Postcolonial Iraq

Farsakh Comment on Future Vision

2007-03-18T15:46:00.000+01:00

Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas may have affirmed that they want a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but it may be more promising to return to a much older idea. There is talk once again of a one-state bi-national solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Oslo peace process failed to bring Palestinians their independence and the withdrawal from Gaza has not (...) Unfortunately, the article's "sense of decency" - or rather Le Monde diplomatique's - doesn't allow for talks about the consociational form of democracy at the heart of the present vision. So you'll better read the Manifesto or any article by Prof. As'ad Ghanem to make quite sure this time it's not about Fatah's old "secular and democratic state."

Time for a Bi-national State

By Leila Farsakh
March 19, 2007

There is talk once again of a one-state bi-national solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Oslo peace process failed to bring Palestinians their independence and the withdrawal from Gaza has not created a basis for a democratic Palestinian state as President George Bush had imagined: The Palestinians are watching their territory being fragmented into South African-style bantustans with poverty levels of over 75%. The area is heading to the abyss of an apartheid state system rather than to a viable two-state solution, let alone peace.

There have been a number of recent publications proposing a one-state solution as the only alternative to the current impasse. Three years ago, Meron Benvenisti, Jerusalem’s deputy mayor in the 1970s, wrote that the question is “no longer whether there is to be a bi-national state in Palestine-Israel, but which model to choose.” Respected intellectuals on all sides, including the late Edward Said; the Arab Israeli member of the Knesset, Azmi Bishara; the Israeli historian Illan Pape; scholars Tanya Reinhart and Virginia Tilley; and journalists Amira Haas and Ali Abunimeh, have all stressed the inevitability of such a solution.

The idea of a single, bi-national state is not new. Its appeal lies in its attempt to provide an equitable and inclusive solution to the struggle of two peoples for the same piece of land. It was first suggested in the 1920s by Zionist leftwing intellectuals led by philosopher Martin Buber, Judah Magnes (the first rector of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Haïm Kalvarisky (a member of Brit-Shalom and later of the National Union). The group followed in the footsteps of Ahad Ha’am (Asher Hirsch Ginsberg, one of the great pre-state Zionist thinkers).

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Ghanem Comment on The Future Vision

2007-02-12T18:43:00.000+01:00

Dismantling the tyranny of the majority (pdf)

By As'ad Ghanem*
January 29, 2007

/.../
I believe this document can be defined as an historic event in the annals of the Palestinians in Israel and of their relationship with the Jewish majority and establishment. This is the first time a representative national body of Palestinians in Israel has prepared and published a basic paper that describes both the existing situation and the changes that are needed across a broad spectrum of Arab life: relations with the Jewish majority, the legal situation, land, social and economic issues, the status of civil and political institutions, etc. The document was written by activists from all political tendencies among the Palestinians in Israel (including some who later opposed the positions adopted), and delineates the achievements necessary for defining the future relationship between the majority and the minority in the state of Israel.

In my view, the document is based on three theoretical principles that constitute the foundations of human social, political and cultural development for at least the past two centuries. First is the principle of human rights: the document addresses the fundamental rights of the Palestinians in Israel as human beings--to economic and social development, women's and children's rights, to live without violence, etc.--and demands their realization.

The second principle invokes civil equality: the basic democratic right to equality before the law and the demand to annul laws, structures and symbols that alienate the Palestinian citizens of Israel and ensure Jewish superiority. And the third principle is that of the right of communities to self-determination, including the autonomous right to manage specific areas of life such as their own education and cultural and religious affairs. In order to realize these foundations, the document's writers demand the implementation in Israel of a consociational system. This would replace the existing liberal system that is exploited automatically by the Jewish majority and that, indeed, constitutes a "tyranny of the majority" in which, in the name of liberal democracy, that majority takes draconian steps against the Palestinian minority and its fundamental rights.

Jewish reaction representing the Zionist consensus was expressed to a significant extent by journalist Tommy Lapid, Professor of Law Amnon Rubinstein and historian Professor Alex Jacobson. They display a well-known nationalist readiness to recognize the right to self-determination of a single group in a pluralist reality, a demand anchored in the extreme nationalism that in the twentieth century was represented by Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and many additional countries and that ultimately led to disasters of historic dimensions. This model ignores the compromises reached in Spain after Franco, in Belgium, in Canada since the Quiet Revolution and in severalother instances in which a pluralist reality facilitated solutions based on mutual recognition and the right of self-determination and self-rule for more than one national or ethnic group within a single political framework.
/.../

* Dr. As'ad Ghanem heads the Government & Political Philosophy Department at the School of Political Sciences, University of Haifa and is chair of the executive committee of the Ibn-Khaldun Association. He was an active participantin the preparation of the document described here.

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Rekhess Comment on The Future Vision

2007-02-12T18:12:00.000+01:00

On "Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel"
Tel Aviv Notes (pdf)

By Elie Rekhess

December 19, 2006

Several position papers on the future of Jewish-Arab relations in Israel have recently beenissued. The most striking is "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel," prepared bythe National Committee of the Heads of Arab Local Councils and endorsed by the Supreme Follow-up Committee of the Arabs in Israel. What has gained the most attention is its national-historical perspective on three issues:

First, the document rejects the nature of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state which, the authors argue, perpetuates the inferior status of its Arab citizens. The present system, says the document, should be supplanted with a "consociational democracy," namely a bi-national state model, based on full power-sharing between the two national groups in government, distribution of resources, decision-making, proportional representation and the mutual right of veto on crucial decisions. The country's national symbols, such as the anthem, flag and emblem, would also be modified.

Secondly, the Committee's paper calls for full equality in the civic, national and historical spheres, including, inter alia, equal rights of immigration and citizenship quotas, a demand which may imply the elimination of the "Law of Return" allowing Jews to freely immigrate to Israel. Special reference is made to the socioeconomic differences between the Jewish and Arab sectors, particularly with regard to land, urban planning, housing, infrastructure, economic development, social change and education.

