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Final Part 3 OF 3
Castles Built of Sand: US Governance and
Exit Strategies in Iraq
By Christoph Wilcke
Middle East Research and Information Project
Fall 2004 www.merip.org
Dead Letter
In the fall of 2003, the US-led occupation arrived at a crossroads. At
the national level, the attempt to install pliant allies to whom to
hand off a democratic Iraq had come to naught. At the local level, the
US military had sometimes installed new councils and sometimes
sanctioned already existing ones. But the military-appointed councils
did not speed up the sluggish pace of reconstruction, and Iraqi
politics turned increasingly toward demands for salaries, jobs and
elections. Meanwhile, attacks on US and other occupying soldiers shot
up dramatically in frequency and lethality. The Bush administration
summoned its proconsul to Washington to hammer out a more concrete
exit strategy -- one that, incidentally, paid more attention to local
Iraqi politics.
Bremer returned from the emergency talks in Washington with an
accelerated plan for transition to Iraqi self-rule called the November
15 agreement. The agreement's central feature was a system of
provincial caucuses. Under the plan, in each province five members of
the IGC, five members of the provincial council and a member of each
of the five largest city councils were to form a 15-person organizing
committee. This committee would then oversee the vetting of candidates
for a provincial caucus. This caucus, in turn, would select a number
of delegates proportionate to the province's share of the national
population to a newly formed interim national assembly. The national
assembly would then select a government, which would form a cabinet
and prepare elections for a constitutional assembly.
Within two weeks of the announcement of the November 15 agreement,
many observers already viewed it as a dead letter, due to the
objections of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Sistani renewed his call
for direct national elections. But the reason the caucus plan failed
in Iraq has as much to do with how it was hatched and presented as
with Sistani, who merely raised the loudest voice of opposition.
Outside Baghdad, the November 15 agreement was scarcely discussed. CPA
outreach was limited to distributing leaflets summarizing the
agreement's main points (after Sistani's damning objections were
known) and organizing roughly a dozen town hall meetings that reached
perhaps 10,000 Iraqis. Provincial officials received Arabic
translations of a summary of the agreement -- minus any request for
their input. But almost all Iraqis, once they heard about the plan,
had the same reaction: they rejected the imposed solution because of
the arbitrary composition of the organizing committee. Many felt that
the caucus system was designed to ensure that those Iraqis appointed
by the US to national or local positions of power would continue to
escape the necessity of seeking a popular mandate. Other questions
remained unresolved: could organizing committee members stand for
election in the caucuses? Would there be a limit to the number of
participants in the caucuses?
As an exit strategy for the US, the caucus plan had some merit. It
focused on local representatives who would have to undergo vetting at
the local level before joining a national assembly. Furthermore, since
the national assembly would in effect vote in a government, no one
would be able to say that that government was US-imposed. It seemed
possible to break the cycle of illegitimacy via caucuses while
avoiding direct elections. But the plan also contained serious
shortcomings. Its timetable for transition seemed to conform more to
the schedule of the US presidential election than to Iraqi
concerns. The UN rightly called it cumbersome, not so much because of
the various steps involved, but rather because of deep suspicion about
the involvement of the CPA, the IGC and US-appointed councils (the
word caucuses also proved untranslatable into Arabic).
The idea of caucuses never caught on with Iraqis both because it was
an imposed CPA directive and because it was poorly explained. By the
time the caucuses were formally consigned to the dustbin in February
2004, the only developments at the local level had been the hasty
creation of "missing" councils by the CPA to fulfill the requirements
of the November 15 agreement for one provincial, and at least five
city councils, in each of Iraq's 18 provinces and the "refreshment" of
existing councils in order to purge them of accused Baathists and make
them slightly more representative.
No Local Elections
Sistani is the lone major player who has consistently advocated
general elections. The Pentagon-dominated CPA was downright disdainful
of elections, while the UN and think tanks discouraged them as
premature, and the former exiles on the IGC feared that elections
would expose their lack of popular support. Even before the invasion,
the Iraqi opposition, judging by the Future of Iraq Project report
whose preparation was supervised by the State Department in 2002, saw
no role for early national elections. Nor have all the political
forces in Iraq embraced national polls. Sunni Arab parties, in
particular, have rejected the idea of elections under occupation. Some
Kurds favored a delay until a constitutional arrangement for the
status of Iraqi Kurdistan could be agreed upon.
The same is not true of local elections, an idea that has been little
debated. The Iraqi authors of the Future of Iraq Project report wrote
in October 2002: "The holding of local elections within a period of
not more than 12 months from the fall of the regime has many
advantages. It will create genuinely representative local
administrative authorities whose presence will complement the role of
the Transitional Authority. It will introduce politics at the
grassroots level and provide a trial run for the national elections,
which follow at the end of the transitional period. And it will help
expand the nucleus of potential political leaders in Iraq to encompass
senior civil servants, professionals and technocrats who are not
tainted by their past."[14] One might add that local elections would
have constituted a critical element in Iraq's governance. The
"administrative vacuum" and "political vacuum" which the report
correctly predicted would have been quickly filled with legitimate and
technically competent representatives of the people, thereby avoiding
the situation created by the US military.
