How Cleric Trumped U.S. Plan for Iraq
November 25, 2003
The Washington Post
Rajiv Chandrasekaran
BAGHDAD -- The unraveling of the Bush administration's script for political transition in Iraq began with a fatwa.
The religious edict, handed down in June by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite Muslim cleric, called for general elections to select the drafters of a new constitution. He dismissed U.S. plans to appoint the authors as "fundamentally unacceptable."
His pronouncement, underestimated at first by the Bush administration, doomed an elaborate transition plan crafted by U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer that would have kept Iraq under occupation until a constitution was written, according to American and Iraqi officials involved in the process. While Bremer feared that electing a constitutional assembly would take too long and be too disruptive, there was a strong desire on his own handpicked Governing Council to obey Sistani's order.
With no way to get around the fatwa, and with escalating American casualties creating pressure on President Bush for an earlier end to the occupation, Bremer recently dumped his original plan in favor of an arrangement that would bestow sovereignty on a provisional government before a constitution is drafted.
Bremer's unwillingness to heed the fatwa until just a few weeks ago may have delayed the country's political transition and exacerbated popular anger at the occupation, Iraqi political leaders said.
"We waited four months, thanks to Bremer," said one council member, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We could have organized this [transition] by now had we started when Sistani issued his fatwa. But the Americans were in denial."
People familiar with the discussions among U.S. officials about the fatwa said American political officers were too isolated to grasp the power of the edict right away, assuming that secular former exiles backed by the U.S. government would push Bremer's plan. Even when Sistani's clout became clear, they said Bremer remained reluctant to rework his transition plan right away. "He didn't want a Shiite cleric dictating the terms of Iraq's political future," one U.S. official with knowledge of the process said.
U.S. officials said it took months even for Iraqis to grasp the influence of Sistani's fatwa. Bremer's deputies also hoped the edict could be countered by statements from other Shiite clerics supporting approaches other than general elections, but few of those materialized.
"What we thought was necessary was for there to be a broad consultation to find out what the Iraqi public wanted," said one official involved in the political transition. "In hindsight," another official added, "we should have done it differently."
Who Would Draft Constitution?
Sistani is a frail man with a black turban, a snowy beard and unquestioned clout among Iraq's Shiite majority. Born in Iran but schooled in Iraq, he lives in the holy city of Najaf, about 90 miles south of Baghdad. Although he works out of a modest office on a decrepit alley, he has enormous authority to interpret Islamic law in everyday life.
During the years former president Saddam Hussein was in power -- when the government deemed activist Shiite clerics subversive and ordered many of them killed -- Sistani remained largely secluded from politics. Even after Hussein's government was toppled in April, Sistani shied away from political pronouncements and public appearances.
At the end of June, when Arab satellite television networks erroneously reported that Iraq's constitution would be written by American and British experts, Sistani broke his silence. In a two-page fatwa issued on June 28, he declared that he would only support a constitution written by Iraqis chosen through a general election, not by a council selected by the Americans.
The fatwa declared: "There is no guarantee that the council would create a constitution conforming with the greater interests of the Iraqi people and expressing the national identity, whose basis is Islam, and its noble social values."
In Baghdad, Sistani's pronouncement did not raise immediate alarm among U.S. officials. Bremer's aides assumed the fatwa would be revised or rescinded once they told Sistani how difficult it would be to hold elections right away. There were no voter rolls, constituent boundaries or electoral laws. "There is simply no way to conduct national elections today," Bremer said at the time.
Bremer also feared that elections would create too much uncertainty. The Bush administration wanted an orderly process it could control, including a constitution that would be a model for its efforts to democratize the Arab world, enshrine individual rights, and establish a secular government, religious freedom and equality of the sexes. Bremer believed that holding a vote before political parties had time to establish themselves would result in Baathists and Islamic extremists, the two best-organized forces in the country, dominating the outcome.
Speaking to reporters a few days after the fatwa was issued, Bremer expressed confidence that he would be able to implement "a process that produces a constitution that meets the general concerns that I understand Ayatollah Sistani mentioned."
