LONDON, Sept 26: Iraq’s rushed constitutional process has deepened ethnic and sectarian rifts and is likely to worsen the resistance and hasten the country’s violent break-up, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said on Monday.

“The constitution is likely to fuel rather than dampen insurgency,” said Robert Malley, head of the think tank’s Middle East and North Africa programme, introducing an ICG report.

“A compact based on compromise and broad consent could have been a first step in a healing process. Instead it is proving yet another step in a process of depressing decline.”

Iraqis are to vote on Oct. 15 in a constitutional referendum on what the ICG calls a weak document that lacks consensus.

Its report says the draft, endorsed by Shia leader Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, as well as Shia and Kurdish parties, is likely to pass despite fierce Sunni opposition.

The Sunnis, it says, are unlikely to muster the two-thirds of votes in three provinces required to block its passage.

“Such a result would leave Iraq divided, an easy prey to both insurgents and sectarian tensions that have dramatically increased over the past year,” the ICG says.

To avert this outcome, it urges the US to broker a last-minute political deal among Sunnis, Shias and Kurds, before Oct 15 that would assuage Sunni fears of a Shia ‘super-region’ emerging in the south and of ‘de-Baathification’.

“There is reason to doubt whether such a strategy can succeed,” the report says, citing communal positions. “But given the stakes, the US cannot afford not to try.”—Reuters