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One has not yet forgotten about the horrors of Katrina and Rita in the United States and the terrible harvest of death and destruction it left in its wake and those brought about by Stan which hit Guatemala and Ecuador where tens of thousands perished and a much greater number of innocent people were dislocated from their dwellings and homes when it paid them its most unwelcome visit, which resulted in the total destruction of whole cities and the disappearance of hundreds of smaller villages and minor population centers. But even the few serious efforts were being undertaken and starting to alleviate the misery and agonies nature struck another very severe blow in another part of the world hundreds of miles away in central Asia, a hurricane of magnitude 7.6 degrees on the Richter scale (out of 9 degrees) struck northern Pakistan with its epicenter in the capital of Kashmir, Mozafarabad. Kashmir has been the object of a very bitter conflict between India and Pakistan. To complete the incredible unusual week it was reported that the chicken influenza has been spreading very rapidly and has already reached Turkey, next door to Iraq. The worry is that it would reach our country and that would be just the extra misery that this country needs.
The only excuses the leaders of these devastated countries were telling their people was that the calamity was so severe and it was beyond the ability of anyone to deal with it. The real tragedy was that the news of this calamity was only after a week being relegated to third or fourth place in the news bulletins and Iraq was coming back to occupy the number one place in the news bulletins and those from television as a result of the very unexpected statement shortly before the referendum. On October 12, an agreement was reached with the Sunnis to drop their opposition to the draft of the permanent resolution which was reached after a very long and strenuous efforts by the other components of the Iraqi society, the Kurds and Shiites involved a good deal of giving to the Sunnis in an attempt to woo them into the game and ensure their participation in the nation building efforts which have been going on for so many months now this was in fact very good news to the Americans who were very seriously worried that the rejection of the draft of the constitution would necessitate the need to start the whole process again at a time when the popularity of the American move in Iraq was at its lowest ebb and the popularity of the administration and that of president Bush himself at its lowest ebb. A success in Iraq, will go without any doubt to their American’s man in Baghdad Dr. Zalmay Khalizad. Ambassador Khalilzad also known as king Zad is a career diplomat, a very patient, quiet and a very capapable diplomat an American of an Afghani ancestry. King Zad was involved in the Iraqi saga from very early on, he was for a very long time and before the invasion the coordinator of the various Iraqi opposition groups and has know all their factions and their leaders and was very familiar with their ethnic and religious diversity, their ambitions, their abilities and their weaknesses. These people were now the political leaders of the country, its government and its various institutions. The more regular visitors to this website might remember that the Iraqis were promised a finished draft of a permanent constitution by August 15, 2005, which would then be sent to the newly elected national assembly, which in its turn would present it to the Iraqi population on October 15, 2005 in a referendum for ratification. A 75 member drafting committee was initially selected from the ranks of the newly elected assembly and was composed of the two political groups that have won the elections namely the Shiites and the Kurds, the other major component of the Iraqi society, the Sunnis were not represented they have mostly boycotted the election and had only a miniscule representation in the assembly so they were not included in the constitution drafting committee, in fact they were in the beginning deliberately excluded by the Americans themselves from all the nation building processes which followed the fall down of Saddam and the dismantling of his regime. The Sunnis were accused of having been the backbone of support of Saddam’s regime, but the Sunnis were now beginning to feel more confident in their ability to bring down the whole American efforts and paradoxically, because of one extremely serious blunder by the Americans themselves namely the controversial clause in the law administering Iraq the kind of interim constitution which was promulgated by the famous Paul bremer the first American proconsul who was in charge of the civil administration of the country after its invasion, the clause which gave three out of the 18 provinces which make up modern Iraq the prerogative to veto the draft if they rejected it, this clause was in the beginning inserted to appease the Kurds, but it was now the Sunnis best card. The Kurds did not need it now and they were very secure in their position, but it has now turned in the Sunni’s trump card they had not only three governorates but four and were potentially in a position to turn the table upside down and force a starting again of the whole process. For these reasons the Americans started to woo the Sunnis and encourage them to come over and participate by very visible behind the scenes maneuvers and convince them of the necessity for them to become actively involved in the nation building processes claiming all the time that these efforts were being conducted by the Iraqis themselves which was clearly not very true. The new U.S. ambassador in Iraq Zalmay Khalizad was actually very much engaged in these maneuvers, 15 Sunnis were added to the constitution drafting committee were added to the original 75. The Sunnis were now becoming increasingly conscious of their potential power and were starting to make some very unrealistic demands. A few days before the referendum they broke ranks and differed amongst themselves, some were advocating a yes vote and others insisting on carrying on the fight to the finish. The referendum started on Thursday, October 13, the Iraqi detainees and those in the hospitals voting, but the real exercise started at 7:00 AM on the scheduled date October 15, and the first to cast their vote were the interim President and the Prime Minister who cast their ballots in a center which was located in the massively protected area in central Baghdad where Saddam’s palace and some of his most sensitive organizations were located which is known nowadays as the green zone and is housing the American and the British embassies and the offices of some of the highest ranking Iraqi official the president and his two deputies and the prime minister and his government. This center was one of a 6,200 centers distributed all over the country and opened from 7:00 AM to 5:00 PM [local time] to allow the 15.7 million Iraqis who we were told were eligible to participate in the referendum which was again conducted by the organization which oversaw the previous election a United Nations structure called the independent high commission for the elections in Iraq. The referendum was carried out under unprecedented and extremely stringent security precautions which was undertaken by a 100,000 Iraqi policemen and military plus another 100,000 mainly American troops. The country was under a very long night curfew, its international borders and air space were closed for 5 days and on the day of the balloting all movements of vehicles were prohibited and the voting centers were cordoned from a very long distance away. The final results of the referendum will be known in a few days time, most probably at the end of next week. A few very interesting trends are already well established, there has been a very good turnover of voters in some f the most important Sunni strongholds against a much less than expected participation in the Kurdish areas in the northern part of the country. There was a very definite improvement in the security situation during the day each of these phenomena were explained on at least two or three sometimes very bizarre theories, but I am not interested in these explanations or the fantastic analyses of the people who are continually educating us about the current Iraqi mess. I would like to stress that I am certain that the draft of the charter will be ratified by a good majority of those who participated in the exercise, but there is a very important caveat. If the Sunnis are going to continue their opposition to the nation building processes and reject the American, the Shiites and the Kurds efforts in convincing to participate in the nation building efforts then we are going to face a very serious trouble and would go back to the dangerous crossroad, which I was talking about in my last letter to this blog.
Dr. Najeeb Hanoudi
Amman/Jordan
Sunday, October 16, 2005
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