New Iraqi government needs to assert itself

by Michael Jansen

Iraq's Governing Council surprised the world by staging a coup against UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, by naming a new interim administration and dissolving itself, all within a space of five days. The council, which emerged on the Iraqi political stage last July as an American lamb, clearly decided to exit as an Iraqi tiger.

The revolt of the lambs began last Friday when the council named Iyad Allawi, head of the Iraqi National Accord, prime minister. Brahimi was supposed to select office holders after consultations with the council, other Iraqis and US Viceroy L. Paul Bremer III. Instead, the council presented Allawi as a fait accompli.

Brahimi's idea that the transitional Cabinet, set to prepare the way for elections, should be a neutral government of technocrats rather than one of politicians was thrown out the window. Brahimi's candidate for premier, Hussein Shahristani, a nuclear scientist, was blackballed by the council and forced to turn down the offer of the post.

After three days of antagonistic wrangling with Brahimi and Bremer, the council announced that Sheikh Ghazi Yawar, a tribal chief, would be president rather than Brahimi's choice, Dr Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign minister and elder statesman. Allawi also proclaimed his 31-member Cabinet. Shortly thereafter the Governing Council disbanded, stunning most observers of the Iraqi scene.

A majority of council members have been pressing since last autumn for an extension of the Bremer-appointed body's mandate beyond the nominal handover to an Iraqi caretaker government on June 30-July 1. Brahimi had insisted on its dissolution and replacement, in July, by an assembly of several hundred members, while Bremer was prepared to expand the body into a transitional advisory council.

Although Bremer was apparently in the know and approved Allawi's premiership, it is not clear whether or not he was au fait with what happened on Tuesday when the council appointed Sheikh Yawar to the presidency and Ibrahim Jaffari, head of the Islamist Shiite Dawa party, and Roj Nuri Shawis, speaker of the Kurdish parliament, as vice presidents. Or to the naming of Cabinet ministers by Allawi and the council and its dissolution. The council was expected to continue in office until the occupation regime ended at the end of the month. Now Bremer will have to contend with a government set to carry on beyond his stay in Iraq, a body which seems to be ready to assert a certain amount of independence. The government could even prevent Bremer from passing a series of pre-emptive economic and other measures designed to solidify an indirect US occupation.

The Cabinet consists of a collection of largely talented men and women who can be expected to do their best in the jobs they have undertaken. Some are technocrats, like the oil minister, Thamir Ghadbhan, a former director general of the ministry, the minister of health, Dr Alaa Alwan, who formerly held the education portfolio, the minister of housing, Omar Farouk Demluji, a dean of engineering, and the minister of planning, Mahdi Al Hafidh. Eight are hangovers from the previous post-war government cobbled together by the council last September. An Iraqi friend made the point that the majority of the members of the new administration come from Iraq's cities rather than the countryside which dominated Saddam Hussein's Cabinets. He observed that it is the first time since Abdel Karim Kassem, who overthrew the monarchy in 1968, that Iraq's leader (Allawi) is from Baghdad. Mosul is also well represented, he said.

The transitional government will have seven months to prepare for elections to a representative assembly, to draft the constitution and to secure Iraqi "hearts and minds" for candidates from the parties on the council, which was generally despised as a powerless stooge of the US. The council, comprising a collection of canny politicians, chose survival over continuation in office.

The members of the new government, nominated by council members, reflect the country's ethnic and religious composition and represent the political interests of contending parties. By having their own ministers in the government, the council members will be in a strong position to influence the election process and ensure their own political future. During their final days in office, a number of council members verbally castigated the US for its failures, particularly on the security front, in an attempt to create some credibility for themselves.

The council coup could not have come at a worse time for the Bush administration.

France, Germany and China, three permanent members of the Security Council, have shown themselves unwilling to adopt a new resolution on Iraq which would leave the US in full control of the country after June 30. Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari flew to New York early this week, after the announcement of the Cabinet, to demand a hand-over of total rather than nominal "sovereignty" by the US occupation regime. His declarations on this issue were echoed by Iraq's new president, Sheikh Yawar.

By going along with the sidelining of Brahimi, the neoconservative Bush administration has demonstrated once again that it does not want to transfer responsibility for nation-building in Iraq to the UN, but intends to try to carry on as best it can. If the US refuses to grant the transitional government real power after the end of this month, it will be regarded by the Iraqis as a just another US surrogate, like its parent body, the Governing Council. So far, the administration has made it clear that the Iraqi military and police will be placed under US command, along with all foreign forces, the disbursement of Iraqi oil revenues will continue to be monitored by an international body, and 650 members of the occupation regime will be transferred to the US embassy in Iraq and deployed amongst the ministries where they have been sent as "advisors" during Bremer's rule.

Unless the new government can assert its control over its emerging armed forces and police, spend its own revenues, and run its own ministries, Iraq will not have true "sovereignty" and the US will remain an occupying power, spurring Iraqi popular resistance to the alien presence in the country.

This article was originally published in the Thursday, June 3, 2004 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.