Pulled this from a recent wire service report on consultations between Iraqi leaders and US representatives...
The five involved in the consultations are Kurdish leaders Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani; Ahmad Chalabi of the exiled opposition Iraqi National Congress; Iyad Allawi of the Iraqi National Accord; and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, whose elder brother heads the Shiite Muslim group Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Garner said he expects the emerging leadership to include a former foreign minister, Adnan Pachachi, and possibly a Christian and a Sunni Muslim leader.
I really wonder how they plan to make this work. There will be an interesting game going on: each group will be trying to maintain good relations with the Americans, which will require a façade of cooperation, but each will also be doing everything possible to undercut the others. There’s very little common ground there, and a lot of hostile history.
The entropic forces are formidable. Barzani’s KDP and Talabani’s PUK, the two main Kurdish groups, have found it expedient to put on a show of unity, but they are natural competitors and there is no lost love between them. In 1996 the KDP actively cooperated with Iraqi troops in attacks on the PUK, and that’s not likely to have been forgotten. The INA is composed of defectors from the Iraqi military and security services; many of its members were once enthusiastic supporters of Saddam, and many are believed to have been involved in atrocities against Kurds, Shiites, and other dissenters. The INA may be able to serve as the center of a post-Baath organization of Sunnis, but its relations with other groups will be shaky at best. Chalabi’s INC is a hollow shell. Before the war, the INC was an umbrella organization including the PUK, PDP, SCIRI, and a number of exile groups; now that the three main constituents have established independent identities, Chalabi has more support in Washington than in Iraq. Even before the war there was evidence that the INC was by no means a united front. Kurds associated with the KDP are believed to have helped Iraqi troops break the INC presence in Iraq, and the KDP, PUK, INA, and SCIRI are known to have held pre-war talks outside the INC framework. Pachachi’s Democratic Centrist group is a personal vehicle with virtually no domestic support.
It is impossible to say at this point what role al-Hakim has to play, or what his relationship with SCIRI is, but it is certainly significant that SCIRI, by far the largest non-Kurdish political organization, is not a direct participant in the process.
Is this the core of a democracy in the making? Maybe, but the thought strains credulity to some extent. |
