On the Eve of the Iraqi Referendum: Two Contrasting Views
By Jacob Thomas
2005/10/18
On October 14, the eve of the Referendum
regarding the Iraqi Constitution, PBS devoted a segment of Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour,
for a discussion of the subject. Four Middle East experts were invited to
“debate the referendum's importance to peace and stability in
Iraq
.”
The experts were: Dr. Najmaldin Karim,
president of the Washington Kurdish Institute; Juan Cole, professor of history
at the University of Michigan; Judith Yaphe, a senior fellow at the National
Defense University; and Adeed Dawisha, a professor of political science at Miami
University of Ohio. Both Najmaldin Karim and Adeed Dawisha, were born in
Iraq
, and are now US citizens.
Professor Dawisha dwelt on the
importance of the political process. This event, as well as last January
elections, involved millions of Iraqis in a process that differed radically from
the many “elections” that took place under Saddam.
Professor Yaphe agreed and added, “I
think what Iraqis need is the process, which is very important, which leads them
to the next election and a more permanent government, then they can work out the
differences.”
Dr. Najmaldin was very hopeful about the
outcome of the referendum. “I believe that you will see that after this
referendum in the election in December that you will see greater participation
by the Sunnis, and they will come to realize that federalism is actually a way
for them to guarantee that they will have self-rule in their area and that there
are safeguards as far as getting a share of the national resources.”
Ray Suarez of PBS turned to Professor
Cole and asked, What's your view? His answer was basically at odds with the
other three participants. “I'm a pessimist on this process, and I'm a severe
critic of this constitution. [It] is full of trapdoors. There will be a
provision that says revenues will be shared between the provinces and the
federal government. In what way will they be shared? Well, there will be a law
passed by subsequent parliament that will determine that.”
“So in many instances the people who
are voting for this constitution have no idea what exactly it is, the substance
that they're voting for. The constitution allows provincial confederations which
have claims on resources and perhaps on enormous resources.
And then 20 percent of the population,
the Sunni-Arab population, seems to be pretty diehard against this constitution;
that's going to weaken its legitimacy.”
So much for the opinions of the experts
that were consulted by PBS on
Friday, 14 October 2005
. As I was eager to read something on this subject that came from the
Middle East
itself, I turned to the online daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat. One op-ed
article attracted my attention right away. It dealt with the coming referendum
in
Iraq
and had this hard-hitting headline:
“It’s
the Constitution’s Opponents who are the People of Discord”
It was written by Abdel-Rahman al-Rashed,
a frequent contributor to the newspaper. I would like to quote several parts of
his article, and hope that you will notice the stark difference between his
tone, and that of Juan Cole.
“The “Opponents”
[Iraqi Sunnis] asked that the Constitution should differentiate between ordinary
Ba’ath party members and the hardened ones; and they got their
wish. In order to make them feel quite comfortable, a constitutional committee
was appointed to supervise the application of this decision. And when it came to
Kurdistan
, they asked specifically for Arabic and Kurdish, rather than the vague
expression “two languages.” These are the languages of the region; and they
got their wish. They demanded that the Constitution affirm that
Iraq
is an Arab country, and a member of the Arab League;
so they got their wish. They asked for an affirmation of the unity of
Iraq
, so the Constitution stipulates that
Iraq
is “a unitary state,” exactly as they wanted. They requested that the
nationality law should insist that an Iraqi is a person whose father and mother
are Iraqis, not merely as one whose mother is Iraqi; so the law was amended to
grant them what they wanted. Furthermore, as they did not appreciate the current
composition of the Government and the Parliament, they requested that the
remaining disputed articles, be dealt with in the future, and they got their
wish.”
“A week before the Referendum, all
these demands appeared impossible to grant; but in order to please the “Opponents”
and help them join the democratic process, their wishes were granted. The
question remains: what was the reason behind all the Opponents’ tactics?”
“Actually, they belonged to two
different groups. One was an anarchist faction whose sole aim was
the destruction of the political process, in order to proceed with their
destruction of the country. They imagined that they could obtain further
concessions by resorting to terrorist acts, and by loudly asking for more
concessions, rather than achieve them through the ballot. They obtained those
last minute concessions, and thus were emboldened to ask for more.”
“The second group among the Opposition
belongs to an ignorant faction that is leading its people into more
problems. Quite likely, should the members of this group persist in their
negative stance; they will lose the opportunity to join the total political
process which is actually to their advantage. Being a minority [Sunni Arabs are
around 20% of the country’s population,] should their vote on the Referendum
be ‘no’ they would be spurning the good will of the
international community, as well as any United Nations’ protection. These two
privileges may not be available to them later on.”
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