[Mb-civic] Raw Politics in Iraq - David Ignatius - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Raw Politics in Iraq

By David Ignatius
Friday, February 17, 2006; A19

>From an American standpoint, Iraq's elections have provided a Middle 
Eastern demonstration of Murphy's Law: Whatever can go wrong will go 
wrong. Amid the resulting political disarray, the Bush administration is 
adopting Yogi Berra's famous counsel of patient stubbornness: It ain't 
over till it's over.

Iraqi politics entered a decisive phase with December's election, which 
voted in a parliament that will choose the new Iraq's first permanent 
government. As Yogi might say, this is the ballgame. So far, it hasn't 
gone the way the United States had hoped.

Iraqis voted for sectarian parties in December, contrary to America's 
desire that many of them would back secular parties that might transcend 
religious ties. Then, Sunday, in a further setback, the dominant Shiite 
bloc known as the United Iraqi Alliance confounded Washington's hopes 
and nominated as the next prime minister the incumbent, Ibrahim Jafari, 
whom many Iraqis have criticized as ineffectual. Worst of all, the 
kingmaker in Jafari's selection was a hotheaded Shiite militia leader 
and sworn enemy of the United States, Moqtada Sadr. And jockeying for 
Jafari was the peripatetic Ahmed Chalabi, who hopes to be economic czar 
in the next government.

But it ain't over till it's over. In a round of political wheeling and 
dealing that rivals Tammany Hall, Iraq's Kurdish and Sunni Muslim 
leaders -- backed by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad -- are demanding a 
broad government of national unity. And they're playing political 
hardball with the Shiite coalition -- threatening to form an alternative 
government if their demands aren't met.

The Kurdish parties, which hold the balance of power, agreed on their 
demands for a national coalition government at a Jan. 22 meeting in 
their stronghold of Salahuddin. U.S. officials, who endorse what they're 
calling the Salahuddin principles, provided me with the minutes of the 
meeting. It's basically a road map for creating the kind of broad 
coalition that might stabilize Iraq and, at the same time, justify the 
vast amount of money and number of lives the Bush administration has 
expended on Iraq.

The Salahuddin document calls for a government made up of the four 
biggest parties -- the Shiite alliance, the Kurdish alliance, a 
coalition of Sunni parties and Ayad Allawi's secular list. The 
insistence on including Allawi is a direct assault on Sadr's faction, 
which believes (correctly) that Allawi tried to destroy Sadr and his 
militia when he was interim prime minister.

To enforce consensus, the Salahuddin document calls for a National 
Security Council that would include leaders of all the main political 
factions and, according to the document, "outline policies that reflect 
national unity and reach decisions based on the principle of accord." 
The document also echoes the Bush administration's insistence that the 
leaders of the two key security ministries -- defense and interior -- 
"must be neutral or accepted by all the parties participating in the 
government."

"There can be no political stability until all the Iraqi constituencies 
are included," Kurdish leader Barham Salih explained in a telephone 
interview from Baghdad on Wednesday. "That's why we as the Kurdish 
alliance are working on a government that includes these four political 
blocs."

What matters is that the United States is embracing these principles -- 
at the risk of alienating its Shiite allies. Zalmay Khalilzad, America's 
ambassador in Baghdad, explained in a telephone interview this week: "We 
support the basic ideas behind the Salahuddin principles. The security 
ministries have to be in the hands of people who have broad support, who 
are nonsectarian, without ties to militias. We cannot invest huge 
amounts of money in forces that do not get broad support from Iraqis. 
They will make their choices. We will make our choices, based on their 
choices."

As Khalilzad and others count the votes, they think the Shiite alliance, 
with about 130 seats, is just short of the number it needs to form a new 
government without the Kurds. And they reckon that the non-Shiite 
parties could pull together as many as 140 votes -- which technically 
would be enough to form a government. That gives them real political 
punch -- and it means that the dickering is far from over. Khalilzad 
won't rule out the possibility that, as the negotiations continue, 
Jafari might not survive as the Shiites' choice for prime minister. "I 
would not exclude the possibility that if they don't agree on programs 
and people, there may be a new candidate for prime minister," Khalilzad 
says.

This is politics in the raw: bargaining, brokering, backroom dealing. 
It's a messy process, especially against the ugly backdrop of new Abu 
Ghraib photos. But it's good news that the people who want a unified, 
democratic Iraq are fighting like hell to make it happen -- and that 
America is warning it won't pay the bills for a government that doesn't 
put unity first.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/16/AR2006021601559.html?nav=hcmodule
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