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Jewish World Review April 6, 2005 / 26 Adar II, 5765 Desert Democrats of Mesopotamia By Tony Blankley
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
As I write this column, the well-deserved
wall-to-wall coverage of the Pope's death seems to have obscured from view
Iraqi news of an impending success in forming an Iraqi national unity
government. Here is the agreed-to line-up, as reported by the Washington
Times.
There will be a Sunni Speaker of the National Assembly, a
Kurdish president, a Shia prime minister, and Sunni and Shia vice
presidents. The Foreign Affairs ministry will go to a Kurd, the Defense
Ministry to a Sunni, and Oil, Interior and Finance Ministries to the Shia.
"They are still juggling with the names (of the ministers)," said the Dawa
Party spokesman. "In the coming week, we will hear more about the names of
the strong candidates."
Various other tricky controversies have been resolved or
partially resolved. The Kurdish peshmerga militias, which have been the more
or less independent military arm of the Kurdish faction, will be considered
part of the Iraqi armed forces, "but will be commanded and deployed by the
Kurdish regional government," according to the report in the Times.
On the all important matter of who gets what oil revenues, the
different factions agreed "in principle" that oil revenues will be
distributed evenly among all Iraqis "with special attention going to
communities that were deprived under Saddam, such as the Kurds, Marsh Arabs
and Shiites of southern Iraq." They have not yet agreed on the exact
numbers, and one can see rich ground for vigorous debate.
For instance, while the Kurds have unambiguously been severely
discriminated against and had oil resources taken from them (and murdered in
vast numbers) by the Hussein regime, economically, they were able to build a
thriving economy in the last years of that regime under the protection of
the Anglo-American no-fly zone. Doubtlessly the Kurds will base their claims
on what has been wrongly taken from them. Others may argue for revenue
distribution based on current economic conditions.
One of the other great disputes seems to have been largely
resolved, at least to the extent that they have agreed on the mechanism for
resolving it. The Hussein regime had expelled thousands of Kurds from their
historic, oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The current tentative agreement calls for
the repatriation of Kurds expelled from the city and "redrawing the
administrative boundaries of the governate to its 1968 borders." That was
the year that Saddam annexed pieces of Kirkuk to other, Sunni, governing
units.
After all these human movements are completed, there will be
regional referenda to determine whether they wish to be administered by
Baghdad or the regional Kurdish authorities.
These would be very impressive negotiations for a mature
democracy. Senators Harry Reid and Bill Frist would be throwing their arms
out slapping themselves on the back on television if they could achieve a
small fraction of such agreements in the Senate this year.
While the United States Senate — the greatest deliberative body
in the world, as they call themselves — is moving toward the "Nuclear
Option" in order to confirm some judicial nominations, the Desert Democrats
of Mesopotamia are negotiating like 19th century wing-collared, top-hatted
and tailed English statesmen. And our politicians don't labor under the
burden of 4,000 years of blood feuds, no historical experience with anything
other than dictatorship, and the daily bomb and mortar attacks of
terrorists, criminals, insurgents and prior regime last-ditchers.
This must be an invigorating moment to be a cultural
anthropologist. Is it possible that the art of negotiation, evolved to the
level of an art form in the Middle Eastern bazaars over the centuries, is
being adapted to substitute for their lack of parliamentary debate
experience, much as the cat's predatory skills, formed before there was man,
turned out to be perfectly adaptable to survival in the back allies of human
cities?
However they are managing it, the Iraqi politicians are moving
deliberately and shrewdly toward the formation of a viable democratic
government — despite the jeering of the Washington pundits. For almost two
years now, I have regularly appeared on television political talk shows with
most of the Anti-Bush Brigade of Washington wise guys and gals. While many
of them probably had never even heard of Sunnies, Shias and Kurds until the
Iraq War, they all professed to be quite certain that these ancient
divisions would surely lead Iraq into civil war after Bush's blunder of
overturning Saddam.
Their beating hearts seemed to catch the rhythm of the
insurgent's bomb blasts — their countenances looking increasingly more
satisfied as the pace of the bomb blasts and their predictions of civil war
came into an unholy unison. Of course, disloyalty, defeatism and demagoguery
were the farthest things from their minds. They were just reporting without
fear or favor — or facts. I'm sure they will be delighted at the impending
success of the Iraqi people in forming a democratic government — and how
that will reflect well on our president — and will promptly admit how wrong
they have been these last two years.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Tony Blankley is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
© 2005, Creators Syndicate |
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