lefties now drumming the iraq issue !!!
Step by Step
A roundup of the past three weeks' good news from Iraq.
BY ARTHUR CHRENKOFF
Monday, June 13, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
"You can't fix in six months what it took 35 years to destroy." These words, spoken by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Iraq's first democratically elected Prime Minister in half a century, should be inscribed in 3-foot-tall characters as a preface to all the reporting from Iraq. Sadly, the underlying reality all too often seems to escape many reporters caught in the excitement of "now."
Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, A. Heather Coyne concurs with the gradualist view:
Having spent the past two years in Iraq, first as an Army officer and now as the head of the Iraq office of the Washington-based US Institute of Peace, I am struck by the determination and steadiness of Iraqis as they struggle to build a stable, democratic country, and by the continuing, firm commitment of Iraqis to participate in--and manage--that process.
In spite of a constant threat from the various insurgencies over the past year, Iraqi government agencies, political parties, and civil society organizations have gradually expanded their capabilities and activities. They will tell you how much more they could have done had they not been constrained by security threats or--almost as important--the lack of reliable infrastructure, but what they have accomplished already is admirable, as is their unflagging determination in the face of these threats and constraints.
There is a phrase I hear in almost every conversation with Iraqis that captures the mood of this process: hutwa bi hutwa, or "step by step."
Below, some of those often overlooked or underreported steps that people of Iraq and their foreign friends have been taking over the past three weeks:
• Society. Samir al-Saboon, the Sunni head of Iraq's National Security Agency, has recently shared the results of latest opinion research in Iraq, taken in May:
Recent polling data shows that fully two-thirds of Iraqis believe their country is headed in the right direction, Saboon said. While a poll in January showed only 11 percent of Sunni Muslims in Iraq shared that view, that percentage has since grown to 40, he said. . . .
Recent polling data shows that fully two-thirds of Iraqis believe their country is headed in the right direction, Saboon said. While a poll in January showed only 11 percent of Sunni Muslims in Iraq shared that view, that percentage has since grown to 40, he said.
The biggest task on the political calendar is preparing Iraq's new democratic constitution by August. The committee to draft the document will be composed of 69 members: 55 from the National Assembly, 13 Sunni representatives, and a member of a small Mandean sect. "Around half the Sunni representatives will be members of political parties and the others representatives from Sunnis regions, mainly in the centre and the west of the country." The 13 will be chosen by the Sunni community, not the Assembly or the committee. The committee's head is Shiite cleric Hummam Hammoudi; his deputies are a Kurdish legislator, Fouad Massoum, and a Sunni Arab lawmaker, Adnan al-Janabi.
Among the foreign offers of help, the Indian government has volunteered its expertise to help draft the constitution.
There is already some good news on the constitution:
Shiite legislators have decided not to push for a greater role for Islam in the new Iraqi constitution out of concern that the contentious issue will inflame religious sentiments and deepen sectarian tensions.
Instead, the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite coalition that won the most seats in January's elections, will advocate retaining the moderate language of Iraq's temporary constitution that was drawn up under the auspices of the American occupation authority.
Humam Hamoudi, the Shiite cleric who heads the 55-member constitutional committee that will draft the new document, said that any attempt to debate the issue of Islamic law could ignite a firestorm of competing sectarian demands and that the brief references to Islam in three paragraphs of the temporary constitution should be left untouched.
"These paragraphs represent the middle ground between the secularists and those who want Islamic government, and I think the wisest course of action is to keep them as they are," he said in an interview at his Baghdad home. "Opening up the subject for discussion would provoke religious sentiments in the street."
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Jaffari has restated to the Assembly his government's vision--most importantly, that "the political programme of the interim government set up following elections has the objective of building a federal, pluralist Iraq while respecting human rights and public freedoms."
In northern Iraq, after some initial delays, the local Kurdish assembly opens for business:
Parliament in the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq has held its first session in the northern city of Irbil.
After recitations from the Koran, all 111 deputies took oaths of office under Kurdish national flags.
Iraq's President, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, attended the session, as well as the newly-elected President of the autonomous region, Massoud Barzani.
The two men who lead rival parties have effectively ruled the Kurdish region since the end of the Gulf War in 1991.
Down south, the minority Sunnis are finally organizing themselves politically, thus ending their boycott of Iraq's democratic politics:
The newly created Sunni alliance, which has not adopted a name, will open its first office in Baghdad, with branches later in other cities.
"The decisions taken by this body will be shared by all Sunnis parties and movements, Islamists, independents, merchants, military officers, heads of tribes and workers," said Adnan al-Duleimi, the head of the Sunni Endowment.
The charitable organization was one of three main Sunni groups to back the formation of the new organization. The others were the influential Association of Muslim Scholars and the Iraqi Islamic Party.
"We decided to establish this Sunni political and religious organization to speak on behalf the Arab Sunnis. We all have to work for the sake of Iraq to get this country out of this hard situation," said Sheik Lawrence Abid Ibrahim al-Hardan, 47, who is from restive Anbar province west of Baghdad.
Sunnis said they hope the organization will give them more of a say in Shi'ite-dominated Iraq and help bring the minority together ahead of new elections in December.
For extensive coverage see this report from Al-Mendhar. In a related development, Sheikh Ali Al Fares Al Dailami, secretary of the Sunni-based Iraqi and Arab Clans' Council, has announced that his body will be entering into alliance with the former prime minister Iyad Allawi to "create a national alliance that includes various national forces in preparation for going into the coming elections process." |
