Iraq.....from slow boil to rolling boil?

Juan Cole reported on the Sunni's unhappiness over a last minute change in voting rules.

The Sunni Arabs of Iraq have for some time had a sneaking suspicion that the Shiites and the Kurds whom the Americans had installed in power in Iraq intended to marginalize and humiliate them. In case they were still in any doubt, the Shiite-dominated parliament drove the point home on Monday. It voted in a provision that the new constitution can only be defeated by a 2/3s majority of registered votes in three provinces, not a 2/3s majority of actual voters. The three-province veto was slipped into the interim constitution at the last moment by the Kurds in late February or early March of 2004, when everyone on the Interim Governing Council was exhausted and too tired to argue. (Larry Diamond tells the story in Squandered Victory). The Kurds wanted to ensure that the Shiites would not craft a constitution that was unacceptable to them (i.e. that forbade provincial confederations with special claims on resources and semi-autonomy of the sort formed by Irbil, Dohuk and Sulaymaniyah under the no-fly zone, as "Kurdistan").

The 3-province veto was never accepted by the religious Shiites on the IGC, and was explicitly rejected by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, on the grounds that it was undemocratic and held the majority hostage to a minority. Indeed, Sistani forbade the UN to endorse the TAL or interim Constitution in its resolutions on Iraq precisely because he did not want the veto internationally recognized. In the event, the Kurds got exactly the constitution they wanted (since Sistani dislikes loose federalism and wants a strong central government, he did not). So the Kurdistan Regional Assembly has already affirmed the new constitution, even though the federal parliament never took a vote on it.

So now that a document has emerged that the Kurds and Shiites are happy with, the Shiites have finally moved to defang the 3-province veto. The Kurds surely originally envisaged that it would be defeated if 2/3s of voters in 3 provinces rejected it in the referendum. The over-all turnout of voters in the Jan. 30, 2005 elections was about 58 percent. That rate of turn-out would have forestalled the 3-province veto if it was on the basis of registered voters, since 42 percent of voters did not participate. If anyone cares about the original intent of the legislators, this new law is clearly just wrong.

Now The Washington Post reports that the U.N. Eyes Iraq Voting Law Changes.

UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations has expressed its concern to the Iraqi government that last-minute changes to its electoral laws before the Oct. 15 referendum on a draft constitution do not meet international standards, a U.N. spokesman said Tuesday.

U.N. officials have been meeting with Iraqi authorities and are confident that Iraq will ultimately agree to sound electoral rules, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.


Sunni Arab leaders have threatened to boycott the Oct. 15 vote because of new rules put forth by the Shiite-led parliament, which make it nearly impossible for Sunnis to defeat the document at the polls.

This is truly another no win situation that Cheney and Rumsfeld's gang that couldn't shoot straight has gotten itself into. If the constitution fails we will have chaotic civil war and if it does pass we will have chaotic civil war. And in the middle will be the American troops.