Editorial: Governing Council

 

Wednesday  November 12, 2003

Washington’s political spin machine has begun to brief against the Iraqi Governing Council in what many observers suspect is the opening gambit in a move to scrap it. This is yet a further demonstration of the degree to which the United States is finding itself out of its depth in Iraq. As the Bush White House repents its hasty invasion at leisure, life for ordinary Iraqis remains far from easy.

The Americans are increasingly fed up with the Council’s inability to make important decisions. One of the major tasks allotted to it was to lay the foundations of a new constitution and pave the way for national elections. The Council consists of representatives from all the country’s ethnic and religious communities. Its members were appointed by the Americans in the days following the capture of Baghdad. The original plan was that the body would only be in office for a few months.

But the failure of the US-led coalition to bring security to Iraq has stopped the process of political normalization dead in its tracks. In addition, the Governing Council has been in office but not really in power — the US led military administration is still calling most of the shots.

Washington complains that the different members of the Council spend most of their time trying to advance their own particular political agenda. Yet it is hard to see what else they could do, when virtually any major decision, even on the exploitation of the country’s immense oil wealth, has to go through the coalition administration. Surely there is nothing inherently wrong with the fact that the different political groupings are preparing for their future in an independent Iraq. Meanwhile, within their abilities, they have not neglected the interests of Iraq. Given the dictatorial regime whose rule they are being groomed to replace, it ought to be seen as remarkable that they have been able to preserve a united front and speak with one voice, as when they rejected Turkish troops as part of the international peacekeeping force.

Washington needs to understand that if it abandons the Council and seeks to build another political structure, the limited good that it has already achieved will almost certainly be destroyed. The Americans must live with what they have created and demonstrate a better understanding of the difficulties the diverse political forces within Iraq are working hard to overcome. The Council may not be ideal either for the US or the Iraqis themselves, but it does constitute a body that is representative of all threads of opinion within the country.

Scrapping it could foster divisions among national leaders and could lead to civil strife. This, coming on top of the lawlessness that is already disfiguring the country, could plunge Iraq into bloody chaos.

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