Did he say "milestone" or "millstone?"

With George Bush calling it an "historic milestone," the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council signed an interim constitution on Monday.

Council members smiled and congratulated one another on finally having reached agreement over the constitution, even trading quips as they lined up to sign the historic document.

The signing had been scheduled for Friday (after having been postponed in the wake of the dreadful bombings at Shia shrines in Karbala and al-Kadhemiya last Tuesday, which killed some 200 people and injured hundreds more) only to be put off again in a last-minute dispute over two provisions in the proposal after Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani objected to them. Over the weekend, Shiite council members persuaded Sistani to drop his objections and allow the signing to proceed and the deal was back on. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting says that

[a]sked why the Shia had accepted the document as it stands, Hajim al-Hassani, deputy to Mohsen Abd al-Hamid, a Sunni of the Iraqi Islamic Party, told the French news agency AFP, "They realised there was no other choice but to go this way."

But Muwaffiq al-Rubaie, an independent member of the GC, was quoted by the New York Times as saying that Sistani "does not want to provoke a crisis".

I believe, however, that the word "yet" should be appended to that sentence. The BBC's analyst calls the document "remarkably progressive by the standards of the Middle East, seeking to strike a balance between respect for Islam and regard for liberal democratic rights" - but it still is an interim constitution, set to expire no later than December 31, 2005. And as the Christian Science Monitor notes,

[t]he protracted wrangling over the document, which took on religious and ethnic dimensions, does not bode well for what will surely be a sharper debate over a permanent constitution.

Indeed, IWPR says that

[d]espite the apparent unanimity that accompanied the signing of the constitution, an element of disagreement remained just under the surface....

GC member Ibrahim al-Jaafari read out a statement by 12 of the 13 Shia council members declaring they had signed the document without demanding changes in order to safeguard national unity. ["We say here, our decision to sign the document is pegged to reservations," Jaafari said, according to the New York Times.] And in a further indication of Shia reservations about the new law, key Shia member Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim of SCIRI did not attend the ceremony, sending a deputy in his place.

The BBC adds that

[a] representative of the Shia Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), Abdel Adel Mahdi, [said] the Shias still had reservations and that the interim constitution could be amended "later on".

As if to underline exactly that point, the IWPR notes that "hardly was the ink dry" when Sistani made clear he still wasn't satisfied.

"Any law prepared for the transitional period will not gain legitimacy until it is endorsed by an elected national assembly," Sistani said in a fatwa, or religious ruling, released on his website.

"Additionally, this law places obstacles in the path of reaching a permanent constitution for a country that maintains its unity [and] the rights of its sons of all sects and ethnic backgrounds," he said.

That is, Sistani has effectively declared that anything an interim government does has no legitimacy. In fact, it could be argued that by his statement, the interim constitution itself has no legitimacy, since it is not the product of "an elected national assembly."

So why at this point agree to such a document? That goes back to Mahdi's "later on" and my own "yet." Right now there is one huge factor pushing for acceptance: June 30. Everybody, each for their own reasons, wants the "handover" to take place as scheduled, and further wrangling about the constitution would threaten to derail that. So on the one side Paul Bremer has cause to push the process forward and on the other Sistani has cause to not be too much of an obstacle. As long as June 30 looms, the pressure is on the Shiites to reach an agreement, even one that doesn't give them all they want. So despite conflicting interests and deep mutual suspicions, there is this interim constitution.

But what happens after June 30? Even assuming the "transfer of authority" comes off as planned, the US, with 100,000+ troops on the ground (and the expectation they will be there for years), will still be the 800-pound gorilla on security issues. But, significantly, it legally will no longer be "the occupying power" and therefore technically no longer able to issue demands. Meanwhile, work toward national elections will supposedly continue, with a target of early 2005. According to Sistani's fatwah, the national assembly coming out of such elections - an assembly expected to be dominated by Shiites because of their majority of the population - would have to ratify any act of any interim government, including, perhaps, the interim constitution itself. And even if that doesn't work, another date starts to loom: December 31, 2005, when the interim constitution will expire and the (presumably Shiite-dominated) national assembly can do as it pleases, unconstrained by the now-dead agreement.

In short, after June 30, time starts to work for the Shiites instead of against them. I suspect that was the substance of the argument presented to Sistani over the weekend. "Now is not the time," I imagine him being told. "After the transfer, then we can go after what's rightfully ours. Then we can make the changes to insure our position and our dominance with a permanent constitution to our liking."

And what will be the reaction of the Kurds and the Sunnis if events start to play out this way? Impossible to say for certain, of course, but quite possibly quite bloody. I fear there are still dark days ahead.

I could be wrong. I hope I am. Maybe things will take a different course. Maybe I'm even right about what the Shia members of the IGC said to Sistani over the weekend but wrong about their intention: Maybe they said all that, but just to stall Sistani because they're political realists who know that they have to allow for genuine minority rights and power-sharing for Iraq to survive and a unified nation and they're just trying to, if you will, nurse the old boy along until such an arrangement is a fait accompli. Maybe.

I doubt it. I really do. But I'll hope that I'm wrong.

As for the Bushites, they're just hoping the lid stays on until after the election, they get another term, and everybody has a chance to forget all about Iraq.

Think people won't forget? Tell me, how are things in Afghanistan these days?

Possible Irony Dept.: Back on January 30 I mentioned a study that indicated that, contrary to conventional wisdom, not only do Shiites not make up 60% of the population of Iraq, there're not even a majority. Wouldn't it be odd if the Shiites went through all these machinations to obtain for themselves a dominating position in a national assembly only to find when the votes were actually cast that they're in the minority?

Footnote: From IWPR.

Twenty men slinging Kalashnikovs, Sterling sub-machineguns, and an assortment of pistols saunter down a main street in the Baghdad neighbourhood of al-Adhamiya one Friday afternoon.

As locals watch anxiously, the men tear down pro-Baathist and anti-Coalition posters, which are a common sight in this predominantly Sunni district.

They replace the posters by sticking up leaflets of their own, which vow attacks on "terrorists" and their allies in the name of a militia called the "Black Flag". ...

Members of several more established movements said that they had heard of the militia, but condemned it as a threat to stability.

"We are against the idea of militias, as they carry weapons," said Salah al-Taher, an official of the Iraqi National Accord, the group led by Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi. "Ordinary citizens cannot distinguish them from saboteurs and thieves, and it will be difficult for the police to avoid clashing with them."

Sheikh Abbas al-Rabei, representing the Sadrists, a radical Shia movement, agreed, saying that armed militias "open the door wide to other organisations and armed movements to settle accounts and impose their own private law.… These organisations help stir up chaos and trouble."

The Sadrists still maintain their "Army of the Mahdi", a force which many Iraqis regards as a militia although it does not bear arms in public.

But some members of the public interviewed by IWPR took exception to such dismissive comments about the Black Flag, and commended the group for doing a job no one else seems ready to tackle.

"I would like to join this organisation, as no one [else] can control the violence," says Khaled Nusaif, a resident of the west Baghdad neighbourhood al-Karkh, sitting in a coffeehouse where one of the militia's statements was posted.

Vigilante justice? Or a Shiite hit squad? The one thing that is clear is that, as everywhere else, the appearance of self-styled enforcers is a sign of a lack of security, safety, and stability.

Update: Edited for clarity.