Posted on 09/26/2005 12:55:52 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
BAGHDAD (AFP) - The rushed drafting of Iraq's new constitution has deepened sectarian rifts and is likely to fuel the Sunni-led insurgency and hasten the country's violent break up, a leading think-tank said.
"Instead of healing the growing divisions between Iraq's three principal communities -- Shiites, Kurds and Sunni Arabs -- a rushed constitutional process has deepened rifts and hardened feelings," the International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report.
Iraq "appears to be heading toward de facto partition and full-scale civil war" said the report, unless Washington makes "a determined effort to broker a true compromise between Shiites, Kurds and Sunni Arabs."
Iraqis are due to vote on October 15 on the draft charter that emerged earlier this month after weeks of haggling between the different parties, although Sunni Arab leaders have already expressed unhappiness with the document.
Sunnis, who held power for decades, are notably unhappy about the rigorous purging of former members of deposed leader Saddam Hussein's Baath party and about Iraq's federal future as laid down in the document.
They feel that the text "threatens their existential interests by implicitly facilitating the country's dissolution, which would leave them landlocked and bereft of resources," said the report by the Brussels-based group.
In a federal Iraq, Sunni Arabs who predominate in central and western areas are concerned that they will be deprived of oil revenue coming from fields largely in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south.
Iraqi Shiites and Kurds dominate parliament to the detriment of Sunni Arabs who largely boycotted January's elections out of fear of insurgent reprisals or disenchantment with the political process.
The failure to agree a government for months after the vote further reduced the time available for agreeing the draft constitution ahead of the August 15 deadline laid down by the US-drafted Transitional Administrative Law.
The ICG said that Sunni Arabs are also unlikely to be able to muster the two-thirds no vote in three provinces that would see the draft sent back for rewriting and new general elections held in December.
Furthermore, key passages in the controversial document "are both vague and ambiguous and so carry the seeds of future discord".
The ICG regrets that US President George W. Bush's administration "chose to sacrifice inclusiveness for the sake of an arbitrary deadline, apparently in hopes of preparing the ground for a significant military draw-down in 2006".
Amid increasing domestic calls for the US to pull troops out and with "scant evidence of progress on the ground... meeting political deadlines has become a substitute for genuine progress."
Sunni Arabs "appear to have made a good-faith effort to participate" but have been excluded from making a meaningful contribution to the draft constitution, it said.
The US must now intervene as Iraqi parties "have shown they lack the incentive, ability or political maturity to reach an acceptable compromise text".
With less than three weeks to go before the referendum, the key lies in accommodating fundamental Sunni concerns without crossing Shiite or Kurdish "red lines".
One possibility the report cites is to limit the number of governorates that can create a federal region, thereby assuaging Sunni fears of a Shiite "super-region" in the south.
Without a national consensus embodied in a permanent constitution, there is little that can halt the slide toward civil war, chaos and dissolution, said the report.
"Only a determined political intervention by the US might be capable of creating the elusive political consensus that could help prevent the country's violent break-up."
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=1139&l=1
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Crisis Group's Board
Lord Patten of Barnes Chairman, Crisis Group Former European Commissioner for External Relations, UK
Gareth Evans President & CEO Former Foreign Minister of Australia
Executive Committee Morton Abramowitz Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey
Emma Bonino Member of European Parliament Former European Commissioner
Cheryl Carolus Former South African High Commissioner to the UK Former Secretary General of the ANC
Maria Livanos Cattaui* Former Secretary-General, International Chamber of Commerce
Yoichi Funabashi Chief Diplomatic Correspondent & Columnist, The Asahi Shimbun, Japan
William Shawcross Journalist and author, UK
Stephen Solarz* Former U.S. Congressman
George Soros Chairman, Open Society Institute
William O. Taylor Chairman Emeritus, The Boston Globe, U.S.
*Vice-Chairs
Adnan Abu-Odeh Former Political Adviser to King Abdullah II and to King Hussein; former Jordan Permanent Representative to UN
Kenneth Adelman Former U.S. Ambassador and Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
Ersin Arioglu Member of Parliament, Turkey; Chairman Emeritus, Yapi Merkezi Group
Diego Arria Former Ambassador of Venezuela to the UN
Zbigniew Brzezinski Former U.S. National Security Advisor to the President
Victor Chu Chairman, First Eastern Investment Group, Hong Kong
Wesley Clark Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe
Pat Cox Former President of European Parliament
Ruth Dreifuss Former President, Switzerland
Uffe Ellemann-Jensen Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Denmark
Mark Eyskens Former Prime Minister of Belgium
Leslie H. Gelb Former President of Council on Foreign Relations, U.S.
