What's the good word?

Columnist Eric Margolis, writing in the February 8 Toronto Sun, says a reader called the situation in Iraq "Mess-opotamia." The name certainly seems to fit and recent developments with regard to establishing a "transitional government" there by June 30 provide no reason to challenge it.

Even though the increasingly-irrelevant Paul Bremer continues to insist

that the central elements of the November agreement could be carried out - that an Iraqi national assembly could be chosen in nationwide caucuses and that the Americans could hand over power by June 30,

the widespread and stiffening rejection of the US plan makes such a notion fanciful at best, even as support for the date is equally widespread and stiffening.

But with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan saying that early elections are not possible, the "how" of the June 30 "when" is left dangling. While Annan said

"we hope we will be able to work with the Iraqis and the coalition to find a mechanism for establishing a caretaker or an interim government until such time elections are organized,"

it's also true that

[t]he United Nations plans to wait to be asked by the Iraqis to return and make an assessment on what kind of interim arrangement can be put in place.

Bremer put on his best Pollyanna face and gamely suggested that there are "dozens" of approaches. That may be true, but it just points up the difficulty: There is no approach on which everyone can agree. Perhaps the closest thing to a consensus is for an expanded Iraqi Governing Council, but that, too, has its troubles. Not only political in its legitimacy - as I noted Tuesday, the IGC has little of that in the eyes of Iraqis - but practically in its makeup, as Reuters reports that Shiites on the council

want an appointed transitional government that ensures their political dominance as Iraq's majority group.

"There are two choices: elections, or compromises that respect the existing balances," said Adel Abdel Mahdi, a senior official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the top party among Shiites who form 60 per cent of the population and hold a like share of Council seats.

"There can't be any playing of the one issue against the other. If you refuse the elections, then you have to accept the balances."

It's hard to imagine the Sunnis or the Kurds agreeing to lock in Shiite dominance.

One approach now being pushed by some would be a real migraine for American forces - and it could become a nightmare, if I can jumble up my metaphors.

Baghdad, February 17 (New York Times) - Shiite leaders are pushing a new plan for the transfer of power in Iraq that calls for partial elections, with balloting in the relatively secure Shiite and Kurdish areas but not in the more turbulent "Sunni triangle."

The proposal, which has grown out of an emerging alliance between Kurdish and Shiite political parties, is part of the intensifying scramble for power....

The partial election plan calls for representatives in the predominantly Sunni areas to be chosen in tightly guarded caucuses, an idea vehemently opposed by members of the country's Sunni minority, who say it is illegitimate and would further divide Iraq's people.

Since the Sunnis are already the source of most of the attacks against US forces in Iraq, further alienating them is something Bremer's team very much wants to avoid.

But there's more to this than that. As the Times notes,

until now, each of the three main groups in Iraq - Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds - had been pursuing its own agenda. The Shiites and Kurds make up 75 to 80 percent of the population, and even if the partial election plan never materializes, the prospect of an alliance between the two groups is terrifying to many Sunnis.

There's also the matter of what each side gains in this emerging alliance. A hint might be found in a remark by Ayatollah Muhammad al-Yaqobi, described as a cleric and part of the inner circle of Shiite leadership:

"There is no perfect solution," he said in an interview in Najaf. "But we have 10 stable provinces south of Baghdad where it's possible to have elections right now, and the Kurdistan areas have had their own government for 12 years. As for the Sunni areas, they can do what suits them best."

His breezy reference to "Kurdistan" (rather than "northern" or "Kurdish") areas with their "own government" suggests to me that the deal is for the Kurds to help the Shiites cement a dominant position in exchange for a federal system with a semi-autonomous Kurdistan.

And there lies the nightmare. Such an arrangement, if it came to pass, would likely enrage the Turks, who are deeply fearful of the effect a Kurdistan, even one part of a federalist Iraq, might mean to the independence-minded Kurds within their own borders. Turkey has already threatened armed intervention to prevent the formation of an autonomous Kurdish state in Iraq. It would further marginalize the Sunnis, likely provoking more violence against not only Americans, but Shiites as well in what could easily become a spiraling cycle of chaos leading to the civil war so many have long feared.

And, less noted but equally important, it continues and emphasizes the religious and ethnic fault lines in Iraq, something the US tried to covertly undermine as part of the caucus plan, which had more emphasis on geography and promoted the idea of "mixed" areas for caucuses. So-called "Balkanization" of Iraq continues to be a very real possibility. I frankly don't think the US gives a flying damn about the arrangements in Iraq or how free or repressive it is or how representative the government is - so long as it's pro-West and stable. Instability is bad for business and bad for US prestige across the region, which is likewise bad for business.

The idea of a Shiite-Kurd alliance must send shivers down the spines of the State Department and Pentagon every bit as much as it does those of the Sunnis.

Mess-opotamia, indeed.

Footnote, just in case we've forgotten: The Times' report also notes that

Bremer stressed that the June 30 deadline would not mean the end of U.S. involvement in Iraq.

One hundred thousand American troops would remain in that nation and the Coalition Provisional Authority would transfer to a massive embassy with thousands of government officials.

Contrary to many of the pundits (including some lefty blgogers) who seem to think that any kind of successful handoff by June 30 will be the end of the matter, I think that Iraq is going to be a continuing political headache for Bush. Continuing US military presence will mean continuing attacks and even if the issue is not heavily pushed in the general election campaign, you can bet people are going to be thinking "but if we've transferred authority, what are we still doing there?"