Demands for equal rights are intertwined with those insisting on the endorsement of the Palestinian historical narrative and recognition of the Arabs in Israel as an indigenous minority. The document calls for an official cknowledgement of the 1948 Nakba ("calamity"; referring to the defeat and displacement of the Palestinians). "Internal refugees" who remained in Israel and whose land was expropriated should be allowed to return to their original lands, and Waqf (religious endowment) property, administrated since 1948 by the Israeli government, should revert to the control of the Muslim community.

Thirdly, the paper suggests structuralinstitutional changes, specifically self-rule (autonomy) in education, religious and cultural affairs, and the media, in order to guarantee the unrestricted development of the Arab minority’s specific collective identity. It also proposes the establishment of an elected, country-wide representative body for the Arabs in Israel.

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The Future Vision Of The Palestinian-Arabs In Israel

2007-02-04T09:46:00.000+01:00

The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel (pdf)

Report by

The National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel - 2006

Introduction

In order to collect various versions in the self-definition of our entity, our relation with the rest of the Palestinians and our relation with the State and to connect them to create a firm integral homogeneous vision, we, the Arab Palestinians in Israel, should have a clear self-definition that includes all the political, cultural, economic, educational and social aspects.

As the chairman of the High Follow up Committee for the Arabs in Israel, I have invited a group of Arab intellectuals (see attached list of names) to a discussion aiming at crystallizing a strategic future collective vision of the Palestinian Arabs citizens of Israel.

I express my gratitude to this group for its efforts and commitment in the march that lasted for more than a year during which four long meetings were held. Documents attached to this paper are the outcome of this march. They are also the outcome of a collective effort during which its content was discussed and ratified. The core of the work was subject to summaries of researches written by some participants in the group, proposing general trends for a change required in the future of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel.

This outcome is a property of the group, the High Follow-Up Committee and the National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel. These documents focus on affiliation, identity and citizenship of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel. They also focus on the legal status, land and housing, economic and social development, educational vision for Arab education, Arab Palestinian culture and on the political and national work of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel.

It is worth mentioning here that the group did not have the chance to discuss other major issues in detail.

The importance of this work lies within the discussion which will follow, as a publication of this document. It is not necessary for all representatives of political streams and parties, represented by the Follow-Up Committee, to approve of this document. Rather, the main goal is to spark the public discussion concerning thefuture of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel.

Shawqi Khateeb
Chairman

/…/

The Palestinian Arabs in Israel and their relation to the State of Israel

/…/

Israel can not be defined as a democratic State. It can be defined as an ethnocratic state such as Turkey, Srilanka, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia (and Canada forty years ago). These countries have engaged their minorities in the political, social and economic aspects of life, in a very limited and unequal way. This comes amidst a continued and firm policy of control and censorship which guarantee the hegemony of the majority and marginalizing the minority.

The principles of an ethnocratic system include:

1. The control of an ethnic group on the State system.
2. Focusing on ethnicity (and religion) and not citizenship, as a basic principle of the distribution of resources and abilities and undermining the “people” (citizens in general).
3. A gradual ethnic process of politics based on ethnic classes.
4. A permanent state of instability.
5. The ethnocratic logic provides tools for understanding societies that prefers one certain group over others; it also dominates the dynamics between different ethnic groups.

To maintain the ethnocratic system, Israel has implemented several rules concerning the Palestinian Arabs in Israel:

1. Cutting all identity relations between the Palestinian Arabs in Israel and the rest of the Palestinian People and the Arab and Islamic Nation. Israel has tried to create a new group of “Israeli Arabs”.

2. Preventing Palestinian Arabs in Israel from keeping relations with their brothers in Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and, thePalestinians refugees.

3. Opposition of organizing the Palestinian Arabs in Israel in any form that can be of a contradiction to the aspirations of the Jewish majority and the state in terms of parliamentary representation and preventing them from exercising any non parliamentarian political activities of public struggles.

4. Opposing the Palestinian Arab leadership attempts to building a vision adverse to consolidate the Status of the Arab minority in the Jewish state which ultimately accepts the Jewish control of the state, its resources and abilities.

5. Forcing the Palestinian Arabs in Israel to accept resource allocation on a basis of ethnicity rather than citizenship. This aims at maintaining the Jewish superiority and the Palestinian Arab inferiority in Israel.

The Palestinian Arabs in Israel are in need of changing their status. While they are preserving their Arab Palestinian identity, they need to obtain their full citizenship in the State and its institutions. They also aspire to attain institutional self-rule in the field of education, culture and religion that is in fact part of fulfilling their rights as citizens and as part of the Israeli state. They also seek to obtain full equality with the Jewish majority.

Such self-rule within the State poses a system based on Consensual Democracy. A system embodies the presence of two groups, the Jews and the Palestinians. Such system would guarantee real resource, leadership and decision making participation.

The Palestinians in Israel should demand the following, from the State:

1. The State should acknowledge responsibility of the Palestinian Nakba (tragedy of 1948) and its disastrous consequences on the Palestinians in general and the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel in particular. Israel should start by rectifying the damage that it had caused and should consider paying compensation for its Palestinian citizens as individuals and groups for the damages resulted from the Nakba and the continuous iscriminating policies derived from viewing them as enemies and not as itizens that have a right to appose the state and challenge its rules.

2. The State should recognize the Palestinian Arabs in Israel as an indigenous national group (and as a minority within the international conventions) that has the right within their citizenship to choose its representatives directly and be responsible for their religious, educational and cultural affairs. This goup should be given the chance to create its own national institutions relating to all living aspects and stop the policies of dividing between the different religious sects within the Palestinian Arabs in Israel.

3. The State has to acknowledge that Israel is the homeland for both Palestinians and Jews (the Israeli future constitution and state laws should reinforce this point by adding an introduction paragraph). The relation between the Palestinians and Jews in Israel should be based on attainment of equal human and citizen rights based on international conventions and the international relative treaties and declarations. The two groups should have mutual relations based on the consensual democratic system (an extended coalition between the elites of the two groups, equal proportional representation, mutual right to veto and self administration of exclusive issues).