Bronislaw Geremek Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Poland
I.K. Gujral Former Prime Minister of India
Carla Hills Former U.S. Secretary of Housing; former U.S. Trade Representative
Lena Hjelm-Wallén Former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister, Sweden
James C.F. Huang Deputy Secretary General to the President, Taiwan
Swanee Hunt Founder and Chair of Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace; former U.S. Ambassador to Austria
Asma Jahangir UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions; former Chair Human Rights Commission of Pakistan
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf** Senior Advisor, Modern Africa Fund Managers; Former Liberian Minister of Finance
Shiv Vikram Khemka Founder and Executive Director (Russia) of SUN Group, India
James V. Kimsey Founder and Chairman Emeritus of America Online, Inc
Bethuel Kiplagat Former Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kenya
Wim Kok Former Prime Minister, Netherlands
Trifun Kostovski Member of Parliament, Macedonia; founder of Kometal Trade Gmbh
Elliott F. Kulick Chairman, Pegasus International, U.S.
Joanne Leedom-Ackerman Novelist and journalist, U.S.
Todung Mulya Lubis Human rights lawyer and author, Indonesia
Ayo Obe Chair of Steering Committee of World Movement for Democracy, Nigeria
Christine Ockrent Journalist and author, France
Friedbert Pflüger Foreign Policy Spokesman of the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group in the German Bundestag
Victor M. Pinchuk Member of Parliament, Ukraine; founder of Interpipe Scientific and Industrial Production Group
Surin Pitsuwan Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Thailand
Itamar Rabinovich President of Tel Aviv University; former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. and Chief Negotiator with Syria
Fidel V. Ramos Former President of the Philippines
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen Former Secretary General of NATO; former Defence Secretary, UK
Mohamed Sahnoun Special Adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General on Africa
Ghassan Salamé Former Minister, Lebanon; Professor of International Relations, Paris
Salim A. Salim Former Prime Minister of Tanzania; former Secretary General of the Organisation of African Unity
Douglas Schoen Founding Partner of Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, U.S.
Pär Stenback Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Finland
Thorvald Stoltenberg Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Norway
Grigory Yavlinsky Chairman of Yabloko Party and its Duma faction, Russia
Uta Zapf Chairperson of the German Bundestag Subcommittee on Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-proliferation
Ernesto Zedillo Former President of Mexico; Director, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
** Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has voluntarily stepped down from the Crisis Group Board of Trustees for the duration of her Liberian presidential campaign, in order that no question of conflict of interest arises, or appears to arise.
Chairmen Emeritus Martti Ahtisaari Former President, Finland
George J. Mitchell Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader
Considering the constitution is light years ahead of anything else in the middle-east, I'd say it a huge accomplishment.
But ofcourse the MSM will do everything possible to derail it.
“In just eight years since Crisis Group's founding, you have become one of the world's premier Non-Governmental Organizations, working from the Balkans to Burma, from Central Africa to Colombia, and many places in between... ICG has an expert presence and staying power in places that make headlines, as well as in places which tend to get crowded out of them. ICG tells power what it thinks and advocates with both passion and effectiveness. It is a continuous source of ideas and insights for Governments, Parliaments, International Institutions, the media and fellow NGOs. In short, ICG is an organization that matters...”
- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, 10 October 2003
The full text of the remarks of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell at the International Crisis Group Reception in Washington DC on 10 October 2003 can be found here.
Well, hey, the U.S. took longer to work out a constitution and we managed to avoid a civil war...
...until 1861.
Of course a few weeks ago, they were moaning the fact they had missed the deadline, now it was rushed!
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
"Sunnis, who held power for decades"....
Sounds like they were very successful at the ballot box. NOT!
They held power through terror, torture, and the mass murder
of hundreds of thousands. Now these clowns are "concerned" about the poor neglected Sunnis, who are still causing murder and mayhem in Iraq. F*** the Sunnis, and the same goes for this pile of doofusses.
These bastards never run out of names, do they? I mean isn't it so that every other day some "prestigious" group we never heard of has so stupid crap to say about us?
George Soros and this group are traitorous scumbags. Please, let's call them what they are.
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