Iraqs
Illegitimate Interim Constitution
By James Conachy
13 March 2004
World Socialist Website
On
March 8, the 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), or their
representatives, gathered in Baghdad to sign a 62-article Law
of Administration, or interim constitution, defining the fundamental
rights of the Iraqi people and outlining the steps by which control
of the country will ostensibly devolve from the US to an elected Iraqi
government.
The event was conceived
as a propaganda coup for the White House, conjuring up images of the
benevolent liberator bringing democratic rights to a long-suffering
people; of grateful Iraqi leaders working in common purpose with the
US; of a war given a much-needed justification; and, above all, of an
exit strategy from Iraq for President Bush to sell to the
American people in the lead-up to the presidential election.
Instead, the stark
contrast between the imagery and the reality confronting the Iraqi people
gave the signing ceremony an element of both tragedy and farce.
The IGC is an unelected
body, mainly composed of people who, in one form or another, collaborated
with the illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq in the hope of gaining
power and privilege. The body has no credibility among the Iraqi people.
As even American generals have commented, the IGC would not survive
if the US troops left.
According to one
report in the Los Angeles Times, the interim constitution was largely
copied from notes written by Paul Bremer, the head of the occupation
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), and simply presented for endorsement.
Without political,
moral or legal legitimacy, the only authority behind the Law of
Administration is the force of 150,000 US and foreign troops occupying
Iraq. Under such conditions, the documents guarantees of civil
liberties are not worth the paper they are printed on.
Every day, the most
basic democratic rights of the Iraqi population are being violated by
US troops. Homes are smashed into and people dragged away on suspicion
of taking part in the legitimate resistance to the occupation. Streets
are cordoned off and roads are blocked. Whole areas of the country are
under curfew and off-limits. Press censorship is in place, strikes have
been declared illegal and demonstrations are regularly fired upon.
The Iraqi journalist
Mustafa Alrawi poignantly observed in Wednesdays Lebanese Daily
Star: Baghdad has become an Orwellian nightmare, replete with
concrete barriers, checkpoints and searches.
According to the
March 7 New York Times, the US military admits to holding at least 10,000
Iraqis in American-operated prison camps, without charges or access
to lawyers. Some detainees are as young as 11-years-old. The male population
of entire villages has been hauled away on suspicion of supporting anti-coalition
activities.
While no one involved
in the signing ceremony cared to raise the issue, the unstated understanding
was that the US military will continue this war of repression in Iraq
indefinitely. The objective of the past 13 years of US aggression against
Iraq has not been concern for democracy or human rights, but to replace
the regime of Saddam Hussein with one amenable to long-term US control
over Iraqs energy resources and territory. Having seized the country,
US imperialism does not intend to allow it to fall into other hands.
Article 59(B) of
the interim constitution dictates that the US will keep its military
forces in Iraq during the election for the transitional government at
the end of this year, a referendum on a permanent constitution in October
2005 and, finally, the election of the first official government in
December 2005. Until the end of this process, the Iraqi Armed Forces
remain under the unified command of the occupation forces
to help maintain peace and security and fight terrorism.
Iraqis will thus
elect a government under the guns of both an American garrison and Iraqi
security forces recruited, trained and commanded by them. The numerous
Iraqi individuals and organisations that have called for or participated
in the active resistance to the occupationreflecting the sentiment
of the majority of the Iraqi populationwill be proscribed from
participating.
The Bush administration
expects this process will create the framework to achieve all of the
principal US war aims. An Iraqi government beholden to US interests
will be installed in power to sign off on the sale of Iraqs oil
industry and other major assets to American corporations and invite
the US military to maintain permanent bases in the country. The little-mentioned
Article 59(C) authorises the unelected transitional government to negotiate
internationally binding agreements that would sanction the
indefinite presence of foreign forces in Iraq.
The events leading
up to the March 8 signing, however, demonstrate that the conceptions
in the White Houseshared by most of the US political and media
establishmentare sheer self-delusion.
Nervousness in the IGC
Instead of the desired
picture of democratic consensus and progress, the IGC deliberations
to accept the document became the venue for rival groupings of the Iraqi
elite to express their animosities and concerns over the nature of the
state being created by the US. Its openly neo-colonial character has
created a degree of anxiety among these handpicked US stooges.
The most revealing
reservations have come from an unexpected sourceIGC member Ahmad
Chalabi, head of the US-supported Iraqi National Congress (INC). In
an interview with US National Public Radio on Tuesday, Chalabi repeatedly
stressed that the document he had signed could not be sold to the Iraqi
people as a valid constitution because the IGC was unelected.
This is problematic,
he declared. If this is not palatable to major parts of the population,
the coming national assembly could reject it... the sovereign state
of Iraq and the sovereign national assembly could say this was drafted
under occupation and we dont like it. What we need to do is get
maximum support for it now and we must make clear to the people what
we are doing.
The fact that someone
like Chalabi openly questions the viability of the US plans is perhaps
the clearest testimony to the fragile state of Iraq and the depth of
opposition to the occupation. More than anyone else on the IGC, Chalabi
is an American puppet. From a wealthy, pro-monarchist Shia family that
fled Iraq in 1958, both he and his organisation openly staked their
quest for power in Iraq on an American invasion.
