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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (172527)	10/15/2005 9:56:22 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 281500

Disappearing acts Modern constitutions take years to be debated and written. The TAL ordered that Iraqis should form a government and write a constitution in six months. No wonder the rush job will be infinitely amended - not to mention the explosive risk of being implemented over the refusal of one of the country's key communities, the Sunni Arabs. Any constitution is supposed to avoid this kind of problem, not provoke it. The definitive recipe for the breakup of Iraq is Article 115. It states: Every province or more has the right to establish a region based on a request for a referendum to be submitted in one of the following ways: 1) A request from one-third of the members in each of the provincial councils in the provinces that wish to establish a region. 2) A request from one-tenth of the voters in each of the provinces that wish to establish a region. In practice, this means that any two provinces can decide to become a "region" - with different laws from other regions (that's exactly what Kurds and Shi'ites want). Obviously, a region with its own laws, government and army is practically an independent country. The SCIRI, which controls nine of Iraq's 18 provinces, is already operating in this manner. Another key article disappeared from the final (ie, today's) draft. It used to be Article 16, according to which: 1) It is forbidden for Iraq to be used as a base or corridor for foreign troops. 2) It is forbidden to have foreign military bases in Iraq. 3) The National Assembly can, when necessary, and with a majority of two thirds of its members, allow what is mentioned in 1 and 2 of this article. The blatant contradiction speaks for itself. In the final draft, there's no reference to the crucial issue of occupation troops or occupation military bases - which raises the question: is Iraq set up to be under permanent US military occupation? And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for Of Iraq's 18 provinces, seven - Baghdad, Babil, Anbar, Salah al-Din, Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala - are in the center-north. Apart from the Sunni-majority Anbar, Salah al-Din and Nineveh, both Baghdad and Diyala are at least half Sunni. These are all important provinces, holding 13 million people, roughly half of Iraq's population - and that includes the 6 million people living in the capital, Baghdad. The resistance is very active in all of these provinces - and not only in four, as the Pentagon maintains. As things stand, with or without a constitution, the resistance and the guerrillas can continue to cause havoc in these seven provinces on a daily basis for a long time. If the constitution is rejected this Saturday, nothing will change, as far as Iraqis are concerned. The Bremer-approved TAL remains in place. There will still be parliamentary elections in December, and a new interim parliament will have to start all over again. Shi'ites will be furious. But for them it's not the end of the game. The new parliament will once again be dominated by Shi'ites and a modified version of this tampered constitution will resurface. If the constitution is rejected, the different strands of the Sunni Arab resistance movement - as well as al-Qaeda in Iraq - will be encouraged, because, for them, although with nuances, this is the occupiers' piece of paper. But even if the constitution is approved, the same thing will happen. Sunni Arabs will concentrate on the fact that they have been excluded, they are out of the game and have nothing left to lose. The resistance will become even bloodier. There couldn't have been a more constitutional way to civil war.