Castles
Built of Sand: US Governance and Exit Strategies in Iraq
Christoph
Wilcke
Christoph
Wilcke is a Middle East specialist who has conducted fieldwork
in Iraq for humanitarian organizations and think tanks.
| 
Members of the Falluja city council are
escorted by Marines to a meeting at a location just outside
of Falluja, April 2004. (Hayne Palmour IV/North County Times/Polaris) |
Speaking
to the American Enterprise Institute on February 26, 2003, George
W. Bush invoked the examples of Germany and Japan to underline
that, the United States would leave behind in Iraq "an atmosphere
of safety, in which responsible, reform-minded local leaders could
build lasting institutions of freedom." After the March invasion,
the US toyed briefly with a quick handover of power to returning
Iraqi exiles before realizing that hardly any of them could lay
claim to the title of "local leader." By May, the US
had decided that its mission of bringing "an atmosphere of
safety" to Iraq required it to occupy the country militarily
for an indefinite period. Increasingly, Bush administration officials
justified the ongoing occupation as the midwife of "lasting
institutions of freedom."
One might
argue that the Bush administration dug its own policy grave by
proclaiming so piously its intent to transform Iraq into a democracy.
One might also argue that the absence of evidence of the former
regime's alleged non-conventional weapons forced the administration
into insincere rhetorical zeal for a democratic Iraq. In reality,
the rhetoric was sincere -- even if the Bush administration's
understanding of "democracy" is different from that
of many Iraqis. Yet strategic incompetence in post-war planning
and fundamental misunderstanding of Iraqi society created facts
on the ground that rendered all the good will of -- and toward
-- the US for building democracy irrelevant.
Strategic
incompetence produced three crises -- of information, international
isolation and security -- that conspired slowly to reduce US ambitions
of governance in Iraq from democratization to consensual advisory
representation to mere stabilization. These three crises increasingly
isolated the occupying authorities and its proxy Iraqi institutions
from the Iraqi people, until the gap between declared goals of
freedom and democracy and reality became unbridgeable. When the
general political mood in the country soured, the US-sponsored
Iraqi institutions failed to take control because they lacked
the legitimacy to intervene. In response, the US fell back on
brokering regional deals with the powers that be in Erbil, Falluja,
Najaf and Sadr City. Local events and dynamics -- in city councils
and in the provinces -- are key to understanding how the US botched
its occupation of Iraq and what turn the country may take following
elections scheduled for January 2005.
"Let
Freedom Reign"
| 
Get your War On © 2004 by David Reees.
Used with permission. |
From the
beginning, two significant problems faced the US and its fellow
occupying power Britain: how to govern and how to exit.
Governance
and exit strategy are closely related. On one hand, the more heavy-handed
the US exercise of power in Iraq, the greater the risk of leaving
behind an Iraqi government of dubious legitimacy and staying power.
On the other hand, if the US simply endorsed whoever won Iraqi
power struggles while limiting its own activities to patrolling
the country, then it would run the risk of leaving behind a new
strongman, an Islamist theocracy or internal strife and possibly
a breakup of the country. In the event, the occupation has been
both a mix of and the middle ground between the hands-off and
the hands-on approaches. It combined a mix of forceful US declarations
from the Republican Palace in Baghdad with occasional rubber-stamping
of local authorities by US commanders, even when those authorities
were undemocratic, Islamist or ex-Baathist. Because it had not
deployed enough troops for direct rule, the US sought middle ground
by working through Iraqi proxies and, eventually, submitting to
international pressure to make the UN a sort of appendage to the
occupation. In the end, the Americans used Lakhdar Brahimi, the
UN secretary-general's special advisor on Iraq since February
2004, to devise a way out of the expanding catastrophe.
The June
28 transfer of "sovereignty" to an appointed Iraqi cabinet
was a low point in the occupation authority's already undistinguished
record of governance. As an exit strategy, the handover, conducted
as a cloak-and-dagger operation two days ahead of the scheduled
ceremony, was just one rung up the ladder from "cutting and
running." Only a partial US climbdown on the issue of operational
control of its nearly 140,000 soldiers in Iraq produced a compromise
at the UN Security Council and with the Iraqi Governing Council.