Throughout 2002,
the INC played a pivotal role in providing false reports to the Bush
administration to feed the lies that Iraq still possessed weapons
of mass destruction. His value to the White House was underscored
by Thursdays revelations that the INC is still receiving payments
of $340,000 per month from the Pentagon for intelligence collection.
Not even a puppet,
however, commits political suicide without some reluctance. It is one
thing for the Bush administration and media to tell the American people
that Iraqis are generally supportive of the occupation. Chalabi and
figures like him are the ones whom the US is going to parade before
the Iraqi people as their government in just a matter of months. His
comments make clear he does not believe that the authority of a sovereign
Iraqi government born in an American-conceived and imposed process is
going to be accepted.
The signing of the
interim constitution had to be delayed on two occasions due to the public
refusal of Shiite IGC members, including Chalabi, to commit to the document.
The objections focused on specific articles or clauses. At a more fundamental
level, though, the hesitation reflected trepidation within the IGC that
the stage was being set for a volcanic eruption of the Iraqi people.
Contrary to the
US propaganda about liberating Iraq, all Iraqi political
figures are acutely aware that broad antagonism exists toward the impact
of US policies stretching back to the first Gulf War. The daily guerilla
attacks on American troops and the Iraqi security forces working for
them are only the most obvious manifestation of the hostility to the
occupation. Of far greater long-term significance is the steadily growing
fury over the social catastrophe the US has inflicted.
Over 12 million
people are unemployed in a country of 24 million. While tens of millions
of dollars are being spent by the CPA to repair Iraqs lucrative
oil industry and recruit new police, much of the country remains without
reliable electricity supplies, clean water, functioning education and
health services and the confidence to walk the streets safely. While
Iraqis have no longing for the former regime of Saddam Hussein, they
instinctively and legitimately blame the US for this state of affairs.
The promotion of communalism
At present, popular
anger is being diverted largely in the retrograde direction of sectarian
and communalist demands. The Shiite clergy and Kurdish elite in particular
are trying to exploit the disaffection to pressure the US to give them
greater power within a future state.
The first walkout
by Shiite IGC members, for example, was over the refusal of others to
accept Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistanis call for an explicit
declaration that Islamic sharia law was the source of the
countrys legal code. After a weekend of reportedly frenzied bartering
and argument, the final version was modified to stipulate that laws
cannot be enacted that contradict Islams universally agreed
tenets. This is being interpreted as giving the Shia clergy a
potential veto over legislation.
Then came the boycott
of the March 5 signing ceremony by five Shiites after Sistani insisted
on another last minute change. He objected to a clause that the scheduled
October 2005 referendum for a permanent constitution would fail if two-thirds
of voters in just three of Iraqs 18 provinces reject it.
Shiites make up
some 60 percent of Iraqs population. If they could be mobilised
on a sectarian basis, Shia parties, including ones wanting an Iranian-style
theocracy, could hold a majority in future parliaments. The referendum
clause therefore limits Shiite ambitions. It means that three provinces
in the Kurdish north or the predominantly Sunni region of central Iraq
could block any final constitution drafted by a Shiite-dominated national
assembly. More generally, the federalist character of constitution entrenches
Kurdish autonomous control in the north and weakens the powers of a
central government the Shiites expect to dominate.
It is not known
what means were employed to change the minds of the dissident Shiite
councillors, but the federalist concessions to the Kurds remained unchanged.
Signalling the disappointment of the Shia clergy at the interim constitution,
Sistani issued a religious ruling, or fatwa, on Monday declaring: This
law places obstacles in the path of reaching a permanent constitution
for the country that maintains its unity, the rights of its sons of
all sects and ethnic backgrounds...
The Kurdish parties
are also bitter at the result. After 1991, they assisted the US in its
aggression against Baghdad in the hope of gaining control over northern
Iraq, the city of Kirkuk and, above all, its rich surrounding oilfields.
While they received limited autonomy in the north, they were denied
Kirkuk and a monopoly on oil revenues. At one point in February, Kurdish
IGC member Mahmoud Othman angrily told the New York Times: If
I try to go back to my people and sell these things to them, they will
choke me. Let Bremer tell them.
The prospect now
exists for a sharpening of the divisions, with the various factions
challenging the authority of the interim constitution, and any government
deriving from it, and seeking better terms. Sistanis fatwa concluded
with the ominous warning: Any law drafted for the transitional
period will lack legitimacy unless it is ratified by an elected national
assembly.
None of these sectarian
and ethnic movements can offer any progressive and democratic solution
to the issues that confront the Iraqi masses. As in the Balkans, the
logic of communalism leads to fratricidal conflict that would have horrific
consequences for working people inside Iraq and the broader Middle East.
The crucial question
is the development of a genuine socialist movement in Iraq and the Middle
East based on the struggle for social equality and the international
unity of the working class. Only such a movement will be capable of
unifying the masses of all backgrounds against the US occupation, the
illegitimate government it is installing and the various communalist
agitators.