4. Israel should acknowledge the right of minorities in line with international conventions. It should admit that the Palestinian Arabs in Israel have a special status within the institutions of the international community and are acknowledged as an
indigenous cultural national group enjoying total citizenship in Israel. It should also acknowledge that the Arab minority in Israel has international protection, care and support according to international conventions and treaties.

5. Israel should refrain from adopting policies and schemes in favor of the majority. Israel must remove all forms of ethnic superiority, be that executive, structural, legal or symbolic. Israel should adopt policies of corrective justice in all aspects of life in order to compensate for the damage inflicted on the Palestinian Arabs due to the ethnic favoritism policies of the Jews. The State should cooperate with representatives of the Palestinian Arabs to search the possibility of restoring parts of their lands that Israel confiscated not for public use. Israel should also dedicate an equal part of its resources for the direct needs of the Palestinian Arabs.

6. Israel should acknowledge the rights of the Moslems to run their affairs concerning the Waqf (Islamic endowment) and the Islamic holy sites. Israel should no longer be in control of the Islamic and Christian holy sites and acknowledge their right of self-rule the as part of the collective rights given to the Palestinian Arabs.

7. Israel should acknowledge the right of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel of social, religious, cultural and national continuity with the rest of the Palestinian people and the Arab and Islamic Nation.

The legal status of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel

/…/

1. The shared citizenship rights:
In order to guarantee the desired legal protection of the shared citizenship rights in Israel, the legal system should adopt the anti-discrimination laws in all aspects of life individually and collectively. This legal system should also include the creation of an independent commission (or commissions) for equality and human rights. Such commission should focus on guaranteeing the implementation and surveillance of anti-discrimination laws. It should also adopt the international conventions pertaining to the protection of human rights and be obligated to them, such as the international convention combating all forms of discrimination, and those pertaining to civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, and those calling for equality of women and child, so that the terms of these conventions would become an indivisible part of the internal law enforced in the country.

2. The collective –national rights:
Concerning collective national rights, we believe that Palestinian Arabs in Israel, as a collective and as individuals, should have equal participation in all public resources including the political ,material and symbolic resources. Such participation would be the cornerstone of building an equal and just society, where this society would include equal relevance and opportunity for each group on the basis of democratic principles of consensuality and power sharing. On the level of legal protection of the national collective rights we note a number of basic legal axes that must be guaranteed in order to crystallize the desired legal status of the Palestinian Arabs :

1. An official recognition of the collective Palestinian Arabs existence in the State, and their national, religious, cultural, and language character, and recognition that they are the indigenous people of the homeland.

2. Recognition of the Palestinian Arab rights of complete equality in the State on a collective –national basis.

3. Guaranteeing dual language system of both Arabic and Hebrew.

4. Guaranteeing effective representation and participation of the Palestinian Arabs in decision making procedures within the official institutes and the activation of the veto right in matters concerning their living.

5. Guarantee of self-rule of the Palestinian Arabs in the fields of education, religion, culture and media and recognizing their right to selfdetermination with respect to their collective life complementing their partnership within the state

6. Equal distribution of resources, such as budget, land and housing.

7. Appropriate representation on a collective basis in the state system.

8. Guaranteeing the right of the Palestinian Arabs to have open and free relations with the rest of the Palestinian People and the Arab Nation.

9. Guaranteeing the rights of the Palestinian Arabs in issues obliterated in the past such as the present absentees and their right of return; the Islamic waqf (endowment); unrecognized Arab villages and land confiscation.

10. Official acknowledgment of the historical injustice against the Palestinian Arabs in this country and against the Palestinians in general and to guarantee for ending this injustice and correcting its continuous disastrous consequences. In order to obtain the desired legal status of the of the Palestinian Arab citizens and to face challenges that associate us during our struggle we propose to reinforce the existing efforts and further develop the legal, cultural, and social-economic status of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel. This is to be actualized by crystallizing and developing legal and strategic policies to serve and push our causes on the short and long terms. We can have a clear future vision in order to obtain equality and partnership and combat national discrimination and negligence within the state.
/.../

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Original arabic >>

Related article:

Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | Hizbullah's two republics

Consociational Hezbollah

2007-01-07T10:55:00.000+01:00

The 1943 National Pact agreed on between Lebanese patriotic confessional leaderships is different in nature from the 2003 "consociational" Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) imposed on Iraqis by occupation forces. Equally, present demands of the Lebanese opposition, pressing for a formation of a government of national unity and/or anticipated elections, are different from those in post-invasion Iraq. The Lebanese demands are in accord with existing constitutional laws, and therefore not expressed in some "insurgent"-style or Sistani-style; the Lebanese opposition isn’t calling to arms and the overthrow of the pro-Western Siniora government, and nor is it calling for a direct popular majoritarian vote for the purpose of forming a transitional government and writing a new constitution.

In their domestic political struggle, Hezbollah and its allies -- (Shi’i) Amal Movement, the (Christian) Free Patriotic Movement, and minor allies -- aren’t playing on their military and demographic assets; they’re playing the democratic game proper:

Hezbollah’s Democratic Demands

By Mohammed Ben Jelloun
January 15, 2007

By demanding a national unity government and a veto power over major decisions, Hezbollah and its allies are sticking to the consociational (multi-confessional) letter and the republican (patriotic) spirit of the Lebanese constitution.