Brahimi sold the transition well, especially in obtaining a grace
period for the interim cabinet from Iraq's most powerful voice,
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, in return for solemn promises of
democratic elections within six months. Yet the UN envoy's original
suggestions for cabinet appointments were abandoned in a last-minute
deal between the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the
inner circle of Iraqi proxies displaying the right attitudes for
assuming power. Ghazi al-Yawir, a leading Sunni member of Iraq's
largest tribe and a returned exile, was appointed president, while
a leading secular Shi'a and former Baathist intelligence officer,
Iyad Allawi, also returned from exile, was appointed prime minister.
Bush reacted
to the news of the June 28 handover by scrawling the words "Let
freedom reign" on the note handed to him by an adviser. The
handover remains an incomplete exit strategy, however given the
continued presence of US troops and the still unfulfilled promises
of a democratic Iraq. A second, and perhaps a third, transition,
including elections and a constitution, will be necessary to fill
the gaping void of local Iraqi institutions through which the
government can rule and on which society can rely. Without such
legitimate institutions of the state, Iraq could well become what
non-proliferation experts, anti-terrorism warriors and democracy
missionaries fear most: a failed state where impunity rules and
no one holds a monopoly of force.
Insular
and Obstinate
| 
An Iraqi boy
carries a portrait of Muqtada al-Sadr during a protest against
the local government advisory council in Basra, June 21,
2004. Protesters demanded that the district’s Western-appointed
governor be relieved of his post. (Atef Hassan/Reuters/Landov) |
The CPA,
now dissolved, was notoriously insular in its palace faubourg,
unable to communicate to, let alone with, the Iraqi people following
the abolition of the Ministry of Information in June 2003. Irregular
and insufficient information fed the rumor mill and constricted
the spaces where Iraqis could discuss their preferences for their
own governance with the occupation authority. The US had bombed
the television tower and telephone exchange in Baghdad, leading
to a virtual communications black hole. Continuing electricity
shortages further reduced the value of television as an information
medium, although Bremer began scarcely watched weekly television
addresses soon after his arrival. In a political culture where
a premium is placed on personal meetings, the dilapidated telephone
system and the insecurity on major roads did not help the CPA,
either. An Iraqi adviser to the Governing Council summed up his
exasperation: "We spend most of our time just getting from
one place to the next!" CPA negotiations accordingly assumed
an air of secrecy. Discussions for the creation of an Iraqi governing
body in June 2003 and, again, in May 2004, for example, raised
deep suspicions about American motives. Recent returnees from
the formerly exiled opposition, now sitting on the Iraqi Governing
Council, also took few measures to reach out to the Iraqi people.
Several months after the fall of Baghdad, the US civilian administration
and its Iraqi proxies were still largely concentrated in that
city. The people in the provinces, with the exception of Iraqi
Kurdistan, which has established media, were left in the dark.
To those Iraqis, patrolling soldiers were the face of the occupation.
Meanwhile,
UN Security Council Resolution 1483, passed in May 2003, relegated
the UN to a subsidiary role. According to a high-ranking UN diplomat,
the US scoffed at French plans for an early return to Iraqi sovereignty
and, later, snubbed Russian and German initiatives calling for
an international conference on Iraq's future similar to the Bonn
gathering on Afghanistan in 2001. International reticence in the
face of America's continued troubles in Iraq and US obstinacy
toward internationalizing the conflict meant that the pledges
of support at the international donors conference in Madrid in
October 2003 did not translate into support on the ground. In
Iraq, it seemed, either you were with the US or you were against
it. For Iraqi provinces, this meant further exclusion from political
processes. Only those with good standing with the US or with significant
networks and resources could play the political game in Baghdad.
The US was therefore predestined to fail as a mediator in efforts
at Iraqi national reconciliation.
Chronic insecurity
inflicted the most damage on US democracy-building plans. Put
simply, the US never won the political part of the battle it started
in March 2003. After the fall of the regime, looting was well-organized,
as were the initial sporadic acts of resistance. Not until the
summer, three months after the war, did insurgent groups claim
responsibility for attacks, indicating that the early resistance
was largely a hangover from the war. The full history of the composition
and motivation of the Iraqi insurgencies has yet to be written.
