Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=01/09/2004

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-01440

TITLE=Post-Saddam Iraq

INTERNET=Yes

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0038

CONTENT= This show will run all weekend long

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Host: Taking steps toward a new Iraqi government. Next, On the Line.

Host: The U-S-led coalition formally began the process of handing over power to the people of Iraq. In each of Iraq's eighteen provinces, committees are to choose delegates who in turn will pick a national assembly. However, Iraq's most prominent religious leader, the Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has been calling for a direct form of elections to choose the assembly. That is one of the many issues that will have to be resolved before the coalition turns over sovereignty to the new Iraqi government in six months. Joining us to talk about the effort to build a new Iraq are, here in the VOA studio, Eleana Gordon, vice president for communications and democracy programs at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; from the Brookings Institution studio in Washington, Senior Fellow Michael O'Hanlon; by phone from Boston, Zainab Al-Suwaij, executive director of the American Islamic Congress. And by phone from Baghdad, Kevin Whitelaw, senior writer for U-S News and World Report. Welcome and thanks for joining us today.

Host: First I'd like to go by phone to Boston and talk with Zainab Al-Suwaij and ask: Zainab, what are the first things that are going to be happening as part of this six-month transition of bringing sovereignty to the Iraqi people?

Al-Suwaij: The first thing is it's definitely true there are a lot of representatives from the eighteen different provinces. And I think these things started already in the process now. Also, they are electing some people from different parts in each city and are giving the names to the government council to form this parliament. The things that are happening over there right now.

Host: I'm afraid we've lost our connection with Zainab Al-Suwaij. Let me ask Kevin Whitelaw who's in Baghdad right now, what's going on there in terms of this effort to get the ball rolling on democratic process.

Whitelaw: Well, there is a lot of talking going on in a lot of different places. Most of them sort of behind closed doors outside the view of most Iraqis, although they're all talking about it on the streets of course. Aside from these councils, which need to meet to elect representatives and some will be privately appointed as well, you also have a number of people that have been meeting to try to write a new fundamental law, something that will govern how this new transitional government would actually function. And there seems to be shaping up a certain amount of contention over this, as a lot of people feel that, whatever the structure of this transitional government, it will influence what the final structure of Iraq is going to look like. And one of the big questions there is what sort of role does the Kurdish state play, whether there will be a relatively independent Kurdish state or whether it's autonomous. What the exact structure of that is going to be is shaping up as one of the large fights. The other is simply one of how do you share power between Iraq's many diverse ethnic and religious groups?

Host: Michael O'Hanlon in the Brookings Studio, what do you think are going to be the most contentious issues and how are they going to get resolved?

O'Hanlon: Well, in addition to what's already been mentioned, I think the broad question of Iraq's federalism is a big, big matter that we haven't yet heard much about. In other words, how much power will be in Baghdad, within the federal or national government, and how much would be within the provinces or in the possibility of a relatively autonomous Kurdistan, in that particular region? In other words, if you imagine, let's say, revenue from oil, a national asset of Iraq, we generally expect that it would be shared on some level throughout the country regardless of where it comes from within Iraq. How much of that money goes to Baghdad in the national government, how much might go to the provinces? And does that kind of division of resources get written into the constitution or is that the sort of thing people haggle over every year legislatively? To me, that's a very big question. Obviously the national government is going to be responsible for overall security, but even at that level you have to say then, what about the individual police forces, any kind of the equivalent of a national guard that Iraq may wind up having? Are any of these kinds of institutions going to be controlled at the state or province level? So, broad questions of allocating resources and keeping Iraq secure, maintaining the security forces, have to be decided. How much of that's going to be done centrally out of Baghdad? How much of that is going to be done regionally by the individual provinces? And I cannot think of a bigger question, bigger set of questions than that.

Host: Well, Michael O'Hanlon, how do you think those questions are going to get worked over? What's going to be the process by which people address those questions in Iraq?