The arguments against elections do not stand up against the
benefits. At the national level, established exile parties may indeed
have enjoyed an advantage over newly founded parties, requiring some
time to create a level playing field. This is less true of local
elections, where even independent candidates often do
well. Furthermore, the objections of Sunni Arabs and Kurds are
groundless when it comes to local elections, where only limited
exercise of power within limited territory is at stake. Minorities
would retain a dominant presence at subsidiary levels of government
and influence at higher, regional levels of government. The best
example is the call by the Kurdish leadership for local elections
while at the same time remaining skeptical toward national
elections. Still others maintain that fair elections require an
acceptance of common rules, which are hard to achieve within a short
time. This difficulty, though, should not be used as an excuse for
inaction. Eventually, electoral and party regulations will need to be
drafted. Unlike national elections, in which equal representation
demands uniformity of rules, local election laws can be flexible and
negotiated more rapidly. What is more, the existence of the ration
card database in Iraq, proven to be fairly accurate despite
contentions to the contrary, would have greatly facilitated voter
registration, one of the chief unresolved issues. At some isolated
local elections that took place from January to April 2004, these
ration cards were indeed used by the CPA.[15] Additional control for
proof of voter eligibility according to the age and residency
requirements was provided by neighborhood elders, identity or
residency card documents.
The CPA's decision not to support local elections had severe
consequences for the legitimacy of the occupation and those who worked
under it as well as for a transition to Iraqi rule. The abrupt
appointment of a caretaker government by Brahimi and Bremer became
necessary precisely because there were no legitimate subsidiary
institutions to make these selections.
Iraqi Loya Jirga
The idea of a national conference to choose an interim national
assembly predates the invasion of Iraq, and drew on the experience of
Afghanistan. The international-Afghan meeting in Bonn in December 2001
and the emergency loya jirga inside Afghanistan in June 2002 served as
guiding lights for the Iraqi opposition seeking to become a
"government in waiting." The London opposition conference in December
2002 adopted a program and a leadership council, and there was a more
specific division of responsibilities at a meeting in Iraqi Kurdistan
in February 2003, just weeks before the invasion.
The CPA shot down early calls for a national conference by the IGC,
which was disproportionately made up of figures from the hoped-for
"government in waiting." In the autumn of 2003, the IGC again failed,
when it proposed to enlarge its 25-person membership to become more
representative.
At the same time, Iraqis had shown that they could organize on a
national, or at least supra-regional level, forming Sunni religious
alliances and a national alliance of "democratic parties," and holding
national women's and tribal conferences since the winter of 2003. With
an unremitting insurgency, some protagonists of which were known to be
politically excluded, with the CPA stuck without an exit strategy
after the death of the caucuses and with growing organization among
Iraqis, Brahimi came to Iraq for the first time in February
2004. Sistani piled on the pressure for early national elections, but
the UN rejected this possibility, and Washington maintained its
insistence on an exit by June 30, despite the absence of a transition
mechanism. The short timeframe prevented local elections from being
held in the leadup to the transition, and hence the idea of a national
conference assumed prominence once more.
The organization of such a conference was faced with resolving
essentially the same questions left unanswered in the caucus system:
who would oversee the selection of candidates to the conference and
what rules would be followed in that process as well as in the process
of self-selection to the smaller body of an interim national assembly
to emerge from that conference? What powers would such an interim
national assembly have and would the larger national conference have
any future role, such as in measures of reconciliation, property
restitution, rehabilitation and compensation?
Some Iraqis stressed the legitimizing element of holding such a
conference before the transfer of sovereignty. If a new government
were to be chosen from among Iraqis who were free to seek to join the
conference, the measures taken by a new government could not be blamed
so easily on the occupation. Brahimi, who had overseen the loya jirga
in Afghanistan, was also keenly aware of the need to draw all actors
in Iraq into political discussions, rather than leaving some with the
option of choosing violence over negotiations and the accountability
of public office. Neither the US nor the IGC, which was faced with
imminent extinction, was comfortable with letting their last
opportunity to shape Iraq's future government slip away so
easily. They persuaded Brahimi and, later, the Security Council to
support a call for a national conference to be held in July, after the
handover.