It seems near certain, though, that Arab jihadis, former regime
members, who may or may not be Saddam loyalists, and dispossessed
Shi'a have all been involved. Violent attacks against personnel,
symbols, proxies and reconstruction efforts of the US occupation
in Iraq are supported or tolerated by a substantial and increasing
minority, if not a majority, of Iraqis.[1]
By all accounts,
Iraqis welcomed the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. The tolerance
for continued violence and anarchy therefore represents a change
in the national mood. The insurgency is diverse and localized,[2] and for many months, insurgents did not seek to liberate
territories. These facts support the hypothesis that Iraqis' growing
alienation from the occupation, rather than their effective intimidation
by the insurgents, explains the mood shift. Much has been written
about two cardinal errors of Bremer's which poured oil onto the
flames of the resistance: radical de-Baathification and the dissolution
of the Iraq army. US counterinsurgency tactics -- disproportionately
punitive raids, air strikes, house searches and the arbitrary
arrests that culminated in the Abu Ghraib scandal -- also played
a part in the alienation of Iraqis. A third source of alienation
was the CPA attempt to dictate the terms of Iraqi participation
in the polity of the future.
Legitimacy
Deficit
| 
A petrol station owner in Anbar province
meets with US military officers and translators at Foward
Operating Base Byers to explain the process many of his
colleagues use to smuggle petrol out of the country, January
2004. (Dana Smillie/Polaris) |
The occupation's
legitimacy deficit can be traced to two trends in national and
local governance. Instead of holding free elections, the US appointed
national and local councils to govern at its behest. Instead of
nurturing the popular legitimacy of these councils, the occupation
authority opted for representational formulas based on the sectarian
and ethnic composition of the country.
Maj. Gen.
David Petraeus established the model for the first US efforts
at local governance in the northern city of Mosul in May 2003.
Petraeus invited the dignitaries of Mosul, including judges, health
workers, teachers, businessmen, and tribal and religious leaders,
to convene in professional caucuses to select a city council.[3]
This council, which initially did not include women, agreed prior
to the caucuses that certain positions and proportions of seats
would go to each of the city's communities of Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen,
Christians and Yazidis.[4]
Some political parties managed to place candidates in the council
through the professional caucuses, but otherwise they held little
influence over city affairs. This council's appointed head, the
governor, was the primary interface between the occupation forces
and the population.[5]
When Bremer
took charge of the occupation authority, he abandoned his predecessor
Lt. Gen. Jay Garner's hinted plans to turn over the reins to favored
Iraqi exile groups. Expatriate Iraqis who had come into the country
as expert advisers to the invaders were quickly reduced to interpreters.[6] The American proconsul reluctantly agreed to establish an
Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) with advisory powers, partly composed
of the former exiles, in July 2003. The IGC helped the US to secure
pledges of international assistance at the Madrid donors' conference
in October, and, though it fell far short of being a successful
Iraqi governance body, it also had its domestic uses for the Americans.
Its members appointed ministers in September, greatly alleviating
the CPA's task of governing by proxy. But Bremer brooked little
dissent from the IGC politicians when they proposed an enlargement
of the council to include other important representatives of religious
and political trends,[7]
and when their constitutional preparatory committee, which Bremer
had ordained, foundered on the opposition of Sistani. Another
of Bremer's first acts was to cancel scheduled local elections
in Najaf, for fear that they would empower elements unfriendly
to the US project.[8]
Iraqi Kurdistan's two main factions were inching toward merging
their separate administrations and holding elections for a regional
parliament before the war, but promises of elections were cut
short once the CPA arrived.[9] In Basra, British CPA officials were open about their disappointment
that Bremer himself had canceled their plans to hold ration card-based
district elections. Islamist parties in Basra did not take well
to the news and promptly organized their own elections, forcing
a standoff with the British. While a secular party spokesperson
dismissed the Islamists' efforts as undemocratic because they
were poorly organized, barred women and were held in mosques,
the British nevertheless conceded to creating a "virtual"
neighborhood, whose representatives would be the elected leaders.
