Iraq and a hard place

UN Secretary Kofi Annan, the New York Times tells us, has apparently agreed to send UN election experts to Iraq following a Monday meeting with L. Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, and representatives of the Iraqi Governing Council. The purpose of the trip would be so see whether or not it's possible to have general elections in Iraq in time for the supposed transfer of power to an Iraqi government on June 30. Annan has already suggested in a letter to a member of the IGC that such elections may not be possible.

The "complicated political plans" that Bremer's team devised for eventual elections involve what amount to regional caucuses to establish an interim government to draft a constitution to actually elect a government sometime in 2005. The details of the process are complex enough that even representatives of the Coalition Provisional Authority supposedly carry cheat sheets to refer to in explaining them. Significant Shiite opposition to that plan became focused through Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered cleric among the Shiite Muslims who make up perhaps 60% of Iraq's population.

Sistani's stiffening insistence on immediate direct elections lead to major demonstrations supporting the demand, including one of 30,000 in Basra, another of 100,000 in Baghdad on Monday, and a smaller one of about 5,000, again in Baghdad, on Tuesday. During Monday's protest, speakers issued what would have to be considered thinly-veiled threats, as the Guardian reports.

"The sons of the Iraqi people demand a political system based on direct elections and a constitution that realises justice and equality for everyone," Ayatollah Sistani's representative, Hashem al-Awad, told the crowd. "Anything other than that will prompt people to have their own say."

The crowd responded by chanting: "Yes, yes to elections. No, no to occupation."

In the face of that opposition, the US has again run to the UN for the fig leaf of an ex post facto endorsement of its plans for Iraq.

For his part, Sistani is playing it cool. For example, According to Azzaman, a London-based independent daily newspaper issued by a former member of the Iraqi Baath Party, Iraqi Governing Council member Ibrahim al-Jafari and Sistani met recently and "reduced the gap of disagreement" concerning the handover of power. Jafari also described Sistani as not wanting to interfere in political details. And according to the Times report, during the meeting on Monday a representative of the ayatollah gave assurances that he would accept the conclusions of the United Nations experts.

However, Jafari reportedly also said that Sistani maintains that calling for elections does not involve a confrontation between the religious authority and western administrations because elections are agreed upon by western administrations, the CPA, and Iraqi political powers.

Everyone, of course, has called for elections. The dispute is over when, what sort, and under what conditions. Which is much like saying there is no confrontation between the left and the extreme right over Bush, because everyone disapproves of him. The only question is whether he's too reactionary or too liberal.

Which is itself another way of saying of course there's a confrontation, and it's impossible to believe that Sistani doesn't know it or see it that way, especially because Asharq al-Awsat, described as "a London-based pro-Saudi independent daily newspaper," says it has learned that

Sistani is preparing a political speech to be delivered on February 10 to clarify his position on several key issues,

which would clearly seem to show an awareness of the political aspect of this. I do not imagine that he is unaware of what he's doing.

And what is it he's done? Well, for one thing, he's shown his clout by showing the kind of pressure he can generate on very short notice. He's clearly established in the minds of the CPA and IGC that there's only so far they can go. And he's forced the US to reinvolve the UN. He has also given himself an out through the UN report and its expected result if he chooses to use it. If he doesn't, well, he has the precedent of having dismissed Annan's earlier letter about the difficulty of elections as having been written under US pressure.

There is one other possibility, which I mention not because I think it likely but because it is a possibility. All leaders of movements face the risk that the movement they initiated may start to take off on its own and push them in directions they don't want to go. Asharq al-Awsat also reported that Sistani's office

denied that he urged his supporters to strike against "colonial" plans. Sistani's office said statements attributed to him in a number of media outlets actually express the viewpoint of those who said them.

I wonder if that is meant to include - and I'm not being sarcastic here - the statement by his representative at Monday's demonstration that failing to meet their demands "will prompt people to have their own say."

In either event, Sistani, having proved he individually and the Shiites as a group are a force to be reckoned with, may be in a mood to be conciliatory to the extent that if he gets some assurances of eventual direct rule, the US (I hate to use the term) "road map" may be acceptable.

The thing is, that plan envisions a kind of federation. While the Shiites are a clear majority overall, in various regions other groups - the Kurds and the Sunnis in particular - are the majority. The US plan hopes to keep peace among them all by guaranteeing each with some level of power in an Iraqi government. That, however, clearly rules out the kind of direct majority rule the Shiites desire. So how can such assurances be made?

That's especially true because, as I've noted before, the Kurds are in no mood to back down. Al-Taakhi, a daily newspaper issued by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, in an item headed "Kurds remain mindful of their rights," says

Masood Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and a member of the Governing Council, said Kurds would not approve of the basic law that leads to the formation of an interim government if their basic demands are not met. Barzani said Kurdish demands essentially include extending the autonomous zone and removing people brought in by the former regime to change the local demography.

In short, they're demanding an autonomous Kurdistan as part of an Iraqi federation, one even bigger than the current zone and with a stronger Kurdish majority than now. Reconciling those demands with the interests represented by Sistani is quite simply impossible.

By appealing to the UN, the US appears to be trying to stall that inevitable confrontation by mollifying Sistani, perhaps only to provide a Henry-Kissinger style "decent interval" before all hell breaks loose. In the longer run, however, the plan appears to me untenable. Iraq is still, I believe, in for a long period of trouble. We've already seen both in some of the former states of the USSR and in the Balkans what can happen when long-suppressed ethnic rivalries re-emerge. I see Iraq slipping toward than same cliff. And frankly, no, I don't know what to do about it.

Meanwhile, the violence continues and in many ways worsens.

Footnote: Emerging from the meeting with Kofi Annan, Bremer pronounced it "a very good, open and candid exchange."

We all know what that means.