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By Jacques Amalric

August 25, 2005

Liberation - Original Article (French)    

Experience has taught us that George Bush’s statements are an excellent barometer for getting an idea of the Iraq situation: the more optimistic the president of the United States says he is, the more we can expect the worst. We still remember his victory cry “Mission accomplished!” that following the entry of American troops into Baghdad.

If This is Success, What is Failure?

He was, in fact, only declaring the beginning of a series of setbacks that have already cost the lives of nearly 2,000 GIs and several tens of thousands of Iraqis. It is for this reason that one must worry about the energetic statements made last Tuesday by the head of the White House [C-SPAN Video Below]; evoking the laborious compromise that was reached, after much pressure applied by America’s Ambassador to Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad, to Shiites and Kurds on the draft of the Iraqi Constitution, George Bush celebrated the achievement of a “period of hope” thanks to an “unbelievable event.”

Undoubtedly for good measure, he had his spokesperson stress the “impressive progress made on most of the Constitution’s provisions, via debate, dialogue and seeking compromise.”

Reality, of course, is totally different: the draft of the Constitution, the text of which is still being kept secret, would make Islam the “main source” of legislation and would leave the fate of Kirkuk, which is in Sunni territory but is claimed by the Kurds, up in the air. Little chance thus that it guarantees, as George W. Bush claimed, “the rights of minorities and of women.”

It will certainly be approved by the Parliament that resulted from the elections of January 31, where Shiites and Kurds are overrepresented (215 of the 275 seats), the Sunnis having massively boycotted the election; but it is likely to be rejected during the referendum planned for October 15: the temporary basic law says that, to be adopted, the text must receive two thirds of the votes in at least sixteen of the eighteen provinces.

After the Handover, a Letter from Condi - and Bush's Handwritten Comment

But the Sunnis, numerous leaders of whom have promised an “insurgency” in the event that the Parliament approves the draft Constitution, are the majority in four of those provinces. This inability to integrate the Sunni community into the constitutional process constitutes a major political failure for the United States and a less-than negligible success for the Saddamists and their Islamist allies.

But the setback was predictable from the moment Washington decided to accelerate things and unilaterally set August 15 as the date by which the Iraqis should imperatively have reached a consensus. An additional week was not enough to convince the Sunni representatives to rally around the federalist and theocratic solution concocted by the Kurds and Shiites. The nostalgia for an “Arab Republic,” the symbol of their preeminence imposed by the British at the beginning of the last century and carefully maintained by Saddam Hussein, is too strong. As is the fear of a backlash from the die-hard Islamists and Baathists.

Weren’t two Sunni members of the constitutional commission assassinated at the beginning of the month? In latching onto the idea of a strong central government, which is now a utopian pipe dream, the Sunnis are headed for certain failure, and their extremists are headed for civil war. An acceptance of the federal solution would have been linked to a pre-established division of the country’s oil resources, but it was not to be, thus they have no chance of accessing the treasured oil that flows mostly in Kurdish and Shiite territory.

A Prayer for the Fallen.

Again, it would have been necessary to let time work things out, which is not something the United States wanted, as it was in a hurry to accelerate an improbably political process. Ready to once again proclaim “Mission accomplished!” But this will be more and more difficult; not only because the American losses are growing but because of the increasing sophistication of the explosive charges targeting patrols and convoys (even if there are fewer car bombs driven by suicide bombers) but also because a rejection of the draft constitution on October 15 could intensify the rampant civil war by inciting the Kurds and Shiites to unilaterally declare their autonomy.

And just to destabilize the region a bit more, look at, on one hand, Turkey’s absolute hostility to more autonomy for the Iraqi Kurds and, on the other, Iran’s increasing meddling in Iraqi affairs. Time is running out for the optimistic George W. Bush, whose Iraq policy is approved by only 34% of Americans. A threshold that recalls another unfortunate memory: that reached by the Vietnam policy of Lyndon Johnson in 1968, just before he decided not to seek another term.

VIDEO FROM THE MUSLIM WORLD: FRIDAY SERMON FROM THE U.A.E.

Sheik Mubarak Lamhiri

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