Disappointed, the Islamists began to vie for control of the entire
city.[10]
A major blunder
at the national level was the sectarian-ethnic formula used to
establish the Iraqi Governing Council and allocate posts in the
ministries.[11] This maneuver rendered sectarian
and ethnic affiliation the organizing principle of Iraqi politics
for the first time, and strengthened centrifugal communal forces
at the local level. In Kirkuk, the US commander assigned seats
on the city council by dividing them proportionally among the
city's ethnic groups. Although this system has been credited with
preventing Kirkuk from slipping immediately into civil war, Kirkuk's
council has seen bloc votes and walkouts that have frozen the
council's work. In April 2004, the Turkman and Arab groups jointly
suspended their membership for several months. In other cases,
the CPA more or less randomly added minorities -- such as a Sunni
in mostly Shi'i Arab Nasiriyya -- to enhance the councils' representativeness.
Although they have been partially successful in Kirkuk, many Iraqis
see the sectarian and ethnic quotas as an undemocratic measure
imposed by the Americans without a genuine civic dialogue about
representation of minorities and protection of different ideologies,
such as secularism. As a result, communal power sharing in Iraq
is currently by American fiat, not by consensus.
Building
Blocks of Stability
Adherence
to the Mosul model, moreover, encouraged a top-down approach to
local governance. All across Iraq, the US moved to set up councils
in provincial capitals, in some cases opting to recognize existing
councils that appeared spontaneously after the war or were organized
by Kurdish and Shi'i religious parties in the northern and southern
parts of Iraq. In Kirkuk, two rival councils declared themselves
in charge before the arrival of the Americans. In Kut, followers
of Shi'i cleric Kadhim al-Ha'iri, took over official buildings
in mid-April 2003. In Ba'quba, a mixed Sunni-Shi'i city north
of Baghdad, and Majar al-Kabir, a small southern town, officials
of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq took
over local control after their Badr Brigades had fought its way
into or simply entered Iraq from Iran. Existing governance structures
in Ba'quba and Kut are the result of shaky compromises between
the US and the local forces. But following the establishment of
city councils, few lower-level neighborhood or district councils
were established until December 2003.
From the
beginning, the US-appointed local councils faced their own legitimacy
deficits. Some Iraqis rejected the councils because they are appointed
or self-selected, rather than democratically elected. Many other
Iraqis simply refuse to acknowledge that these bodies represent
them because they were set up at the instigation of the Americans.
The focus
on the educated middle class encouraged by the Mosul model failed
to win the support of the large numbers of disenfranchised urban
poor. In the end, outside Baghdad, the occupation authorities
used the local councils as proxies through which to gather information,
project power and, at the same time, devolve responsibility for
governance to Iraqis and create building blocks of a stable internal
order.
But the new council members were not experienced in government
administration and had no staff or budgets. They were unable,
on the whole, to carry out reconstruction projects aside from
small tasks in cooperation with the military and CPA, which held
the purse strings. The councils were neither linked to one another
nor to the Baghdad ministries that had controlled their budgets
under the old regime. The foremost result was slow reconstruction.
Occupation authorities did not take advantage of the opportunity
to rehabilitate the dilapidated electricity, water and irrigation
infrastructure at the local level. In the absence of improvements
in material conditions or responsive local Iraqi officials or
coalition commanders to whom to turn for help, Iraqis began to
turn hostile toward the occupation.[12] Demonstrations for salaries, jobs and electricity in Baghdad,
Basra and elsewhere in December 2003 were early indicators of
the mood shift. The stalling of reconstruction efforts and the
exclusion from power of those first on the spot -- Islamist parties,
for the most part -- created a vacuum at the local level that
the military and its appointed proxies could not readily fill.
Instead, both reconstruction efforts and political opposition
turned to broad-based popular movements affiliated with Islamist
parties.
Rather than
encourage "democracy" -- the rule of elected representatives
for the benefit of citizens -- the US chose to constitute "representative"
bodies according to certain procedures and quotas for the purpose
of stabilizing Iraq politically. Representative of Iraq's diversity,
but not its people's wishes, the local councils floated in a policy
and power vacuum between the Iraqis they were supposed to represent
and their US overlords.
