October 22, 2005

IRAQ’S much-anticipated October 15 national referendum on the country’s new democratic constitution may end up spawning more problems and challenges for the star-struck country, and its still-befuddled government, than it solves.

The early indicators were promising and satisfying. The Shia and Kurdish provinces responded to the call with enthusiasm, although the turnout in the Kurdish areas was visibly more tepid than when the polls were organized in January and the Kurds took to them like moths to the flame.

But the most edifying feature of the exercise unfolded in the three Sunni provinces — Anbar, Salahuddin and Ninevah — where the dreaded en masse boycott of the referendum didn’t gel; nor even the more unnerving spate of violence deluged the polls. Yes, the Sunni turnout was still not enthusiastic but it was much better than feared. That, under the circumstances, was a modicum of achievement.

Ten million votes were cast across the country, representing 64 per cent of registered voters. That is a sufficiently impressive figure, given the benchmarks of the West where any turnout in excess of 50 per cent is regarded as good. For a country still in the teething period of its baptism as a democratic polity, it could be described as more than satisfactory.

However, the latter indicators, morphing in the wake of the referendum, are the ones giving jitters to everyone, more so to those in the ranks of the Iraqi government, dominated by the Shias and the Kurds. It seems that in their over-exuberance to produce an overwhelmingly ‘yes’ vote, somebody, somewhere, in the Iraqi echelons of power decided to go for the overkill.

Referendums in the Arab world, right across the spectrum from Morocco down to the shores of the Gulf, have a notorious history of governments-in-power invariably overplaying their hand. The outcome of these referendums, with a 98 to 99 per cent yes vote, became a joke the world over. The Iraqi referendum, too, seems to have hit a familiar shoal and grinding the democratic process to an unforeseen halt.

It appeared, in the midst of vote counting, that 12 of the 15 provinces where the Shias and the Kurds predominate, there was an unusual pattern of ‘yes’ ballot hovering in the high 90s. According to independent vote monitors, a count of 90 per cent-plus in any balloting, for or against the proposition at stake, is reasonable ground to suspect foul play. Suspicion, in this case, is doubly compounded by the fact that it isn’t one or two areas with such an unusual yes count but full 12 provinces.

One could say that the Shia and the Kurds have had a hugely accumulated reservoir of pent up emotions. After all, they had been consistently denied their legitimate rights over a long span of 80 years. They were like horses aching to canter off behind a bar for far too long. So the moment the bar was lifted they bolted and galloped on. The result should not surprise monitors used to reading the tea-leaves only in a traditional pattern.

But it is likely that the people in power in these areas were unnerved by projections and forecasts made in regard to the three Sunni provinces voting ‘no’ overwhelmingly and scuttling the whole democratic process. So the overkill syndrome took over and ballots were stuffed to tell a doubting world that the Shias and the Kurds were all out in favour of the new dispensation. Shades, there, of what afflicted Pakistan in 1977. Z.A. Bhutto would have won without ballot stuffing but got cold feet and went for the overkill. What followed that knee-jerk option is history.

If the charge of cheating sticks then it would deal a terrible blow to the body politic of a united Iraq. Some prominent Sunni politicians are already raising the holler of wholesale bungling in the referendum and demanding that it be declared null and void. Their campaign of vilification would get a big boost if the election observers and independent monitors also chipped in with their attestation of fraud. All bets would then be off.

That a spanner has been thrown in the works of democracy in Iraq is a daunting reality that puts a huge question mark on what may come next. The Americans have been keen, in fact desperate, that the democracy charade triggered by them should reach its logical progression, no matter what costs it exacts from the Iraqis. Under the circumstances, democracy’s success in Iraq is the last standing crutch for the beleaguered presidency of George W. Bush. So his factotums in Iraq have been tilting at all wind- mills to make Iraq’s tryst with democracy a success.

US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad had worked hard on every segment of Iraqis so that the referendum may not be put in jeopardy. The last-minute compromise that saw the dominant Shias and Kurds relenting in favour of an in-house parliamentary commission to review the autonomy package central to their schemes of things was reached only because of Khalilzad twisting arms all around.

But the commission being touted as a panacea for whatever is bedevilling the autonomy package is a riddle wrapped in an enigma, to use a Churchillian phrase.

It has not been spelled out how the commission will be selected, by whom and with what composition? What would be its mandate and scope? The only element of it not shrouded in secrecy is that whatever compromise is reached between the three ethnic and sectarian groups will be put to another national referendum. Therein it carries the seeds of Iraq’s eventual, dreaded, disintegration.

The Sunnis are understandably keen to safeguard their interests by insisting on the primacy of the federation over autonomy of the regions. They may bargain hard and strive for maximum advantages, which may or may not, suit the dominant groups. The Kurds, for instance, may not like giving much leverage to the federation. They are suspected of being on a short leash and may run out of patience.

What would prevent them from voting against the compromise package at the next referendum, thus snuffing out the entire federation? Don’t forget, their mentors, the Americans, had worked this beguiling caveat into the constitution, that any three provinces could scuttle it with a two-thirds negative vote, largely with their Kurdish proteges on their mind. This intriguing veto may easily bring the federation down to nothing. So, the majority of Iraqis have shot themselves in the foot by lacing the referendum with an easily avoidable suspicion.

The Iraqi government, in its enthusiasm to placate the raw sentiment of the Kurds and the Shias for comeuppance against Saddam Hussein, has succumbed to temptation and put the latter in the dock before an all-Iraqi tribunal.

The Iraqis have every right to try the man who tortured and oppressed millions of them for so long. But the timing of the move is questionable, especially with this cloud of suspicion hanging thick over the referendum exercise.

The world is reacting with a big grain of doubt about the impartiality of the tribunal and a fear that the Iraqis are in a hurry to hang Saddam. But the Iraqis aren’t alone to wish Saddam put through a ‘quickie’ justice — tribal justice. The Americans are tacitly in accord with the concept of tribal justice being meted out without the fanfare of an international tribunal going through its paces over years, as is the case with Slobadan Milosevic of erstwhile Yugoslavia at the tribunal in Hague.

The Americans don’t relish the idea of Saddam being exposed to an independent and international tribunal for fear that he would, then, start baring his cupboards of skeletons; some of these skeletons and cross-bones could cause sleepless nights in the pack of the neocons studding Bush’s top echelons, in the White House and the Pentagon.

It’s an irony, if not a glaring miscarriage of justice, that Saddam is being tried for just one crime, committed against the Shias of Dujail, 70 miles north of Baghdad, in July, 1982, in which 143 of them were shot in cold blood by Saddam’s thugs.

The writer is a former ambassador to Iraq.

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