[Mb-civic] The Kurd Card - Charles Krauthammer - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

The Kurd Card

By Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post
Friday, March 10, 2006; A19

Lost amid the news of all the bloodletting in Iraq is an important 
political development: The Kurds have switched sides. In the first 
parliament after the first set of elections, they allied themselves with 
the Shiite slate to produce the current Shiite-dominated government led 
by Ibrahim al-Jafari.

Now the Kurds have joined with the opposition Sunni and secular parties 
to oppose the Shiite bloc. The result is two large competing coalitions: 
(a) the Kurd-Sunni-secular bloc, which controls about 140 seats in the 
275-seat parliament and would constitute the barest majority, and (b) 
the Shiite bloc, which itself is a coalition of seven 
not-always-friendly parties and controls 130 seats, slightly less than a 
majority.

If only it were that simple, Iraq would have a new, secular-oriented 
government. But to protect minorities and force the creation of large 
governing coalitions, the Iraqi constitution essentially requires a 
two-thirds majority to form a government.

If we had that requirement in the United States, we might still be 
trying to settle the 2000 election. In Iraq, the result for now is 
stalemate, which could lead to disaster if the whole system 
disintegrates because of the impasse. Or it could lead to a more 
effective, less sectarian government than Jafari's.

The key question is who is going to control the two critical ministries: 
interior and defense. In Iraq, as in much of the world, interior does 
not control the national parks. It controls the police. And under the 
current government it has been under Shiite control and infiltrated by 
extreme Shiite militias. Some of these militias launched vicious 
reprisal raids against Sunnis after the bombing of the Golden Mosque in 
Samarra, jeopardizing the entire project of a national police force 
exercising legitimate authority throughout the country.

The main objective of U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who worked 
miracles in Afghanistan, is to make sure that the Interior Ministry is 
purged of sectarianism by giving it to some neutral figure, perhaps a 
secular Sunni with no ties to the Baath Party. Similarly with the 
Defense Ministry, which controls the army. The army has, by most 
accounts, handled itself well following the mosque bombing and 
subsequent riots, and it has acted as a reliably national institution. 
It is essential that it not get into sectarian hands.

Political success in Iraq rests heavily on these two institutions. Which 
is why these negotiations, tiresome and endless as they seem, are so 
important.

The immediate issue is the prime ministership. An internal ballot among 
the Shiite bloc brought, by a single vote, another term for Jafari. The 
critical vote putting him over the top was the faction controlled by 
Moqtada al-Sadr, the radically anti-American and pro-Tehran cleric whose 
home base is the Shiite slums of Baghdad. For Sadr, a weak and 
corruption-ridden government that allows conditions to deteriorate would 
be the perfect prelude to his gaining power.

Not all parts of the Shiite coalition are happy either with Jafari's 
ineffectiveness or with his political dependence on Sadr. Splits are 
already appearing in that uneasy alliance. But the most important 
challenge to Jafari is the Kurds. They are wary of Sadr and unhappy with 
Jafari, under whom everything -- services, security, trust -- is 
deteriorating.

Admittedly, part of their calculation is sectarian. This is, after all, 
Iraq. Jafari has impeded Kurdish claims on Kirkuk and infuriated the 
Kurds by traveling to Turkey (which opposes all Kurdish ambitions) 
without their approval and with a traveling party that did not include a 
single Kurd.

The Kurd-Sunni-secular bloc wants a new prime minister who will 
establish a national unity government. Because the United States wants 
precisely the same outcome, the Kurd defection is very good news in a 
landscape of almost unrelenting bad news. The other good news is a split 
in the Shiite bloc, with a near-majority that favors a more technocratic 
prime minister and is chafing at Sadr's influence. Additionally, the 
Sunni insurgency is in the midst of its own internecine strife between 
the local ex-Baathists, who are not particularly religious and want 
power, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's foreign jihadists, for whom killing 
Shiites combines sport and religion and who care not a whit for the 
future of the country. There are numerous reports of Sunni tribes 
declaring war on these foreign jihadists and of firefights between them.

The security situation is grim and the neighboring powers malign. The 
one hope for success in Iraq is political. The Kurdish defection has 
produced the current impasse. That impasse has contributed to the mood 
of despair here at home. But the defection holds open the best 
possibility for political success: an effective, broad-based national 
unity government that, during its mandatory four-year term, presides 
over an American withdrawal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/09/AR2006030902195.html?nav=hcmodule
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060310/b2cebd5b/attachment.htm