[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Last Chance for Inclusion in Iraq

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Last Chance for Inclusion in Iraq

August 2, 2004
 


 

Steering Iraq away from civil war and toward a workable new
constitution is far more important than holding to an
arbitrarily chosen date on the transition calendar. That is
why it was right for Iraqi authorities to delay, for at
least a couple of weeks, a potentially crucial national
conference originally scheduled for this past weekend. The
specific function of the conference is to choose a national
council to oversee the current, narrowly based interim
government. But its real importance is the opportunity it
offers to attract dangerously alienated Sunni and Shiite
factions into peaceful political bargaining. 

Unfortunately, the choosing of conference delegates had
become so badly skewed that this possibility was being
squandered. Iraq cannot afford to pass up such chances. The
postponement creates a chance to try again. 

Much of the credit for this decision goes to the United
Nations, which had raised serious concerns about delegate
selection to anyone who would listen, from Iraqi
functionaries to American diplomats. Helping to organize
this conference is one of the main responsibilities
assigned to the U.N. by the most recent Security Council
resolution. 

The U.N.'s next challenge will be to persuade the interim
government to stop packing the conference with its own
allies at the expense of Sunni nationalists and radical
Shiites who might be willing to abandon armed resistance
for a real chance to shape the new Iraq. 

The armed insurgency has hardly melted away since the
nominal transfer of sovereignty five weeks ago, as the
weekend's spate of bombings made clear. It remains the
single biggest obstacle to Iraq's political and physical
reconstruction. A murderous car-bombing killed some 70
people last week, and almost every day seems to bring
kidnappings of foreign civilians, with grisly threats of
beheadings. 

The conference should also include a wide range of secular
Iraqis and independents not affiliated with the
exile-dominated political parties. 

Washington is now trying to keep a relatively low
diplomatic profile in Iraq, hoping to sustain the illusion
that the interim government is fully in charge. This is
disingenuous, and not only because of the continued
presence of nearly 140,000 American occupation troops. It
was the United States that created a woefully
unrepresentative governing council and that then let the
exile politicians on that thinly rooted body shape the
interim government. The Bush administration cannot afford
to simply stand aside and see these problems compounded. 

The deep alienation of so many pivotal groups of Iraqis is
one of the main reasons that the insurgency continues to
gain strength. Fixing this fundamental problem should begin
with a more wisely organized national conference. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/opinion/02mon1.html?ex=1092466911&ei=1&en=8896c5988232e9a5


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