Bremer was vague about how the authors would be selected. At the time, his aides privately said Iraqi political leaders and Americans would select the writers. But he pledged that the document was "not going to be written by the United States. It's not going to be written by the British. It's not going to be written by the U.N. It's going to be written by Iraqi people."
Overtures to the Ayatollah
Hoping to change Sistani's mind, political officers with the occupation authority sought a meeting. But every overture was met with a polite rebuff. "He didn't want it to look like he was cooperating with the Americans," said Mowaffak Rubaie, a member of the Governing Council who is close to Sistani.
By early July, Bremer had shifted focus to formation of the council, a 25-member body composed of American allies and political neophytes. In last-minute negotiations before the council was named, the prospective members demanded more authority for a variety of issues, including the drafting of a constitution. As a compromise, Bremer offered to let them form a commission that would identify the best way to select the drafters.
Soon after the council was formed, Bremer asked leaders of the country's largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, to meet with Sistani to see if a compromise could be reached on the constitution, said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, director of the party's political bureau. He said the party's leader at the time, Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, who was killed in an August car bombing in Najaf, talked to Sistani about backing away from the fatwa.
"We told Bremer there was no hope for compromise," Abdel-Mehdi said. "Ayatollah Sistani was firm in his position."
Bremer's Power Challenged
Upon hearing back from Abdel-Mehdi and other intermediaries, Bremer and his aides figured there was still a way to reach a compromise. They talked about recruiting other ayatollahs, such as Hakim, to issue statements warning about the dangers of immediate elections, U.S. officials familiar with the process said. And they sought to hammer out a middle-ground solution with Governing Council members, the officials said.
"There was still a lot of confidence we would find a way around the fatwa," one U.S. official said.
By August, after lengthy discussions, American political officers and several council members settled on the idea of a "partial election." Instead of allowing anyone to stand as a candidate and having to compile voter rolls for general elections, the occupation authority would organize caucuses in each governorate, or province, that would be limited to political, religious, tribal, academic and trade union leaders as well as other influential local figures approved by the Americans. The caucus would select the drafters of the constitution.
Although holding caucuses would take longer than directly appointing the authors, Bremer accepted the idea, as did several influential members of the Governing Council. "It was the ideal compromise," said council member Samir Shakir Mahmoud Sumaidy. "The process would be more democratic, but it would avoid the problems of a general election."
Despite their confidence, they had no idea what Sistani thought of the plan. The ayatollah remained silent.
In mid-August, the Governing Council selected a 25-member constitutional commission that began discussing ways to choose the drafters. Composed of lawyers, judges and academics, the commission held meetings with influential figures around the country, including Sistani.
What they heard in their meetings was strong support for general elections, several commission members recalled. In their conversation with Sistani, the commission did not even broach the idea of partial elections, said law professor Hikmat Hakim, one of the commission members.
"We told him his fatwa would be respected," Hakim said. "We didn't ask him about the partial elections."
On Sept. 8, the commission voted 24 to 0 to endorse general elections. "It was very difficult, if not impossible, to disregard the fatwa of Ayatollah Sistani," said Yass Khudier, another commission member.
Concerned that a unanimous endorsement of general elections would interfere with Bremer's timetable to wind up the occupation by the end of 2004, U.S. officials grew impatient and urged the council to press the commission for a compromise. "We told them to come up with other ideas," one council member said. "We told them to consider partial elections."
When the commission submitted its final report to the council on Sept. 30, it failed to resolve the impasse. The panel suggested the same three approaches that everyone had been talking about -- direct appointment, partial elections and general elections -- without choosing one of them.
As the report was being completed, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell sought to push the council to endorse partial elections, saying Iraqis should be given a six-month deadline to complete their constitution. Members bristled. "It was an unreasonable demand," said Dara Noureddine, the council's liaison with the commission. "We needed time to achieve consensus."
But consensus was elusive. The council had split into two factions. Sunni Arabs, Sunni Kurds and some moderate Shiites, such as Ahmed Chalabi, favored the partial elections. Other traditionalist Shiite groups, among them the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution and the Dawa party, cited Sistani's fatwa as a mandate and insisted on general elections.
"We felt elections were the only legitimate way to proceed," the Supreme Council's Abdel-Mehdi said. His party and several other Shiite council members told Bremer that they would not be able reach a consensus on partial elections.
