March 10, 2006
The Kurd Defection May Offer Sliver of Hope
By Charles
Krauthammer
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.
©
2006, Washington Post Writers Group