Baghdad
First
By accident,
Baghdad proved a partial exception to the CPA's model of local
governance. Baghdad's mayors held ministerial rank under Saddam
Hussein and controlled the municipal budget; elsewhere in Iraq,
the national ministries set the budget. Baghdad houses about one
fourth of Iraq's population and is said to be among the world's
most sprawling metropolitan areas. The credo of "Baghdad
First" that captured the CPA's hope of producing a democratic
domino effect throughout Iraq flowed not only from the historical
administrative autonomy of the capital but also from the resources
-- CPA, military and NGO -- amassed there. Beginning in May 2003,
the First Armored Division and other divisions, together more
than 39,000 soldiers, spread the word over loudspeakers and in
face-to-face interactions that Baghdadis should convene at predetermined
times to select neighborhood leaders. The soldiers operated under
the guidance of the Research Triangle Institute (RTI), a think
tank that had won the contract from the US Agency for International
Development to provide assistance in local governance.
Over the
course of several months, the military formed 88 neighborhood
councils. In a bottom-up approach not replicated in the provinces,
these lower councils selected members of district councils who
in turn formed a Baghdad city council. Members included Iraqis
of all political stripes. Some vented their fury at Saddam Hussein's
deposed regime, while others were hangers-on of that regime. Still
others were religiously motivated and had naturally settled into
official positions after having worked informally to restore order,
security and basic services in the immediate aftermath of the
war. Many of these leaders were never integrated into the "Baghdad
First" vision.
In Shu'la
and Sadr City, two poor Shi'i neighborhoods comprising perhaps
half of Baghdad's population, popular councils had formed spontaneously
following the fall of the regime. In Shu'la, the council consisted
of religious men, some of whom were accused by the CPA of having
been informers for Hussein's security services. In Sadr City,
representatives of the young cleric Muqtada al-Sadr gathered male
heads of households to elect a district council following the
fall of the regime. Nevertheless, the US military, together with
RTI, attempted to install councils following the example set by
Petraeus in Mosul.
In Sadr City,
however, the "elected" council did not cooperate with
the occupying forces. Only a long standoff and protracted negotiations
led to the disbanding and integration of the Sadrist council.
Sadrist representatives repeatedly did not show up for meetings
of the all-Baghdad city council and other functions convened by
the occupation authority. Further setbacks occurred when a US
helicopter crew tore down a banner inscribed with the name of
Muqtada's uncle Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr in August and when US soldiers
shot dead "their" council's leader, Muhannad Kaabi,
in November.[13] These events were part of the background of the eventual
decision of the Sadrists to take up arms against the occupiers
in April 2004 and again in August.
Dead Letter
In the fall
of 2003, the US-led occupation arrived at a crossroads. At the
national level, the attempt to install pliant allies to whom to
hand off a democratic Iraq had come to naught. At the local level,
the US military had sometimes installed new councils and sometimes
sanctioned already existing ones. But the military-appointed councils
did not speed up the sluggish pace of reconstruction, and Iraqi
politics turned increasingly toward demands for salaries, jobs
and elections. Meanwhile, attacks on US and other occupying soldiers
shot up dramatically in frequency and lethality. The Bush administration
summoned its proconsul to Washington to hammer out a more concrete
exit strategy -- one that, incidentally, paid more attention to
local Iraqi politics.
Bremer returned
from the emergency talks in Washington with an accelerated plan
for transition to Iraqi self-rule called the November 15 agreement.
The agreement's central feature was a system of provincial caucuses.
Under the plan, in each province five members of the IGC, five
members of the provincial council and a member of each of the
five largest city councils were to form a 15-person organizing
committee. This committee would then oversee the vetting of candidates
for a provincial caucus. This caucus, in turn, would select a
number of delegates proportionate to the province's share of the
national population to a newly formed interim national assembly.
The national assembly would then select a government, which would
form a cabinet and prepare elections for a constitutional assembly.
Within two
weeks of the announcement of the November 15 agreement, many observers
already viewed it as a dead letter, due to the objections of Grand
Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Sistani renewed his call for direct national
elections. But the reason the caucus plan failed in Iraq has as
much to do with how it was hatched and presented as with Sistani,
who merely raised the loudest voice of opposition.
Outside Baghdad,
the November 15 agreement was scarcely discussed. CPA outreach
was limited to distributing leaflets summarizing the agreement's
main points (after Sistani's damning objections were known) and
organizing roughly a dozen town hall meetings that reached perhaps
10,000 Iraqis. Provincial officials received Arabic translations
of a summary of the agreement -- minus any request for their input.