In his Friday speech on December 1, 2006; that is, on the first sit-in day in the ongoing Lebanese Anti-Government Protest, Sheikh Abd Al-Ameer Kablan, the vice president of the Shi’i Council in Lebanon, made it clear that the opposition’s demands were of a "consociational" nature; "we are for consociational participation not majority/minority participation," he said. Unlike many commentators, indeed, Hezbollah and its allies do not contest the constitutional system in force in Lebanon; they don’t question what Stephen Zune (December 6, 2006) sees as a "colonially-imposed" and Robert Fisk (November 13, 2006) as a "French conceived" confessional representation system. To the contrary, Hezbollah and its allies are championing Lebanese-style democracy.
Equally, against all sorts of worries, fear, suspicion, and warnings about Hezbollah, this strengthened party in the aftermath of the July-August war did not advocate any majoritarian change in the system of representation – even less a violent overthrow. In fact, Hezbollah embraced radical forms of consociational democracy instead.
[...]
It will no longer do to give precedence to investigating a particular political crime over national unity, national security, and national reconstruction; it will no longer do to give priority to tracking still hypothetical murderers of former prime minister Rafik Hariri over protection against destroyers of Lebanon’s infra-structure and murderers – the assassins beyond any reasonable doubt, though powerfully protected – of more than 1.000 Lebanese civilians.
Full article >>
Read also: Hizbullah's Two Republics

The articles above cite a document signed Ali Fayyad, a politburo member and director of a think tank closely affiliated with Hezbollah, who says "the consensus rule became Hezbollah’s motto" following what the party saw as an attempt by the majority side in government to monopolize the decision-making process:

Hezbollah and the Lebanese State. Reconciling a National Strategy with a Regional Role

By Ali Fayyad
August 15, 2006

[...]
The Hezbollah’s insistence that Lebanon’s political system is a democratic consensual one based on the rule of 'con-sociationism' as stipulated by the Preamble of the Lebanese Constitution cannot be understood merely as a political response to a particular moment of deep divisions. It reflects a deep transformation in Hezbollah’s understanding of the requirements of the Lebanese political system as well as its appreciation that internal stability is central to every national project if it is to succeed in its pan-Arab and Islamic dimensions. Hezbollah’s adherence to the consensus-building principle (…) sees that the majority rule creates an unstable balance of power and is inadequate in the long run to protect the interests of all. The movement seeks therefore to invest its strength and capacities to promote balance rather than to achieve domination in the Lebanese structure.
[...]

Clearly, Hezbollah’s consociation concept is not synonymous with federation; it is rather far from federation. Nasrallah sounds here like warning of an "Iraqization" of Lebanon:

Nasrallah’s Victory Rally Speech

September 22, 2006

[...]
We announce from this place, with the blood of our martyrs; we announce, precede matters, and say, any talk in Lebanon about partition is an Israeli talk, any talk in Lebanon about federalism is Israeli talk, and any talk in Lebanon about cantons is Israeli talk. We the Lebanese, our fate, decision, and wish to God should be to live together in one state. We are against its partition and division. We are against its federalism and division into cantons.
[...]

Israel's Arab community and the bi-national state

2006-12-29T21:18:00.000+01:00

Israeli Arabs seek autonomy and veto on government decisions

By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
December 6, 2006

Israeli Arabs are demanding cultural, religious and educational autonomy, and the right to veto government decisions on national issues that affect them.

The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee Tuesday released a document entitled "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel." It stipulates that Israeli Arabs will demand that during the next two decades Israel become a binational state alongside an independent Palestinian state.

Monitoring Committee officials say the document is a cornerstone in the history of the Israeli Arabs, as it was produced by the Monitoring Committee and sponsored by the local authorities committee, two bodies representing all the political factions of the Arabs in Israel

"Our main objective is to ignite the spark of the political debate on the future of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel," said Shawki Hatib, chair of the Monitoring Committee.

The document demands that Israel recognize the Arab community as a national minority with the right to be represented in international forums. Jewish Israelis need not see it as a threat, Hatib said.

The document has eight chapters, each outlining the vision regarding land policy, economic development, education, etc. The chapter about relations with the state does not say that Israeli Arabs recognize Israel's Jewishness, but that they are willing to see it as a "joint homeland" for the two nations.

"This means we recognize the Jewish nation's rights in Israel as individuals and a group. But not at the Arabs' expense. We will respect each other if they respect our rights," said Dr. Asad Ghanem, a political scientist, who wrote the chapter.

The chapter presents Israel as a state created by colonialism, which grew strong due to the increased Jewish migration to Palestine in the wake of World War II's consequences and the Holocaust. It says Israel imposed a colonial policy on its Arab citizens, including confiscation of their land and redefining the culture as Jewish.

The document demands changing the state's symbols. "After 60 years we must grow up and speak the truth. This state must contain both groups on all levels. Let the Jews have Zionist symbols in their space. I support that. But why impose those symbols on me?" asked Ghanem.

The chapters presented Tuesday will be part of a book to be published by the Monitoring Committee. It was initiated by Hatib, prepared by the local authority heads' committee and financed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

"The Or Committee also ruled that the Israeli Arabs' weakness is the lack of group rights. That was written by a Jew, and nobody felt threatened, but when the Arabs say it, it's threatening," he said.

The chapter about the Palestinian state says the Israeli Arabs support the establishment of a Palestinian state adjacent to Israel. It would belong to the Palestinian people, while Israel would be a binational state, as it has a Jewish majority and a large Arab minority. It calls for setting up a democracy constituting a coalition of Jews and Arabs in Israel. Each side would run its own affairs and each would have a right to veto the other's decisions.

The document says the Arab public does not see Israel's present government system as a democracy, and says Israel is an ethnocracy, like Turkey, Sri Lanka, Latvia and others.

For more on the bi-national state see also
my earlier Edward Said related post.

Iraqis Seek to Stem Sectarian Violence

2006-12-09T18:44:00.000+01:00

Iraqi groups are making tentative moves to stem sectarian violence by organizing a coalition called the National Salvation Front and calling for national and international meetings. Moqtada al-Sadr's Tayyera Sadriyyin party is crucial for the advancement of the goals of the alliance of Shiite, Sunni and secular groups.