O'Hanlon: I don't know if there's a perfect process. I don't know if people are going to, you know, be willing to map out a specific set of decision milestones in advance. I almost feel we're going to have to have give and take. There's going to have to be a discussion of the actual ideas and the substance, possible proposals. And then, as some of those proposals get vetted, get aired, get reacted to, that will give people confidence that they can trust a process to come up with some fair decisions. If I were an Iraqi right now -- let's say I was a Sunni in the heartland of Iraq, I would be nervous that if I set up a certain process, the Shia might ultimately essentially hijack it with their democratic strength, their majority strength in the country and let's say have all of the resources from oil divvied up by the central government in Baghdad in a way that the Shia themselves ultimately decide about and allocate perhaps more than they should to their own people. So, I would want to hear some kind of a discussion of how much of the oil revenue is going to go to the provinces and how much is going to go to the national government before I would agree to a constitutional process or a mechanism to set up these decisions. I would want to hear both the substance and the process debate simultaneously. So I think it's going to be messy, back and forth, give and take. And the sooner we start hearing some realistic proposals for some of these big questions about security and economics and other things, the better.

Host: Eleana Gordon, how do you think this debate, this messy debate is going to shape up over the coming months? Is this something where how these debates play out now is going to make a huge difference in the shape of the sort of government that Iraq might have in the years to come?

Gordon: Well, I think the risk here is that we try to resolve too much too quickly. We don't have a democratically elected constitutional committee. We don't have, right now we have certain political parties that are in power that are the ones we've inherited coming out of the post-Saddam situation. So we have Islamist parties that are fairly strong; the Baathists actually remain fairly well organized, and the Kurdish parties. But new parties have not emerged yet. Women have not found their political power yet, and so for us to resolve these very important fundamental questions about Iraq's future today, in a rush, in three months or four months, would be problematic. As much as possible if we can table these questions until later, that's the whole reason why we need to have a constitutional committee later, in a year, two years. It took us ten years to resolve many of these questions. And so, I think we need to find a way to get a process going where more Iraqis can be included, where there's a legitimacy to the constitutional convention that will be put in place and these questions are debated over the next two years. They're huge questions. We can't resolve them overnight.

Host: Kevin Whitelaw in Baghdad, let me ask you that question then, do you think people are going to try to hash out these contentious issues here at the front part of the process or get a process in place that will put off the most contentious issues until a later date?

Whitelaw: Well, I do think that the U-S occupation government here was hoping to be able to put off some of the most contentious issues here, saying that this is merely an interim government. But a lot of people really do view this fundamental law, this whatever sort of law is going to govern this transitional government is sort of the first draft of a new constitution and so, people are obviously taking this debate very seriously. But what you're also seeing is a reluctance from one of the most important figures in the Shia religious community in Iraq, as you referenced in the introduction, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who has come out very strongly this week to actually criticize the U-S plan saying that it does not ensure a representative government. He would like to see this constitutional assembly elected directly by the people, something that would take much longer. The Bush administration so far has not been willing to give this any more time. They really want to get a jumpstart on the process, worried that they can otherwise get bogged down and not be able to reverse some of the downward momentum that they've had over the past couple of months.

Host: Michael O'Hanlon, what do you think are the chances of there being a somewhat more democratic direct electoral process integrated into this choosing of delegates for a national assembly?

O'Hanlon: Well, I have to believe that we could actually do a fairly broad kind of vote if we wanted to. If you go back to many of the elections that have happened in the developing world in recent years coming out of conflict environments, they've often had very simple and very effective means of essentially one person, one vote. You don't need a sophisticated voter role. You can actually have indelible ink stamped onto a person once they have voted to make sure they don't vote twice. So, I actually think there are ways to accommodate a number of Mr. Sistani's concerns. And frankly, to an extent, I'm sympathetic to what he is saying because I believe a caucus process, as we're all about to rediscover here in the United States and in Iowa over the next couple of weeks, is a little bit mysterious. And to the extent the United States is already somewhat mistrusted as the behind-the-scenes power pulling all the strings to make its own way come out the way it wants, I think we might be better off to some extent making the process simpler and more transparent. So, it may be too late to really give ground on that, but I tend to hear what Sistani's saying and have some sympathy with it.

Host: Eleana Gordon, what do you think are the chances that some of these concerns that Ali Sistani has raised, that there needs to be more electoral direct action as part of this national assembly, are going to be accommodated one way or another?

