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Difficult Democracy in Iraq
June 13, 2007 12:59 AM

If you want an idea of how difficult it's been to forge a working government in Iraq, read this article from the NY Times.

It starts out:

Iraq's political leaders have failed to reach agreements on nearly every law that the Americans have demanded as benchmarks, despite heavy pressure from Congress, the White House and top military commanders. With only three months until progress reports are due in Washington, the deadlock has reached a point where many Iraqi and American officials now question whether any substantive laws will pass before the end of the year.

And goes down hill from there:

For the handful of party leaders with the power to make deals, the promise of compromise now carries less allure than the possibility for domination. Long-suppressed Shiites and Kurds now see total victory within their grasp. The same forces of entropy and obstinacy have also severed links between the party leaders and their constituencies. In Shiite areas of southern Iraq, Sunni areas of the west and for Kurds in the north, Iraq's central government has become increasingly irrelevant as competing groups within each faction maneuver at the local level for control of public money and jobs. In many cases, especially through mosques, Iran and other foreign powers often provide more institutional support than Baghdad. As Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki told an American military commander on Monday, "There are two mentalities in this region, conspiracy and mistrust."

The kicker, though, is that our pal, Ahmad Chalabi, has planted himself back in the thick of things and he's not making it any easier to forge a compromise on the one issue he's been put in charge of - De-Baathification:

Ever since the Americans purged former members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein from Iraq's government soon after the 2003 invasion, they have been trying to reform their policy. The latest effort began this spring with the grandly titled Reconciliation and Accountability Law, a proposal backed by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the senior American envoy in Iraq until April. The draft decreed that all former Baathists who had worked in the government could collect their pensions. It opened government jobs to thousands more, and set a three-month time limit for Iraqi citizens to bring lawsuits against former members of the Baath Party. But the law was stymied by Ahmad Chalabi, who headed Iraq's de-Baathification commission. Mr. Chalabi, the former Pentagon protege, relies on the commission for an official role in Iraq's government. Having just renovated a spacious office in the Green Zone, he has strongly opposed any effort to weaken his position or the country's policy on former Baathists.

There is no solution to this mess unless it comes from the Iraqis themselves. It's that simple. Another day and another American death...for what?


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