Iraqis Seek to Stem Sectarian Violence
by David Enders
09 December 2006

(...)
Saleh al-Mutlaq, the leader of the Iraqi Dialogue Front, a secular political party whose critics accuse him of links to the insurgency and former government, recently announced the creation of the National Salvation Front, a grouping of parties that spans sects and is calling for regional and international meetings to reach an agreement between Iraqis.
On December 6, as headlines in the United States were dominated by the Iraq Study Group's suggestions about how the Bush administration should proceed in Iraq, Maliki made his own headlines, by reversing his initial opposition to holding such meetings.
The new front includes the Tayyera Sadriyyin, the political party led by anti-occupation cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose militia, number of seats in parliament and cabinet posts rival those of Hakim's party.
Sadr's party allied with Hakim's and other Shiite parties in elections in late 2005, but has since broken with Hakim over power-sharing and Hakim's continued calls to partition Iraq. If the new front holds, it would be a serious challenge to the current government, as Sadr has already withdrawn his support for Maliki over the latter's meeting with Bush and refusal to allow the Iraqi parliament to discuss the issue of allowing U.S. troops to remain in the country, an issue Sadriyyin members of parliament have spearheaded.
In 2004, before widespread sectarian violence broke out, Sadr's militia coordinated to some extent with Sunni guerillas to battle U.S. troops before Sadr was convinced to participate in the political process and a government that is now seen as a joke.
A Sadr spokesman said that he was hopeful Sadr's supporters would move away from sectarian politics and ally with Sunnis.
"We need to have an alliance with secular and religious Sunnis," said Ghaith al-Tamimi, a member of the Sadriyyin media department in Baghdad. "The Sadriyyin should stand up because we are running out of time on this issue."
Mustafa al-Hiti, a member of Mutlaq's party who spends much of his time in Amman, said the only parties not participating were Maliki's Dawa, the country's two main Kurdish parties, and Hakim's SCIRI -- essentially, the Bush administration's only allies in Iraq.
Hiti said that discussions over the formation of the bloc had begun before Bush's meeting with Maliki, but that the group had decided to announce itself now to capitalize in part on U.S. support for the sort of regional talks Maliki had initially rejected.
(...)
The entire article

Best Wishes 2006

2005-12-26T18:33:00.000+01:00

In memory of Bouna and Zied
In memory of French November 2005

Fw: Communiqué on the Iraqi Election Frauds

2005-12-18T20:01:00.000+01:00

COMMUNIQUE ON THE IRAQI ELECTION FRAUDS
DEC. 13, 2005

Despite the assurance of the so-called Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq(IECI), on preventing 86000 illegal voters from tainting the electoral process in Kerkuk as they did in January 30, 2005 elections. They changed their decision and not only allowed the 86000 illegal voters from voting but opened the voter’s lists for further additions.
This kind of reverse actions from the IECI are a good proof that they are under tremendous pressures from well known circles to serve their own agendas.
With this kind of unjust actions and allowance for fraud on behalf of the IECI and the decision of the European Parliament for refusing to send election observers to Iraq, THE IRAQI ELECTIONS WILL NOT HAVE ANY CREDIBILITY AND THE RESULTS WILL BE QUESTIONABLE.
We ask the American administration who labeled these elections as "democratic" to put and end to the tricks and frauds being displayed by the major players in the Iraqi arena.
We ask the IECI to standby its original honest decision of preventing 86000 Illegal voters from further discrediting the Iraqi elections.

Orhan Ketene
Iraqi Turkmen Front
U.S. Representative

Translation
of the communiqué (in French) which was sent to members and commissioners of the European Parliament in Brussels

COMMITTEE FOR THE DEFENCE OF THE IRAQI TURKMEN RIGHTS
BELGIUM
14th December 2005

SUBJECT: ELECTORAL FRAUDS AND IRREGULARITIES IN IRAQ

The January 30, 2005 general election in Iraq has been tainted with multiple irregularities and frauds which have permitted to the coalition of the Kurdish parties (KDP and PUK) to sweep off not only the totality of the seats of the three provinces which are under their control since 1991 (Erbil, Duhok and Suleymaniya) but also to appropriate the majority of the seats in the other northern provinces (Kerkuk, Musul, Salahaddin and Diyala) where they are clearly a minority, to the detriment of the Arabs, of the Turkmen and of the Chaldo-Assyrians.
These frauds and irregularities have permitted to the coalition of the Kurdish parties to obtain 55 seats out of a total of 275 and thus become the second most important parliamentary group in the country and impose itself on a national level as an ineluctable parliamentarian group to form the government and rule the country with powers which are clearly disproportionate with regard to its real representation in the country.
The Turkmen organizations and political parties have denounced in due time these frauds and irregularities committed during this election and they have sent letters of protest on the day following the election to the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI) to contest the results of the election, especially for the following reasons:
1-The participation of 86.000 Kurdish voters, irregularly registered on the electoral lists in Kerkuk although they were not residents of this city. They had been brought to Kerkuk by the Kurdish parties after the invasion and occupation of the country in March 2003 in order to change the ethnic compostion of this city to impose their hegemony.
2- Preventing hundreds of thousands of Turkmen voters of Tel Afar, Musul, Kerkuk, Tuz Khurmatu, etc. to cast their votes. The Kurdish parties and their militias (peshmerga) which were de facto controling the election process in these regions used multiple pretexts to prevent the Turkmen from voting in these regions.
3- The Kurds organized electoral frauds in the regions under their control in order to inflate the number of voters in favour of the coalition of the Kurdish parties by allowing thousands of their partisans to vote several times in the same polling centers and by organizing the transport of thousands of their partisans to enable them to cast their votes in several polling centers on the day of the election.
4- The anarchy in the collection of the ballot boxes after the closing of the voting centers, the counting irregularities, the substitution of voting papers, etc...
Copies of the claims and letters of protest by the Turkmen political parties have also been sent to the Secretary General of the United Nations and to the Members and Commissioners of the European Parliament, informing them of the electoral frauds and irregularities which took place during the election, demanding their help in order to ensure that the next election in Iraq would take place in better and democratic conditions.
The IECI after verification of the electoral lists in Kerkuk had accepted the demands of the Turkmen parties and had removed the names of the 86.000 irregular voters from the voting lists in Kerkuk for the 15th December 2005 election, but unfortunately, once again under the pressure of Kurdish parties this commission volt-faced (reversed its decision) at the last minute.
In effect we have just learned that not only the IECI has cancelled its decision concerning the removal of the names of the 86.000 irregular voters from the electoral lists in Kerkuk, but that it has accepted the registration of thousands of other irregular voters on the electoral lists in Kerkuk !
These last minute decisions taken by the IECI in favour of the Kurdish parties and to the detriment of the Turkmen will falsify the results of the upcoming election in the province of Kerkuk and will remove all its credibility.
The Committee for the Defence of the Iraqi Turkmen Rights denounces the pressures made on the IECI by the Kurdish parties and condemns the decision of this Commission which allows tens of thousands of irregular voters to cast their votes in Kerkuk.
We ask the IECI to reverse its last decision and remove once and for all the names of the 86.000 irregular voters from the electoral lists in Kerkuk and to refuse the registration of the new irregular and illegal voters in Kerkuk.
We regret the absence of European observers during this election and we ask the Members and Commissioners of the European Parliament and the heads of political parties in Europe to take action and condemn such practices which are contrary to the basic principles of democracy.

