Uniting or dividing Iraqis?

July 20 2004

Uniting or dividing Iraqis"?

PV Vivekanand

The Iraqi National Convention, which is aimed at uniting Iraqis under the forerunner of a democratic umbrella, could turn to be a forum for dividing the people of the beleaguered country and deepen schisms between the ethnically diverse Iraqi society.
It is Iraqis' first experience in getting together with a view to interacting although the mandate of the conference is limited. At the same time, it could also be a stage for leaders of various religious, ethnic, social and political groupings to meet and discuss the situation in the country after the ouster of the Saddam Hussein regime.
Never before in recent history have the Iraqis been afforded an opportunity to attend a national conference where they could air their views without fear. "National conferences" were indeed held during the Saddam regime, but they inevitably tended to be forums to heap praise on Saddam and his government. Anyone who dared to criticise the regime risked his life. Therefore the upcoming convention should indeed be considered as a historic opportunity for the people of Iraq to start having a say in their affairs.
However, as reports from Baghdad indicate, politicians— mostly exiles who returned home after Saddam was ousted last year —  have already hijacked the event. But then, that is the way politics work and first-time experiments could not be expected to work out perfectly, say the organisers of the forum.
The conference is an idea of the United Nations. Lakhdar Ibrahimi, the then UN special envoy to Iraq, worked out the details. He proposed that 1,000 people representing all religions, sects, tribes, and social and political groups as well as academics attend the conference and select 100 from among the participants to form an interim assembly.
The structure of the conference as well as the interim assembly proposed by Ibrahimi would have ensured a fair and just balance based on Iraq's ethnic diversities. However, that structure is deemed to have been undermined by now.
According to Jawadat Al Obeidi, secretary-general of the Iraqi Democratic Congress, a group which includes 216 Iraqi political parties, "gifted and honest Iraqi personalities" have been sidelined and their efforts to attend the conference were stonewalled by members of the Supreme Commission for the Preparation of the National Conference.
The interim assembly will act as parliament and will advise the interim government headed by President Ghazi Al Yawar and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi which took office on June 28.
It will have the authority to veto legislation and appoint alternate ministers and could replace the president and vice-presidents, the prime ministers and cabinet members in the event of death. The assembly will also determine the country's budget for 2005 and draft Iraq's constitution.
Security is indeed an issue for the conference and guerrillas who oppose the US-backed process have stepped up their attacks. As of Wednesday, even the venue of the conference remained a closely guarded secret.
Twenty-one of the 100 seats are already "gone" — taken over by 20 members of the now dissolved interim governing council and Fuad Masoum, a Kurd who is in charge of convening the meeting. Only Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister, and four other members of the defunct governing council who joined the interim cabinet opted not to "reserve" seats for themselves in the assembly.
Apart from sealing their seats, the 20 others have also staked claims for their allies and cronies in the assembly, meaning that the bulk of the rest of the seats — 79 — have already been spoken for. As such, critics argue that the meeting, which begins on Saturday, will be nothing but a stage-managed event where many aspiring Iraqi politicians would find they are destined to be left out, and many have already announced they would not be attending the forum. Some of them have said they do not want to be part of a conference that is being "arranged" by the "occupation" since they do not recognise the transfer of sovereignty to the interim government by the US and continue to consider the country as occupied by the US-led coalition forces.
On the other hand, signs of a Shiite effort to dominate the conference and the assembly itself have emerged. Leading that effort is said to be Chalabi, a one-time American favourite as Saddam Hussein's successor in post-war Iraq.
Chalabi, who fell out with the Americans over charges that he misled the US on Saddam's alleged weapons stockpile, misappropriated American funds granted for spying and provided confidential intelligence information to Iran, has definitely groped his way back to a position of influence with or without American help.
He is a member of the Supreme Commission for the Preparation of the National Conference.
Reports indicate that he, with help from an umbrella group representing Shiites, has made sure that a significant number of the 1,000 people being asked to attend the conference are his people. So have a few other "influential" former members of the interim governing council, reports say.
In principle, the Iraqi conference should be be structured along the Afghan loya jiga model and attended by tribal leaders, academics, scholars, intellectuals, youth delegates, artists, writers, poets, leaders of professional associations and unions and religous leaders.
Around 550 of the 1,000 participants in the convention will be representatives of Iraq's 17 provinces and about 350 will be representatives of political parties, religious, tribal and nongovernmental groups, and "high-profile personalities." Twenty-five per cent should be women.
Political and ethnic power struggles characterised the selection of representatives from the provinces. Christians are given three seats, but they are demanding another two. Yazidis, Assyrians and other minority groups are complaining of low representation for themselves.
Motqada Sadr, the firebrand Shiite leader based in Najaf, has boycotted the process.
Sunnis from central Iraq complain that they have not been given the opporunity to select their "genuine represenatives." The Muslim Clerics' Association, a mainstream Sunni religious group, has also said it will not take part in the conference.
The Sunnis as well as many Shiites say it is meaningless to attend an event whose conclusion has already been determined.
According to reports, it is only a formality that it would be announced at the conference that Sharif Ali Bin Al Hussein, a descendent of the Hashemite royal family which was toppled in 1958, will be the speaker of the Interim National Council in a move arranged by Paul Bremer, the US viceroy who left Iraq on June 28 after handing over "sovereignty" to the interim government.
It is "arrangements" like these that have upset many. They might agree that Sharif Ali is the right candidate for the job, but they oppose the idea that the US has already made all the decisions to be taken at the conference.
Prominent intellectuals and leaders upstart political parties have declined invitations to attend the conference. They say their presence will only be used to legitimise what they see as an illegitimate process.
"We won't give them the legitimacy of our participation," Sheikh Jawad Khalisi, an influential Shiite Muslim cleric, was quoted as saying by the Los Angeles Times.
Khalisi is part of an alliance of Shiite, Sunni Muslim and Christian leaders and prominent academics who include Baghdad University political science professor Wamidh Namdi and Sheihk Harith Dhari, a powerful Sunni imam, said the paper.
"Every country that has been occupied throughout history has had some of its sons who cooperated with the occupation and some of its sons who resisted the occupation. We're choosing to resist," Khalisi said.
Nadhmi recently told the Washington Post that he and seven others declined to attend the conference: "We are not going to be used to give legitimacy to a constitution or a committee which has been, directly or indirectly, appointed by the occupation."
Ibrahimi, the erstwhile UN envoy to Iraq, had prepared a list of names of participants. Chalabi, reports say, cited secret files his people have took away from the former government's offices that show that some of the Ibrahimi nominees nominees had close ties with the Saddam regime; that made sure they were excluded.
Despite the divisions and schisms, there is no doubt that the convention is the first step for national interaction among Iraqis in the post-Saddam era. Many in the region feel that the process should have been more transparent with a view to bringing to the fore the diverse ideas and convictions of the people of Iraq rather than being set off in a direction where decisions designed to serve external interests are likely to be imposed on the very people who have to live with those decisions.