Iraq Won’t Survive as Loose Federation;
India’s Model Suits It Best
By M.P. Prabhakaran
Iraq’s draft constitution, in the form in which it is heading for referendum, is deeply flawed. If approved, it could set the stage for that country’s disintegration. The consequences will be disastrous to the region and to the United States.
The new constitution leaves almost untouched the autonomy the Kurds have been enjoying in the north since the early 1990’s. It also contains language that would allow the majority Shiites to set up a vast autonomous area in the oil-rich south. The Sunnis of Iraq, who form barely 20 percent of the population, will be left to fend for themselves in the resources-poor central region. The Sunni region’s collapse as a viable political entity will be only a matter of time. No wonder all the 15 Sunni members of the constitutional committee refused to endorse the draft.
The Kurds and the Shiites on the committee decided to go ahead with the referendum plan, over the Sunnis’ protests. Obviously, they have everything to gain by getting it passed. They also relish the idea of hurting the Sunnis who had been ruling over them until the collapse of the Saddam regime. The fate of the draft constitution will be known on October 15, 2005, when Iraqis vote on it. Those who want to see Iraq surviving as one nation and prospering hope that this flawed constitution would be rejected.
President Bush called it a milestone in Iraqi history and a document containing “far-reaching protections for fundamental human freedoms.” His paeans of praise should not surprise anyone. Anything that makes his getting out of the mess he has created in Iraq faster is welcome to him. What comes as a surprise to most is that even some perceptive analysts of Iraqi politics and of Bush’s policies in Iraq have found the document praiseworthy. One of them is Peter W. Galbraith, a former United States ambassador to Croatia, a scholar and currently a senior fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. I am disheartened to learn that he couldn’t care less if Iraq unravels in the course of implementing this constitution.
“It’s not a problem if a country breaks up, only if it breaks up violently,” he said, according to David Brooks’s August 25, 2005, column in The New York Times. Even more disheartening is the reason he gives why Iraq’s unraveling should not be a mater of great concern: “Iraq wasn’t created by God. It was created by Winston Churchill.” This is the kind of language the arrogant and conceited neocons and paleocons in the Bush administration are wont to use. One doesn’t expect it from a person of Mr. Galbraith’s caliber. Doesn’t he know that the same can be said, mutatis mutandis, about any country in the world, including the United States?
The most applaudable aspect of the new constitution, according to Mr. Galbraith and other supporters of it, is its emphasis on a “loose federation” for Iraq. But the critics of the document see in the very same loose federation idea the seed of the country’s eventual breakup. Iraq is already loose thanks to the American invasion, say these critics, and a constitution providing for a loose federation will only reinforce that looseness. It will serve as a catalyst for disintegration. For a loose federation to survive the entity that constitutes it should have attained some level of political maturity. It is not advisable for an infant nation, the critics say.
What Iraq needs today is a tight federation, one with a strong center. Surprisingly, the demand for it came from the representatives of the Sunni minority who joined the constitutional committee and participated in its deliberations much later. The Shiite majority and the pro-Western Kurds decided to draft at least 15 members of the Sunni community into the committee only when pressured by the Bush administration.
The Shiites and the Kurds rejected the Sunni demand for a strong center, arguing that a federation with centralized power wouldn’t be different from what it was under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. Most of the Sunni members of the panel, it may be added, were members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein that ruled Iraq for decades. However, their past association with the Bath Party and its misrule does not in any way diminish the validity of the case they made – that the right form of government for Iraq at this critical juncture is federation with a strong center.
They are not talking about a centralized authority with all powers vested in one individual or a coterie of individuals. They are talking about a system in which the central government will be stronger than the governments in the provinces; in which decisions will be made by democratically elected representatives of the people, not by a dictator; in which minority rights will be protected from the tyranny of the majority; and so on. Fair-minded Iraqis owe it to their country to pay heed to their case. They owe it to their country to put pressure on their elected representatives to revise the constitutional draft accordingly before it is put to referendum on October 15. I also want to suggest to them that there is a vibrant constitution they can use as a model – the Indian constitution.
Strong Center Needed
The challenge Iraq is facing today is one of binding together three ethnic groups – the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds. The challenge India faced in 1947, the year in which it gained independence from Britain, was one of binding together hundreds of ethnic and linguistic groups spread over all leading religions of the world. The founding fathers of India found a way of doing it by adopting a constitution, federal in nature, and adapting it to befit the realities of the time.
For a country like India, with more centrifugal forces than centripetal ones, keeping the country together required a strong center. The document, which India’s constituent assembly deliberated upon for over two years and adopted on January 26, 1950, provided for a strong central government and comparatively weak provincial governments. Looking back, it can be said that, but for that provision in the constitution, India would have splintered into as many independent entities as there are linguistic, ethnic and religious divisions in the country. Iraq would do well to emulate India’s example.
There is one more point of comparison between India and Iraq. If Iraq was created by Britain’s Winston Churchill, as Mr. Galbraith told Mr. Brooks, rightly if sarcastically, the political entity called India as we know it today was a creature of British rule. Before Britain began to rule India, it was a land of warring princely states, not vastly different from what Europe was until the Second World War. If Iraq happened by design, the political entity called India happened by default. But both happened in furtherance of British interests.
True, unlike the Iraq of today, India was fortunate to have a philosopher-statesman of Plato’s description to guide it in its nascent stage. It is not out of place to mention here that this philosopher-statesman, Mohandas Gandhi, was once ridiculed by Winston Churchill as a “half-naked fakir.” Thanks to the guidance provided by the half-naked fakir in the beginning, India in time evolved into a developed polity and the largest democracy in the world.
Iraq may not have a Gandhi to guide it. But the Iraqis can certainly seek inspiration from his teachings and learn from India’s experience.
[Published on August 30, 2005.]
[Readers are invited to comment. Send your comments to letters@eastwestinquirer.com]
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Reader's Response
A Unique Point of View
I just read your article. Very informative and well-written. Also, your point of view is unique. I agree with you completely. I've read elsewhere that Bush's real plan is to destroy Iraq and it looks as if he'll get away with it. How appropriate it is that Britain is our ally in this!
Ian Cohen, New York, New York, U.S.A.
August 31, 2005