But almost all Iraqis, once they heard about the plan, had the
same reaction: they rejected the imposed solution because of the
arbitrary composition of the organizing committee. Many felt that
the caucus system was designed to ensure that those Iraqis appointed
by the US to national or local positions of power would continue
to escape the necessity of seeking a popular mandate. Other questions
remained unresolved: could organizing committee members stand
for election in the caucuses? Would there be a limit to the number
of participants in the caucuses?
As an exit
strategy for the US, the caucus plan had some merit. It focused
on local representatives who would have to undergo vetting at
the local level before joining a national assembly. Furthermore,
since the national assembly would in effect vote in a government,
no one would be able to say that that government was US-imposed.
It seemed possible to break the cycle of illegitimacy via caucuses
while avoiding direct elections. But the plan also contained serious
shortcomings. Its timetable for transition seemed to conform more
to the schedule of the US presidential election than to Iraqi
concerns. The UN rightly called it cumbersome, not so much because
of the various steps involved, but rather because of deep suspicion
about the involvement of the CPA, the IGC and US-appointed councils
(the word caucuses also proved untranslatable into Arabic).
The idea
of caucuses never caught on with Iraqis both because it was an
imposed CPA directive and because it was poorly explained. By
the time the caucuses were formally consigned to the dustbin in
February 2004, the only developments at the local level had been
the hasty creation of "missing" councils by the CPA
to fulfill the requirements of the November 15 agreement for one
provincial, and at least five city councils, in each of Iraq's
18 provinces and the "refreshment" of existing councils
in order to purge them of accused Baathists and make them slightly
more representative.
No Local
Elections
Sistani is
the lone major player who has consistently advocated general elections.
The Pentagon-dominated CPA was downright disdainful of elections,
while the UN and think tanks discouraged them as premature, and
the former exiles on the IGC feared that elections would expose
their lack of popular support. Even before the invasion, the Iraqi
opposition, judging by the Future of Iraq Project report whose
preparation was supervised by the State Department in 2002, saw
no role for early national elections. Nor have all the political
forces in Iraq embraced national polls. Sunni Arab parties, in
particular, have rejected the idea of elections under occupation.
Some Kurds favored a delay until a constitutional arrangement
for the status of Iraqi Kurdistan could be agreed upon.
The same
is not true of local elections, an idea that has been little debated.
The Iraqi authors of the Future of Iraq Project report wrote in
October 2002: "The holding of local elections within a period
of not more than 12 months from the fall of the regime has many
advantages. It will create genuinely representative local administrative
authorities whose presence will complement the role of the Transitional
Authority. It will introduce politics at the grassroots level
and provide a trial run for the national elections, which follow
at the end of the transitional period. And it will help expand
the nucleus of potential political leaders in Iraq to encompass
senior civil servants, professionals and technocrats who are not
tainted by their past."[14] One might add that local elections would have constituted
a critical element in Iraq's governance. The "administrative
vacuum" and "political vacuum" which the report
correctly predicted would have been quickly filled with legitimate
and technically competent representatives of the people, thereby
avoiding the situation created by the US military.
The arguments
against elections do not stand up against the benefits. At the
national level, established exile parties may indeed have enjoyed
an advantage over newly founded parties, requiring some time to
create a level playing field. This is less true of local elections,
where even independent candidates often do well. Furthermore,
the objections of Sunni Arabs and Kurds are groundless when it
comes to local elections, where only limited exercise of power
within limited territory is at stake. Minorities would retain
a dominant presence at subsidiary levels of government and influence
at higher, regional levels of government. The best example is
the call by the Kurdish leadership for local elections while at
the same time remaining skeptical toward national elections. Still
others maintain that fair elections require an acceptance of common
rules, which are hard to achieve within a short time. This difficulty,
though, should not be used as an excuse for inaction. Eventually,
electoral and party regulations will need to be drafted. Unlike
national elections, in which equal representation demands uniformity
of rules, local election laws can be flexible and negotiated more
rapidly. What is more, the existence of the ration card database
in Iraq, proven to be fairly accurate despite contentions to the
contrary, would have greatly facilitated voter registration, one
of the chief unresolved issues. At some isolated local elections
that took place from January to April 2004, these ration cards
were indeed used by the CPA.[15] Additional control for proof of
voter eligibility according to the age and residency requirements
was provided by neighborhood elders, identity or residency card
documents.