Bremer refused to give up. He chafed at the idea that a cleric would be able to dictate Iraq's democratic transition. "Is the political structure of Iraq going to be in the hands of one man?" Bremer said to a group of visitors in October.
He urged the council's five traditionalist Shiites to try to persuade Sistani to support partial elections, said Rubaie, one of the five. Rubaie said he met with Sistani in October and explained the problems with general elections and the benefits of partial elections. Sistani was unmoved, Rubaie said. "He would not have it."
Shortly thereafter, Sistani delivered his first public pronouncements on partial elections. In written comments provided to The Washington Post, he said there could be "no substitute" for a general election.
Fatwas from other clerics in support of partial elections never materialized. Nobody wanted to take on Sistani.
Occupation Chief Yields
Shiite political leaders insisted an election could be organized in less than six months using food-ration rolls as a voter registry. But Bremer and his aides dismissed that, insisting an election could not be pulled off in less than two years.
But as U.S. military casualties escalated, Bremer and other Bush administration officials realized their plan would have to be rewritten. "Once it became clear we couldn't get around the election, we knew we had to do something else," one American involved in the process said.
On Nov. 9, Bremer called national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who was at FedEx Field for a Washington Redskins game. With no viable way to draft a quick constitution, both agreed a major change was needed, according to officials familiar with the talks.
The next day, Bremer hurried back to Washington. After two days of White House discussions, he returned to Baghdad with a new plan in hand.
On Nov. 14, he met with the council's nine rotating presidents to outline the administration's new approach: Iraq would be given sovereignty before it drafted a constitution. It was a dramatic concession.
The next day, he detailed the plan to the full Governing Council at the home of Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader serving as this month's council president.
In place of a permanent constitution, Bremer said, the council would be able to draft a basic law that would serve as an interim constitution to enshrine basic rights such as freedom of speech and worship, the separation of powers and civilian control over the military. Once the law was completed, he said, each province would hold caucuses to choose representatives for a 250-member transitional assembly whose members would serve as a provisional legislature. The assembly would also elect members for an executive branch from within its ranks, he said.
Bremer said he wanted the process to be completed by June 30, after which he would bestow sovereignty on the interim government. That government then would be responsible for drafting a constitution.
Although there was general support for Bremer's plan, members pressed him on details. Some protested his requirement that 15-person organizing committees would screen participants in the caucuses. Others questioned whether a 250-member assembly would be able to agree on a government. Others objected to the dissolution of the council after the new government is formed, saying the council should remain as an advisory body.
"The Governing Council has been recognized by the United Nations, the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference," Abdel-Mehdi said. "Why disband it? And what happens if the new government runs into trouble? We need the GC as a safety valve."
Several Shiite leaders expressed concern that the organizing committees might exclude candidates because they were Islamic activists. "The veto power should only apply to people who are Baathists or criminals," one Shiite member said.
Bremer did not want to delve into details, according to several members who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Instead, they said, Bremer wanted the council members to accept the plan and announce it to the news media as if they had created it themselves.
"He brushed aside the details. He just wanted an agreement," one member said. "It was 'my way or the highway.' "
In response, occupation authority officials insist the council had plenty of time to discuss the plan, which the officials said reflected the council's desire that the handover of sovereignty be accelerated.
Before his Nov. 10 flight to Washington, Bremer called Abdel-Mehdi in for a meeting.
"If we go for this option, do you think Sistani will accept?" Abdel-Mehdi recalled Bremer asking him.
"I'm sure," Abdel-Mehdi responded.
While Bremer was flying back from Washington, Abdel-Mehdi said he met with Sistani, who endorsed the broad contours of Bremer's new plan to hand over sovereignty to a provisional government, which would convene elections for a constitutional council.
But Abdel-Mehdi said Sistani never passed judgment on the details, particularly those that have concerned other Shiite leaders involving how members would be selected. In response to written questions about Bremer's new approach, Sistani's office said the ayatollah would not comment.
"He certainly has not blessed the plan," Abdel-Mehdi said.
http://iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2003&m=11&d=26&a=2This post deserves its own thread. Seriously.