Gordon: Well, I think I also am sympathetic to some extent to what Sistani's trying to do in that he wants to make sure this is a legitimate process, that it's not viewed as either the United States putting in place these new basic laws or this new government or the parties that are already in place and that are to some extent supported and propped up right now by the United States. It's interesting that he has opened a way possibly for compromise. He suggested that if the U-N Secretary General sent a special committee and that if that committee declared that elections were impossible to hold right now for security reasons, that he would possibly accept that. And I take that as, he's trying to find a way to support the coalition but also make sure that whatever process we engage in is viewed as legitimate by the Iraqis. The other interesting aspect of this is the governing council itself, the members are the ones negotiating with Sistani, not the C-P-A [Coalition Provisional Authority], which is, I think, a first step of their problems. The Iraqis are taking ownership of their problems rather than giving it all to the coalition, which is what the situation has been until now.

Host: Kevin Whitelaw, Eleana Gordon mentions a role that is being sought there for the U-N and the Iraqi governing council is in talks with the U-N. What sort of role might there be in this ongoing process for the United Nations?

Whitelaw: Well, it depends on who you talk to. I think the U-N would believe it could have had a large role here, but so far the U-S occupation government, in particular the Bush administration, has simply not been willing to relinquish really any of their authority and responsibility for building this new political organization and political order here in Iraq. They've been very intent on being sure that they have a certain amount of control over what this thing actually looks like and they're worried about the idea that the U-N would come in and slow things down. It would take a little bit longer and they would not be able to make this July 1st deadline that President Bush has laid down, if they decide to go to more of an election process, as Ayatollah Sistani has called for. And what's interesting here is he's not doing this to be difficult. He's not doing this to try to make it a more a religious rule that comes out. He simply is, as best as anybody can tell, trying to be sure this is something that is going to be more representative. Unfortunately, that seems to conflict a little bit with the U-S aim of getting some sort of transition under way by July 1st and giving this whole thing more of an Iraqi face and being able to say, "Look we are in fact handing over power to the Iraqis. Here it is." No one here, it seems to me, really has confidence that this process is going to work all that well, in part because, as Michael O'Hanlon suggested, most Iraqis really don't understand it yet. It hasn't been really well explained. It hasn't been delineated yet, partly because a lot of it hasn't even been decided yet. And frankly most Iraqis just do not trust the U-S occupation government, that it's acting in their best interest. I'm standing in Baghdad. The power's out again. And so, you know, we're now nine months after the fall of Baghdad and you're still having worse and worse power outages, longer and longer gas lines. And the Iraqis are saying, gee, if you can't even get that to work, how are we supposed to believe that you can do the rest of it?

Host: Michael O'Hanlon, there are two goals here that Kevin Whitelaw has mentioned: one being the speedy transfer of sovereignty back to Iraqis and yet the other goal being having some kind of direct election that would be clear and credible on its face. Are those two goals at odds with one another?

O'Hanlon: They're in tension with one another -- I'm not sure they're contradictory. I think that what you need to do, for example, is to agree with the Iraqis there are going to be some reasonable constraints on the kinds of decisions that are made in the first few months. And it's not that we're going to be vetoing their decisions, but going into this, we're going to recognize for example the U-S military still needs to be there and that still has to be one of the unspoken assumptions that we all accept going in. There are going to have to certain decisions about not turning this into an Islamic theocracy or a country dominated by one ethnic group or another. There are going to have to be certain rules about freedom of the press and about democracy. You cannot quickly eliminate the possibility of future democracy even if some government wants to, the way Algeria's government or one of its parties was thinking of doing ten years ago. You can't have that. In other words, the Iraqis will be sovereign and they will have a government in place, but until they're further down the road in their own constitution-building and their own independent election processes, there are going to be certain bounds on the room for maneuvering of the interim government. And if you can establish those in a way that's seen as fair and reasonable, then I think you can have a near-term Iraqi government and also continue the process toward building a more permanent structure.

Host: Eleana Gordon, let me ask you the same question, which is, are the goals of speedily making a transition and yet also having a process that will involve directly the Iraqi people, are those in tension or contradictory or not?