Dr. Hassan AYDINLI
Committee for the Defense of the Iraqi Turkmen Rights - Belgium.

The Message of French "Natives" to Iraqis

2005-12-18T13:17:00.000+01:00

"Don’t Emulate French Republicanism!"

Only enough French republicanism to hold the country together is actually needed in Iraq. Beyond that, the very communitarian logic of the recent Iraqi constitution might just as well inspire an updating of French-style integration.

"Indigenous Citizens"

Manifestation du 08 mai 2005
© AFP, FRANCOIS GUILLOT

While many Iraqi radicals, democrats and patriots still hold French republicanism in nearly religious veneration, France’s postcolonial "natives" (i.e., second and third generation Muslim immigrants from ex-colonial Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa) consider it simply a form of racism. Occasionally, some of these discriminated and excluded Frenchmen may even feel attracted to extremely conservative (i.e., loose consociational and non agonistic) forms of communitarian political organization.

The fact is that the latest urban riots have showed to what degree French-style integration; i.e., French assimilation policy, has been downgraded and fallen in disuse.

Naturally, left-wing defenders of this integration model will continue explaining in social-economistic terms the revolt of the suburbs of Paris and the other cities of France. They will continue explaining November 2005 in terms of the cutbacks in government subsidies that have curtailed social services in the affected areas. They will invoke the rage stemming from neo-liberal policies and the need therefore for a "Marshall Plan for the suburbs" (Bernard Cassen, Le Monde diplomatique); they will invoke either the economic globalization (Toni Negri) or the imperfections of everyday French republicanism and (Olivier Roy).

Its defenders from a more or less extremist right-wing will continue equating identity politics with hatred and fanaticism. They will invoke Islamist fundamentalism as well as anti-French and anti-West racism (Alain Finkielkraut, France’s answer to Samuel Huntington).

In this sense, the controversy about the identity of the breakers – "Are they Frenchmen or anti-Frenchmen?" – exemplified the two positionings. To some all that these youthful insurgents ask for is being Frenchmen and finding their way back into their sweet France, to others these Afro-Arab-Muslim rioters simply hate France and everything French. In reality, neither neo-liberal globalization nor any Islamist or anti-West identity drift can, not alone anyway, explain why this violence had to burst in France precisely.

So what is the alternative to French color and identity "blind" assimilation; what sort of social and political integration qualifies as truly postcolonial?
Firstly, according to a widely held opinion among Frenchmen, communitarianism is the dominant integration model in the Anglo-Saxon world. To French Le Figaro, even Sweden is communitarian. This is to say that everything is relative of course. Or as they say: the one-eyed may be king among blind people. In truth, except for specialized political scientists, the word communitarianism (kommunitärism) has never been part of the language use of Swedish, rather Jacobin, monarchy.

What else are we left with than this liberal multiculturalism that is put into practice here, there, and everywhere else but in France?

Well, in the U.S. you can be American and Muslim, American and Black, indeed. The "and" that is officially banished in France is definitely essential to citizenship and can no longer be evaded, as Esther Benbassa states it. As she expresses it too, it is in the own interest of those in power in France "to take it into account." But let’s not be mistaken about it: in the U.S. hyphenated identities are accepted for individuals only; the federal system in the U.S. is based on territory and does neither recognize ethnicity and confession nor allow for communal political representation.

To be or not to be French is not the question. Rather, the question is whether or not France can offer its insurgent children a new form of Frenchness. Acknowledging a crisis of French identity, President Chirac spoke of those more than two weeks of unrest as "bearing witness to a deep malaise." "We will respond by being firm, by being fair and by being faithful to the values of France," Chirac said. Just which values exactly and how ready he was for a radical updating of the whole idea of Frenchness is the question.

What about a multicultural and inter-communitarian "republicanism," for example? What about a (consociational) political representation secured for all communities in France, one that is matched with a (agonistic) public sphere where all communal identities are freely discussed and perpetually called into question?

How about applying the "freedom-equality-fraternity" motto to the attitude communities are to take to each other in France, with all that this would imply in terms of quotas – in parliament, government, and the economy – and in terms of affirmative action measures in favor of the disadvantaged? How about a French fatherland defined by the loyalty of the said communities toward a certain Hexagonal territory and a certain cultural arena? How about citizenship defined by inter-communal consensual minimal individual protections, matched with maximal duties toward the fatherland?

