27 August 2005 The Dog Ate My Constitution By Gwynne Dyer "Ahmed, where's your homework?" "The dog ate it, Miss. I had it all done, honest, but then the dog..." "That's all right, dear. Take another week and give it to me next Monday." Real teachers in Iraq are not so forgiving. The kids rarely have to write a whole constitution, but if they did it would be in on time: Iraqi teachers don't accept lame excuses, and they don't give extensions. Whereas the Iraqi parliament and its American overlords are another story entirely. The new Iraqi constitution was due to be handed in by 15 August. Then there would be a referendum to ratify it on October 15, and new national elections to produce a somewhat more credible government for Iraq in December. Those deadlines were set by the US occupation authorities, who were desperately trying to create some "turning point" after which the country would stabilise and American casualties would start to fall. The appointment of an "interim Iraqi government" to replace direct US rule in June 2004 the so-called "hand-over of sovereignty" didn't do the trick. Neither did last January's elections (which were boycotted by the Sunni Arabs, the core of the resistance movement), nor the emergence of a more-or-less elected government in May after months of haggling. Now Washington's hopes of a happy ending are pinned on the new constitution. "We don't want any delays. Now's the time to get to get on with it," said US Defence Secretary Don Rumsfeld in late July, and Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, the president of the current version of an Iraqi government, promised the US ambassador: "There will be no delay." But there was. The Kurds of northern Iraq and the Islamic religious parties who claim to represent the Shia Arabs of southern Iraq have made a deal to turn the country into a federal state. That gives the Kurds control over their own area (and their own oil), and a better shot at breaking away to create their own country at some future time. Federalism also suits the Shia religious parties, since it gives them the rest of Iraq's oil and effective freedom to impose Islamic law over most of Iraq. The big losers were the Sunni Arabs of central Iraq, the traditional ruling group, who would end up with no oil and permanent Shia domination. So they rejected the Kurdish-Shia draft, and the 15 August deadline arrived with no agreement. Did the National Assembly dissolve itself and call new elections as the US-imposed rules required? No, it just gave the drafting committee one more week to agree on a new constitution. Who could blame them if the dog had eaten their homework? President George W. Bush greeted this failure with his customary optimism: "I applaud the heroic efforts of the Iraqi negotiators...Their efforts are a tribute to democracy and an example that difficult problems can be resolved peacefully through debate, negotiation and compromise." So another week of debate and negotiation passed, but no compromise emerged. Did the National Assembly dissolve itself on 22 August? No, of course not. It was just the dog again. The Kurds and Shia Arabs handed their joint draft over to the National Assembly without Sunni Arab agreement, insisting that technically this met the second deadline. Then they gave themselves three more days to work on extracting Sunni consent to the contents. President Bush hailed this as an "amazing event" and declared: "It's a very hopeful period. The Iraqi people are working hard to reach a consensus." That third deadline expired last Thursday, and of course the Sunni Arab representatives had still not budged on the issue of federalism. They would be dead men if they did: "99 percent of Sunnis are unhappy (with the constitution)," explained Saleh al-Motlak, one of their chief negotiators. At that point, Mr Bush put in a personal call to the chief Shia negotiator, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, demanding that he offer more concessions to the Sunnis. (White House spokesman Trent Duffy explained with no hint of irony that Bush's call "reflects that this is an Iraqi process and that the United States is there to help them.") The post-third-deadline negotiations staggered on until Saturday, 27 August, with no results. By now nobody could deny that the dog had well and truly died, and the Kurdish-Shia version of the constitution was presented to the National Assembly on Sunday. The referendum will be held on 15 October as arranged, but it will be defeated if only three of Iraq's eighteen provinces vote against the constitution by a two-thirds majority. Washington originally wrote that rule in order to give its Kurdish allies a veto, but it gives a similar veto to the four central provinces where Sunni Arabs are the overwhelming majority of the population. Even if the constitution is approved in the October referendum, the armed revolt among the Sunni Arabs will continue, because their concerns have been ignored. President Bush now sounds quite testy about that: "This talk about the Sunnis rising up. I mean the Sunnis have got to make a choice. Do they want to live in a society that's free, or do they want to live in violence?" But the Sunni Arabs of Iraq have defined their choices rather differently, and the insurgency will continue regardless of any new constitution. _____________________________ To shorten to 725 words, omit paragraphs 6 and 14. ("The appointment...constitution"; and "The referendum...population") Note that this article has gone out before the final vote was taken in Sunday in the National Assembly. Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.