Gordon: I think it is helpful to look at what we were doing before and why I think that wasn't going to work. Before, we were not going to hand over any sovereignty until we had created a constitution and resolved all these issues. Well, that would have postponed the handing over of sovereignty either for many years, for too long, and perpetuated a situation where the Iraqis actually feel powerless -- they are free but they feel powerless -- or a situation where we would rush all the constitutional issues. So, what we're trying to now find is a third path, which is to say we have to give the Iraqis more, say, more control over their future but do it in such a way that we also give them time as a nation to debate these very important constitutional questions. And I think Michael O'Hanlon made a very important point, which is, we are the mediator here. And all the players are going to test us. Are we going to be firm about the rules of the game? Are we going to be firm about saying, we're going to ensure that all ethnic groups are going to have individual rights respected, or that women's rights will be respected, that there will be some separation of religion and state or freedom of religion? All the players are testing us because if they don't believe that we'll stand firm on these issues, then the ethnic groups and the different political groups have to make sure that they accumulate power or they'll lose power. So, they're testing us right now.

Host: Kevin Whitelaw in Baghdad, where the power is out, you mentioned that that's an issue that troubles Iraqis. Obviously, also the issue of security is foremost in people's minds. What's the security situation like right now in Iraq?

Whitelaw: You know, all along that's actually been a surprisingly difficult question to answer because statistics are not released, and even if they were, it's not clear how much they actually mean. I think the biggest, the best way to describe it is simply that Iraqis don't feel safe and that's because they don't really understand, they don't have any way to judge what their safety is. They hear rumors. They hear certain reports of things happening. They don't have anyone to go to if it does happen. They don't trust the police. They have a lot of difficulty approaching American troops. They tend not to pay a lot of attention to them and are often very jumpy when approached by Iraqis or often they can't even communicate with them to begin with, and so, I think you have a situation where people still do not feel safe here. And so, even while attacks on U-S soldiers have been up and down, I think, you still need to answer the question, not in terms of measuring attacks on American soldiers, but what is the situation like in Iraq? Some towns are safe. But in Baghdad, which obviously is one of the most important places for this, that's not the sense you get when you walk around and talk to people.

Host: Michael O'Hanlon, there's been a big effort made to involve Iraqis in this security effort. Is that making an impact? Is that likely to make an impact? And how is the security issue going to play out in this move to try to have a more democratic government?

O'Hanlon: I think first Kevin is exactly right and I'm hearing the same thing. He's first-hand. I'm just saying second-hand, but Iraqis themselves are not feeling secure enough in their own country. I actually believe the counter-insurgency is going fairly well. Not just because of the culture of Saddam but because of broader trends. Many of the intelligence tips we've been getting both before and after Saddam's capture, etc. And the fact that the Iraqi resistance, I don't believe was that large to begin with -- at least not the dedicated core fighters, the Baathists and foreign Jihadists. But, the question of security on the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere in the country is by no means resolved. And in fact on balance, we've done not as good of a job as I would have predicted. A little bit below punching our weight in this area. The Iraqis, the new Iraqi police forces will help, but they're not good enough. We're not giving them enough training. We're rushing them into the job and that means they can only begin to develop competence and effectiveness if we work with them. We have to do joint foot patrols. We have to do a lot of teamwork, Iraqi-American joint efforts, not just driving humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles through the streets of Baghdad at thirty miles an hour to get in and out of the neighborhood as quickly as possible, but actually putting U-S troops on the street. You're seeing a very interesting debate in the United States now, a lot of U-S Marines of the First Marine Division and our own marine scholar Sam [Carl] Mundy here at Brookings are suggesting a change in tactics to some extent, especially in areas like Baghdad and the Sunni triangle.

Host: I'm afraid that's going to have to be the last word. We're out of time for today. I'd like to thank my guests: Eleana Gordon of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution; Zainab Al-Suwaij who was with us briefly from Boston, who's with the American Islamic Congress; and Kevin Whitelaw of U-S News and World Report, from Baghdad. Before we go, I'd like to invite you to send us your questions and comments. You can e-mail them to Ontheline@ibb.gov For On the Line, I'm Eric Felten.