I commented once (April 2005) on the history of the confessional constitutional system in Lebanon in these terms:

[…] we must then admit that a very strong alteration or hybridization of French metropolitan law had taken place on Lebanese colonised soil. (Following in emigrants’ wake, this subversive process has now reached the very French metropolitan soil, where much energy and money is spent these days in order to stop the new specter haunting la République or what the French call with strong disapproval "le communautarisme.")

Well, I think that time is ripe now to complete this cycle of hybridization. I‘m serious about it, updating the French-style integration might need draw on the very communitarian logic of the recent Iraqi constitution – I’m not speaking of drawing on the federal provisions of the said constitution but on its potential for a tight consociationalism with some more central power. But inversely too, only enough French republicanism to hold the country together is actually needed in Iraq. For example, the absolutist laïcité requirement is the last thing needed to save the Iraqi constitution. In other words, a consociational "République" is as badly needed in France as a "republican" consociation is in Iraq.

To those not directly concerned, I recommend this bilingual website for further reading:

Idées de France

Unity/Diversity: a Colonial Puzzle?
With its universalist dogma and legal denial of cultural and ethnic identities, in favor of the more abstract (and formally equal) "citizen" status, isn’t the French Republic in fact still in tune with its old colonial-era "civilising mission"? And isn’t the overwhelming feeling of social "exclusion" within the suburban housing projects to be blamed on a colonial heritage and some sort of continuity between the political inferiority endured by these kids’ grandparents and the still paternalistic tone of today’s Republican elites? Such are the latest questions raised by the defenders of a "postcolonial" approach to contemporary France.

The bottom line is the link between the official "unity" claimed by the French Republic and the ethnic and cultural "diversity" that is both a consequence of France’s colonial past and a historical key to the French nation. This link is a complex, dialectical one, which explains why working at neutralising identity politics — as France has for a long while — may very well result in actually reinforcing them. This type of postcolonial paradox is not encountered in former colonial powers such as Great Britain or Portugal — which points to the idea of a crisis of universalism specific to France. These questions and others are on top of today’s agenda, at a time when France is trying to make sense of what happened in its toughest suburbs in early November.
[...]

A Colonial Unconscious?
In the same way that De Gaulle’s 1945 France had opted for a version of Vichy as a historical accident to support national reconciliation — favoring a form of self-censorship regarding the history of France’s collaboration with the Nazis — some commentators now wonder whether De Gaulle’s 1960s and 1970s France hasn’t made a similar choice to defuse the many tensions between French nationals, repatriates from North Africa, and descendants of immigrants (that is, most often, of colonised populations): the untold idea was to remain silent about the damage inflicted by colonialism and the so-called "republican racism" it had fueled (to use a phrase favored by today’s prosecutors of republicanism). Which would be the reason why the colonial debate is being reopened so late today, and therefore in such a potentially explosive manner, after being silenced back when ex-colonies were becoming independent nations.

Immigrants/Colonized: Any link?
The broader question is that of the possible persistency of colonial-style behavior in the French Republic’s relationship with immigrant (and immigrant-origin) minorities — insofar as most of them are the direct descendants of the "subjects" of its old colonial empire. What raised such a question is the type of assimilationist policies favored in France, along with their "universalist" justification, and above all the government’s powerlessness and agressive attitude at the same time in the face of its poorest suburbs. A vivid reminder of this came in early November when the Villepin centre-right cabinet chose to revive a colonia era "state of emergency" regulation: a 1955 law allowing city administrations to impose a curfew on their respective territories.
This idea of a direct connection — if not of a continuity — between France’s colonial past and contemporary urban policies is strongly rejected by traditional defenders of France’s republicanism: from conservative columnists warning against the risk of "a competition of victims", as Le Figaro’s Alain-Gérard Slama to newsweekly Marianne’s columnists, all the way to the most vigorous advocates of Enlightenment values, such as André Glucksmann indicting "the fires of hatred" and Alain Finkielkraut denouncing in the Israeli press "those young anti-West rioters".
[...]

The Republic vs. the Natives
This same line of argument is followed by those who wonder whether neutralising (and legally denying) particular ethno-cultural identities, in the name of a humanistic conception of the abstract "citizen", does not actually help to reinforce them, by pushing them back toward identitarian modes of self-expression that can only be displayed away from the Republic’s framework.
Such is the suggestion made by the several hundred young activists who signed the now-much debated December 2004 "call to the indigenous people within the Republic" and demand that a symposium on "postcolonial anti-colonialism" be organized by the government: they claim that in the French Republic of the new Millenium, their only belonging is to a community of "descendants of slaves and African prisoners, sons and daughters of colonised people and immigrants" rather than to the French national community or citizenry. Another sign that the current return of the colonial repressed is fashioning new attitudes and discourses.

Towards Iraqi Reconciliation

2005-11-23T23:43:00.000+01:00

In January Bush said he would pullout of Iraq if the new Iraq government (this was before the elections) asked him to pullout. On the other hand, the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance list had originally called for an American troop withdrawal, but that plan was dropped even before the January 30 elections, presumably because of American pressure. Well, the Iraq government and the Iraqi people are now asking for the withdrawal, better still, the preparatory reconiciliation conference, held in Cairo under the auspices of the Arab League, accepted the right for Iraqi groups to mount an armed resistance against the foreign troops:

Iran Urges Iraq to Seek Pullout Timetable
Nov 22, 6:28 PM (ET)

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's supreme leader urged the Iraqi president on Tuesday to seek a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, saying the American presence harms the country.

Read article >>

Iraqi Leaders Call for Pullout Timetable
By Salah Nasrawi
Tuesday November 22, 2005 3:16 AM

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Leaders of Iraq's sharply divided Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis called Monday for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces in the country and said Iraq's opposition had a ''legitimate right'' of resistance.
The final communique, hammered out at the end of three days of negotiations at a preparatory reconciliation conference under the auspices of the Arab League, condemned terrorism, but was a clear acknowledgment of the Sunni position that insurgents should not be labeled as terrorists if their operations do not target innocent civilians or institutions designed to provide for the welfare of Iraqi citizens.
The participants in Cairo agreed on ''calling for the withdrawal of foreign troops according to a timetable, through putting in place an immediate national program to rebuild the armed forces ... control the borders and the security situation'' and end terror attacks.