Both the timing and the unanswered questions caused the postponement
of the conference at the last minute until mid-August. Because the
timing effectively canceled the legitimizing effect of the conference,
Muqtada al-Sadr's movement, the Arab Socialist Party, the Sunni Muslim
Scholars' Board and other prominent Iraqi intellectuals rejected an
invitation. Former Iraqi diplomat Ghassan Atiyyah, a member of the
preparatory committee for the National Conference, had sharp words for
the secret deals over nominating delegates. In a memo printed by an
Iraqi newspaper, Atiyyah noted that while half the 1,000 delegates
would be elected from each of the governorates, roughly 150 persons
would be nominated from political parties, including by the newly
appointed prime minister, president and vice president.[16] The former
members of the IGC, which disbanded upon nomination of an interim
government in late May, defied the test of legitimacy not once or
twice, but three times. Having been appointed by Bremer, they were now
to receive an automatic place in the 100-member National Assembly,
without having to be nominated or elected to the National Conference
or elected by the conference delegates to this assembly. The assembly
would have some powers of an interim parliament, such as approving,
though not making, laws, budgets and ministerial nominations.
What Lies Ahead
A national conference is a very different affair from a local council
with responsibilities for roads, sewage and security. Unlike in local
elections, where competency usually trumps ideology, the formula of
part elections, part selections may indeed have been conducive to
achieving maximum representation. But strangely, that formula was a
copy of the US and British attempts to create representative local
councils: reserved seats for tribal leaders, men of religion, women,
professional unions and political parties. Had Iraqis been given a
chance at an exercise in democracy through local elections, such an
absurd formula putting political parties on a par with tribal leaders
and human rights organizations next to representatives of Iraq's
hierarchical Shi'i clergy could have been avoided. As it stands, both
religious organizations and tribal clans and associations continue to
provide governance outside the realm of the state. Sheikh Dhafer
al-Obaidi is the primary arbitrator and decision-maker in
Falluja. Muqtada al-Sadr's "courts" dispense justice in Najaf, SCIRI's
Badr Organization and the Fudhala' Association are actively involved
in providing local services and Kurdish peshmerga are the bulwark of
security forces in northern Iraq.
The disaffection of Iraqis with the few political parties with
national name recognition[17] has not helped smaller parties gain a
foothold, as Bremer argued in June 2003. The reason can be found in
the neglect political party development received from the occupation
authority's approach to governance. The CPA never sought to regulate
existing political parties, create a level playing field for emerging
parties, or open up space for discussion on the rules governing local
or national elections. The result has been politics behind closed
doors, with the CPA imposing the terms not only of a transition, but
also for constituting local and national political bodies. Instead of
empowering Iraqi voters, leading parties, tribes and religious
establishments are striking deals (or not) on how to divvy up
power. This neither helps the common Iraqi in feeling represented, nor
does it help to establish more legitimate centers of power for
directing the badly needed reconstruction. Those who are left outside
these arrangements have resorted to populist or violent means of
opposition. They are also claiming a piece of the pie in most of
Iraq's provincial cities, to which the writ of the interim government
and the US does not extend.
With roughly 140,000 US troops in Iraq, the US will not want more
nasty surprises as preparations for national Iraqi elections get
underway in the late fall of 2004. But the US may well be in for more
surprises. The failure to focus on local, legitimate representation,
whether through general local elections or high participation in
caucus-style selections, may come back to haunt the US. As insurgent
and opposition elements refuse to be drawn into national
representation because they fear the outcome is preordained in favor
of pro-US elements, the US-appointed institutions, both at the
national and local level, will continue to struggle not only to govern
day to day, but also to prepare for general elections in which more
factions of the government will lose than win. The second transition,
through general elections in January 2005, may well collapse amid
speculations of manipulation. But without elections, there will be no
third, constitutional transition by the end of 2005 either.
[1] Gallup, "Iraqis View Visible Cooperation With CPA as Potentially
Fatal," May 25, 2004.
[2] One study making this point is Ahmed Hashim, "The Sunni Insurgency
in Iraq," Middle East Institute Policy Brief, August 15, 2003.
[3] Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2003.
[4] Interview with Khosrat Goran, deputy governor of Mosul, January
2004.
[5] Interview with Raad al-Fakhri, Iraqi National Accord chief, Mosul,
January 2004.
[6] Isam al-Khafaji, "I Did Not Want to Be a Collaborator," Guardian,
July 28, 2003.
[7] Interview with Mahmoud Othman, former member of the Iraqi
Governing Council, Baghdad, February 2004.
[8] Washington Post, June 28, 2003.
[9] Interview with senior CPA official in Erbil, January 2004.
[10] Interviews in Basra, February 2004.
[11] Raad Alkadiri and Chris Toensing, "The Iraqi Governing Council's
Sectarian Hue," Middle East Report Online, August 20,
2003. http://www.merip.org/mero/mero082003.html
[12] Washington Post, July 4, 2004.
[13] Washington Post, November 11, 2003.
[14] Future of Iraq Project, Final Report on the Transition to
Democracy in Iraq (November 2002). On file with the author.
[15] Washington Post, February 16, 2004. Ration cards were used in
Najaf sub-district elections on February 17, 2004 as well as in
numerous other locations for lower-level councils.
[16] Al-Manara (Basra), July 18, 2004. [FBIS translation]
[17] Oxford Research International, March 15, 2004.
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