The CPA's
decision not to support local elections had severe consequences
for the legitimacy of the occupation and those who worked under
it as well as for a transition to Iraqi rule. The abrupt appointment
of a caretaker government by Brahimi and Bremer became necessary
precisely because there were no legitimate subsidiary institutions
to make these selections.
Iraqi Loya
Jirga
The idea
of a national conference to choose an interim national assembly
predates the invasion of Iraq, and drew on the experience of Afghanistan.
The international-Afghan meeting in Bonn in December 2001 and
the emergency loya jirga inside Afghanistan in June 2002
served as guiding lights for the Iraqi opposition seeking to become
a "government in waiting." The London opposition conference
in December 2002 adopted a program and a leadership council, and
there was a more specific division of responsibilities at a meeting
in Iraqi Kurdistan in February 2003, just weeks before the invasion.
The CPA shot
down early calls for a national conference by the IGC, which was
disproportionately made up of figures from the hoped-for "government
in waiting." In the autumn of 2003, the IGC again failed,
when it proposed to enlarge its 25-person membership to become
more representative.
At the same
time, Iraqis had shown that they could organize on a national,
or at least supra-regional level, forming Sunni religious alliances
and a national alliance of "democratic parties," and
holding national women's and tribal conferences since the winter
of 2003. With an unremitting insurgency, some protagonists of
which were known to be politically excluded, with the CPA stuck
without an exit strategy after the death of the caucuses and with
growing organization among Iraqis, Brahimi came to Iraq for the
first time in February 2004. Sistani piled on the pressure for
early national elections, but the UN rejected this possibility,
and Washington maintained its insistence on an exit by June 30,
despite the absence of a transition mechanism. The short timeframe
prevented local elections from being held in the leadup to the
transition, and hence the idea of a national conference assumed
prominence once more.
The organization
of such a conference was faced with resolving essentially the
same questions left unanswered in the caucus system: who would
oversee the selection of candidates to the conference and what
rules would be followed in that process as well as in the process
of self-selection to the smaller body of an interim national assembly
to emerge from that conference? What powers would such an interim
national assembly have and would the larger national conference
have any future role, such as in measures of reconciliation, property
restitution, rehabilitation and compensation?
Some Iraqis
stressed the legitimizing element of holding such a conference
before the transfer of sovereignty. If a new government were to
be chosen from among Iraqis who were free to seek to join the
conference, the measures taken by a new government could not be
blamed so easily on the occupation. Brahimi, who had overseen
the loya jirga in Afghanistan, was also keenly aware of the need
to draw all actors in Iraq into political discussions, rather
than leaving some with the option of choosing violence over negotiations
and the accountability of public office. Neither the US nor the
IGC, which was faced with imminent extinction, was comfortable
with letting their last opportunity to shape Iraq's future government
slip away so easily. They persuaded Brahimi and, later, the Security
Council to support a call for a national conference to be held
in July, after the handover.
Both the
timing and the unanswered questions caused the postponement of
the conference at the last minute until mid-August. Because the
timing effectively canceled the legitimizing effect of the conference,
Muqtada al-Sadr's movement, the Arab Socialist Party, the Sunni
Muslim Scholars' Board and other prominent Iraqi intellectuals
rejected an invitation. Former Iraqi diplomat Ghassan Atiyyah,
a member of the preparatory committee for the National Conference,
had sharp words for the secret deals over nominating delegates.
In a memo printed by an Iraqi newspaper, Atiyyah noted that while
half the 1,000 delegates would be elected from each of the governorates,
roughly 150 persons would be nominated from political parties,
including by the newly appointed prime minister, president and
vice president.[16] The former members of the IGC, which disbanded upon nomination
of an interim government in late May, defied the test of legitimacy
not once or twice, but three times. Having been appointed by Bremer,
they were now to receive an automatic place in the 100-member
National Assembly, without having to be nominated or elected to
the National Conference or elected by the conference delegates
to this assembly. The assembly would have some powers of an interim
parliament, such as approving, though not making, laws, budgets
and ministerial nominations.
