Despite US pressure, no agreement reached on Iraqi constitution

The reasons for the delay serve to highlight the utterly anti-democratic and illegitimate character of the entire process. Under the protection of thousands of US troops and completely sealed off from the Iraqi people, the layers of the Iraqi ruling class who have been prepared to collaborate with the colonial conquest of the country are using sectarianism and communalism to try and lay claim to a portion of the spoils of war.

The inability to reach an agreement by August 15 was due to the refusal of Arab Sunni legislators to bow down to the demands of the Kurdish nationalist and main Shiite fundamentalist organisations that the future Iraqi state have a federal structure, with a weak central government and powerful autonomous regions.

The three Kurdish provinces of northern Iraq are already an autonomous zone, with its own regional government and armed forces. The Kurdish leadership is demanding that the constitution expand their territory to include the oil-rich area around the city of Kirkuk. At one point, the Kurdish delegation proposed that the constitution specifically give the Kurdish region the right to secede from Iraq in eight years time.

The Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) has raised demands for the establishment of an autonomous region in southern Iraq, incorporating nine, predominantly Shiite-populated provinces where some 50 percent of the country’s oil industry is located. Both the Shiite and Kurdish factions demanded that regional governments be given control over most of the income generated by the oil industry.

Federalism has been endorsed by the main Shiite cleric Ali al-Sistani, who has consistently advocated taking advantage of the US invasion of Iraq to gain greater wealth and political power for the Shia elite and clergy. As well as autonomy, SCIRI and Da’awa called for the constitution to give “a guiding role” to the Shiite clergy and assert Islam as “the primary source” of the country’s legal code. Such a measure would make way for Iranian-style religious courts—giving Sistani and the Shiite religious establishment another source of privilege.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/iraq-a16.shtml