Real politics starting inside Iraq?

It is possible, just possible, that the coming weeks will see the emergence
of real internal politics inside Iraq. That is, the kind of politics
marked by realistic discussion and tough negotiating among leaders of the
country’s different major factions. That’s not to say the violence will
completely go away. But if the discussions/negotiations are serious
enough, they might be able to win out over the tendency to violence, and the
country might yet be able to hold the fair, nationwide elections that everyone–everyone!–says
they want to see before the end of January 2005.

That consensus around the need for elections is a great starting point.

I guess the precedent I’m thinking most about is that of South Africa’s
early-1990s transition from brutal minority rule to a true, one-person-one-vote
system. That transition was also marked by continuing violence that
in some areas was considerable, and indeed almost threatened the country’s
ability to hold the elections in late April of 1994. A small portion
of the bowing-out minority community (the Boer-dominated “White” community)
tried to mount a rearguard action against the move to democracy, and was
able to enlist the help of pro-Buthelezi collaborators inside the Zulu community
in order to keep the violence stoked. But that didn’t work. What
predominated in the end was the very long-drawn-out process of negotiating
the “ground-rules” for how the country’s democracy would work.

Those negotiations achieved their declared aim–which in the context of
South Africa’s extremely troubled history of inter-group relations was in
itself an enormous accomplishment. But beyond that, the negotiating
process itself established some basis of trust between communities and people
where previously there had been no trust at all. And it also helped
the very underdeveloped system of political parties within the previously
unfranchised portion of the citizenry to become better formed and more stable
by virtue of the participation of these parties in the negotiation itself.

In Iraq, it was this extremely important process of internal, inter-group negotiation
over the basics of how Iraqis would live and work together in the future that
that arrogant and silly man Paul Bremer tried to completely short-circuit
earlier this year when he summarily forced the 24 members of Iraq’s quasi-puppet
Interim Governing Council to sign onto something called the “Transitional
Administrative Law”. (For my analyses at the time, read
this
and this
and this
.)

So why am I thinking now that possibly–just possibly–we might be seeing
the start of the kind of real politics inside Iraq that might–just might–signal
the possibility of the country escaping from the present tempest of violence
in which it seems mired?

I’m looking at two main indicators for now. I’m looking at Moqtada
al-Sadr’s apparent readiness to stand down (though not yet dismantle) the
militia capacity he’s been building for the past 15 months, and to start building
a political party that can participate in the internal inter-party negotiations.
And I’m looking at the willingness of some subtantial portion of the
membership of the IGC/transitional government to distance themselves considerably
from the diktats of the fast-fading Bremer.

In the latter regard, we had most importantly the IGC voting (or anyway,
choosing) against Bremer’s preferred choice for ‘President’ of the
transitional government, a couple of weeks ago, when they chose Ghazi al-Yawar
over Bremer’s favorite, Adnan Pachachi. And indeed, they have stuck
with and built on that independence of decisionmaking since then.

Today, in
this article
in the NYT Jeffrey Gettleman provides this fascinating little vignette
of how Bremer’s high-handedness on the Yawar/Pachachi issue affected one IGC
member:

Raja al-Khuzai, a member of the [IGC] … said she had once
counted herself among Mr. Bremer’s friends. But last month, Dr. Khuzai said,
Mr. Bremer alienated her when he intervened in a dispute over choosing the
new Iraqi president. The council favored Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar; Mr. Bremer
wanted Adnan Pachachi.

According to Dr. Khuzai and other council members, when they gathered
for a vote, Mr. Bremer stepped into the council chambers and told them he
would not honor their choice.

“He told us, `You do not represent the Iraqi people,’ ” Dr. Khuzai said.
“I was shocked by this. Two members of this council have been murdered.
All of us have received death threats. And Mr. Bremer told us we don’t represent
Iraqis.”

Mr. Bremer declined to be interviewed.

Actually, it strikes me that it was crucially important that Lakhdar Brahimi
had been in Baghdad at that time, providing an “independent”, non-US power
of witnessing and affirming what was going on. (Has Brahimi really resigned
now, as Yankeedoodle is reporting as from Ha’aretz? I haven’t
found confirmation of that anywhere else. But if that is true, it remains
the case that even just by having been present there in Baghdad during that
crucial period, he made a huge contribution to opening up internal political
space for the Iraqis to operate in.)

Regarding Moqtada, it remains to be seen, of course, how effective he’ll
be at building a political party alongside his still-existing militia… Clearly,
though, the guy has a significant ability to organize throughout many geographical
concentrations of the country’s Shi-ite community, and a significant ability
to inspire people through his rhetoric.

It was a good sign when he and Ayatollah Sistani both agreed to meet with
each other. It will be an even better sign if the physical clashes still
reported inside Najaf and Sadr City die down… I just really hope that
the Americans do their part to help that violence to de-escalate and disappear.

So then, if the violence can be kept below a certain threshold, there would
be a real hope for the much-needed internal, inter-group and inter-party discussions
to begin.

Lakhdar has proposed a 1,000-person “loya jirga” type gathering for July,
as a way to get this going. I don’t know if that would necessarily work.
In South Africa, it took three or four tries–CODESA-1, CODESA-2, then
finally the talks that worked– before they hit on the finally “effective”
formula in which to hold their election-preparing talks. So we needn’t
necessarily say that if Lakhdar’s proposal fails, that’s the end of the story.
The most important thing is to keep the negotiations going in one
form or another, and for all parties to be as cognizant as possible of the
huge risks involved in any return to outright violence.

What else could we learn from South Africa about this tricky process of
a transition from very repressive, contested minority rule to a working multi-party
democracy?

Actually, I think there are many, many potential lessons; and perhaps some
of the people the UN should work hardest to get to go to Iraq to help guide
this process would be participants from the South African negotiations
themselves.

I’m not talking here primarily about that showcase of SA’s transition to
democracy, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Work in that dimension
can come later (as it did in SA). What I’m talking about is the process,
modalities, and sequencing of the negotiations themselves.

One hughly important example. In Bremer’s extremely ill-advised “Transitional
Administrative Law”, he made a point of prescribing a very specific formula
for addressing the issue of “minority rights” within the unitary democratic
Iraq. South Africa’s democratic Constitution certainly has many very
impressive provisions for the rights of the country’s many different linguistic,
cultural, and religious “minorities”. Indeed, it is a showcase for
how people from at least ten different major linguistic groups can live together
within a single democratic system. (Check it out!)

But nobody–least of all, an autocratic foreign pro-consul– ever dictated
that that was how SA’s Constitution should be. The provisions for safeguarding
“minority” rights emerged from lengthy inter-group and inter-party negotiations.
And they could only grow out of those negotiations after the leaders
of the country’s long-unfranchised and repressed “Black” majority population
felt confident that their own need for adequate representation would be assured.

Why on earth should the members of a long-repressed majority group be expected
to be happy if they fear that rule over them by one minority group is to
be replaced by rule over them by another minority group?

I am not saying that that was the exact content–nor indeed, the intention–of
the safeguards given the Kurds (in particular) in the text of the TAL. But
trying to impose that formula on the country at a time when all the significant
voices in the majority Shi-ite community were still saying, “Hey, what about
our rights?” was clearly an idiotic, counter-productive, and seemingly
undemocratic thing to do.

Anyway, I have to run. (Quaker meeting time.) More on this, later.