What Lies
Ahead
A national
conference is a very different affair from a local council with
responsibilities for roads, sewage and security. Unlike in local
elections, where competency usually trumps ideology, the formula
of part elections, part selections may indeed have been conducive
to achieving maximum representation. But strangely, that formula
was a copy of the US and British attempts to create representative
local councils: reserved seats for tribal leaders, men of religion,
women, professional unions and political parties. Had Iraqis been
given a chance at an exercise in democracy through local elections,
such an absurd formula putting political parties on a par with
tribal leaders and human rights organizations next to representatives
of Iraq's hierarchical Shi'i clergy could have been avoided. As
it stands, both religious organizations and tribal clans and associations
continue to provide governance outside the realm of the state.
Sheikh Dhafer al-Obaidi is the primary arbitrator and decision-maker
in Falluja. Muqtada al-Sadr's "courts" dispense justice
in Najaf, SCIRI's Badr Organization and the Fudhala' Association
are actively involved in providing local services and Kurdish
peshmerga are the bulwark of security forces in northern
Iraq.
The disaffection
of Iraqis with the few political parties with national name recognition[17]
has not helped smaller parties gain a foothold, as Bremer argued
in June 2003. The reason can be found in the neglect political
party development received from the occupation authority's approach
to governance. The CPA never sought to regulate existing political
parties, create a level playing field for emerging parties, or
open up space for discussion on the rules governing local or national
elections. The result has been politics behind closed doors, with
the CPA imposing the terms not only of a transition, but also
for constituting local and national political bodies. Instead
of empowering Iraqi voters, leading parties, tribes and religious
establishments are striking deals (or not) on how to divvy up
power. This neither helps the common Iraqi in feeling represented,
nor does it help to establish more legitimate centers of power
for directing the badly needed reconstruction. Those who are left
outside these arrangements have resorted to populist or violent
means of opposition. They are also claiming a piece of the pie
in most of Iraq's provincial cities, to which the writ of the
interim government and the US does not extend.
With roughly
140,000 US troops in Iraq, the US will not want more nasty surprises
as preparations for national Iraqi elections get underway in the
late fall of 2004. But the US may well be in for more surprises.
The failure to focus on local, legitimate representation, whether
through general local elections or high participation in caucus-style
selections, may come back to haunt the US. As insurgent and opposition
elements refuse to be drawn into national representation because
they fear the outcome is preordained in favor of pro-US elements,
the US-appointed institutions, both at the national and local
level, will continue to struggle not only to govern day to day,
but also to prepare for general elections in which more factions
of the government will lose than win. The second transition, through
general elections in January 2005, may well collapse amid speculations
of manipulation. But without elections, there will be no third,
constitutional transition by the end of 2005 either.
[1]
Gallup, "Iraqis View Visible Cooperation With CPA as Potentially
Fatal," May 25, 2004.
[2]
One study making this point is Ahmed Hashim, "The Sunni Insurgency
in Iraq," Middle East Institute Policy Brief, August 15, 2003.
[3]
Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2003.
[4]
Interview with Khosrat Goran, deputy governor of Mosul, January
2004.
[5]
Interview with Raad al-Fakhri, Iraqi National Accord chief, Mosul,
January 2004.
[6]
Isam al-Khafaji, "I Did Not Want to Be a Collaborator,"
Guardian, July 28, 2003.
[7]
Interview with Mahmoud Othman, former member of the Iraqi Governing
Council, Baghdad, February 2004.
[8]
Washington Post, June 28, 2003.
[9]
Interview with senior CPA official in Erbil, January 2004.
[10]
Interviews in Basra, February 2004.
[11]
Raad Alkadiri and Chris Toensing, "The Iraqi Governing Council's
Sectarian Hue," Middle East Report Online, August 20,
2003. http://www.merip.org/mero/mero082003.html
[12]
Washington Post, July 4, 2004.
[13]
Washington Post, November 11, 2003.
[14]
Future of Iraq Project, Final Report on the Transition to Democracy
in Iraq (November 2002). On file with the author.
[15]
Washington Post, February 16, 2004. Ration cards were used
in Najaf sub-district elections on February 17, 2004 as well as
in numerous other locations for lower-level councils.
[16]
Al-Manara (Basra), July 18, 2004. [FBIS translation]
[17]
Oxford Research International, March 15, 2004.
