through, under a broad-based government, until the installation of a permanent constitution next year, providing, of course, for elections and democratization. How much power to which ethnic or cultural group, and who will exercise the lion's share of political power? These are the issues of the present and the foreseeable future. The Shiite majority which remained largely disempowered during the Saddam Hussein years, which witnessed the installation in power of the minority Sunni Muslims, is today foremost among the religious groups which are making a strong bid for power. It is their perception that the Kurdish minority in Northern Iraq would be exercising strong veto control over key provisions in the permanent constitution to be drafted next year, which led to a last minute walk out by Shiite representatives from an Iraqi Governing Council meeting recently, which was to endorse the interim constitution. Reports also said that the Shiites are seeking total control over the Presidency. Compounding these Iraqi dilemmas is the fact that the Shiite majority is currently being guided by a clerical leadership headed by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, which could be expected to steer Iraq away from secular and even unquestionably democratic founding ideals. To the extent to which these principles would be shunned, Iraq would remain a seething cauldron of ethnic and religious strife. For, if religious and political hegemony is sought by the Shiites, this would provide an ideal seed bed for conflict among the country's religious and ethnic groups. Particularly those which have hitherto been politically and culturally repressed, such as the Northern Kurds, are likely to make a strong bid for a share of power. Unless a Bosnia-type enormously complicated solution is found to the emerging imbroglio, the West would have on its hands a virtually ungovernable, chronically conflict-ridden state. It is indeed the height of irony that the West would find it exceedingly difficult to mediate a democratic solution in Iraq where power-sharing principles rather than power aggrandizement on the part of particular religious and ethnic groups, boasting predominance in numbers, would prove, formative, state-moulding influences. All this would, of course, come in top of Sunni disaffection and military rebellion, which has already claimed scores of Shia and American lives. |
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