...
Debate in Washington over when to bring troops home turned bitter last week after decorated Vietnam War vet Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, and estimated a pullout could be complete within six months. Republicans rejected Murtha's position.

...
The conference also decided on broad conditions for selecting delegates to a wider reconciliation gathering in the last week of February or the first week of March in Iraq. It essentially opens the way for all those who are willing to renounce violence against fellow Iraqis.

Read article >>

Poll: Iraqis not in favor of occupation

BASRA, Iraq, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- A poll of Iraqis found most think the occupation forces are hurting the country and 45 percent approve of attacks on foreign troops.
The London Telegraph obtained a copy of the results of the study which showed that in some areas 65 percent support attacks, and less than one percent think the occupation is improving security.
The poll, conducted by Iraqi university researchers who were not told the data would be used by Britain's Defense Ministry, showed stark numbers against the occupation forces, which contradicts the positive message coming from London and Washington.
Eighty-two percent of respondents said they "strongly oppose" troops being in their country, 67 percent feel less secure and 72 percent have no confidence that the occupation will succeed.

Iraq's Patriotic Communities, the Turkmen

2005-11-07T22:53:00.000+01:00

Here are some more reasons to reject the so-called constitution and oppose the would-be political process: According to the Iraqi Turkmen for example, the constitution is deficient in terms of both democracy and justice. I hereby seize this opportunity to apologize for my till now poor attentiveness as to developments involving other Iraqi communities than those which draw most public attention. Of course, I have been too schematic about all this. Though, my past insistence on Kurdish identity in Iraq was a way of contesting exclusive, if not totalitarian, Arab identity; I did not mean at all to exclude the other Iraqi communal identities – Assyrian, Christian, Yezidi, etc. I hope I made it clear that national-patriotic reconciliation and democratic dialogue or negotiation (the real "political process") should embrace every ethnic and every confessional community:

Undemocratic aspects of the new Iraqi constitution draft
Iraqi Turkmen Human Rights Research Foundation
August 16, 2005

[...]
The policy of the American occupation is clearly undemocratic. The U.S. Grant the Kurds all types of facilities and the leading positions in the north of Iraq, particularly in the oil-rich Turkmen province of Kerkuk which was handed to the Kurds. The Administrative State Law, which was written by the Americans in 2004 ‘to democratize Iraq’, included many undemocratic items, such as:
As the constitution of 1958, it made discrimination between the different Iraqi communities by saying that Iraq is constituted from the Arabs and Kurds, in contradiction with all the international laws and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Thereby, it grants to the Kurdish minority which represents 17% of the Iraqi population, rights equal to those of the Arab majority which represents 65% of the Iraqi population while ignoring the rights of the Turkmen who represent 13% of the Iraqi population and also ignoring the rights of the Chaldo-Assyrian community, which represents about 5% of the Iraqi population and other minorities. Accordingly, the Kurdish language must be studied in all Iraq while the Turkmen and Chaldo-Assyrian languages could not be used officially in government schools, even in the regions were these nationalities constitute the majority.
This Law gives the 3 Kurdish provinces the right to reject any decision made by the Iraqi parliament.

The major undemocratic aspects of the published version of the new Iraqi Constitution are the item 3 and 4 of section I. In this section - item 3, the Iraqi people are classified into 2 major ethnics groups, Arabs and Kurds, and to other basic ethnic groups, i.e. the Turkmen, Cheldo-Assyrians and others.

In item 4, the Arabic language continues to be the official language of Iraq and the Kurdish beside the Arabic language in the Kurdish region, while other languages should be decided in the referendum.
[…]

With all due respect to the Arab League, I think the General Secretary of the Turkmen Commission is quite right when he simultaneously "emphasizes the territorial integrity" and the cultural diversity of Iraq, considering it "appropriate to mention that Iraq is a multinational and multi-religious country, the majority of Arabs are the part of the Arab world":

Declaration of the Turkmen Committee for the Unity of Iraq (pdf)
The General Secretary of the Turkmen Commission
August 16, 2005

[...]
Turkmens insist to take an active role in rebuilding Iraq and constitution preparation process. The pressure and massacre to which Turkmens have been subjected are not less than those of other groups have been subjected to. Our Committee, therefore, would like to draw your attention to following points:

1. We would like to underline that new Constitution should treat all groups fairly and the interests of the nation must be kept over all things. Realizing our national development in safety and through the rules adopted by the civilized countries should be our main principle.

2. We mention that we are for an Iraq ruled by republic and having a democratic, pluralistic and parliamentary system. The government should be rotating in Iraq. Free and fair election is needed for that The status of current 18 provinces of Iraq should be maintained and each province should be governed whether being self-governing territory or federal administration in accordance with the all Iraqis consensus. So, federal system means that provinces have a federated structure. Here we’d like to emphasize the necessity to maintain Iraqi territorial and national integrity.

3. Rights and should be the official religion and one of the legislative sources of the Iraqi nation.

4. The religion of Islam should be the official religion and one of the legislative sources of the Iraqi nation.

5. As mentioned in the Transitional Administrative Law’s Article 44, the Constitutional Court should be established in Iraq and the right of suing issues that are against the constitution should be given to the people and the political entities. Also, people and political entities should have the right to sue the government for acting against the constitution to the international court.

6. National and constitutional rights should be given to all Iraqis without discrimination. This principle should explicitly be mentioned in the constitution and none of the ethnic groups should be treated in secondary consideration and none of the ethnic groups role or position should be exaggerated.

7. We believe that is appropriate to mention that Iraq is a multinational and multi-religious country, the majority of Arabs are the part of the Arab world and the Muslims who are in majority in Iraq are the parts of Islam.

8. The official language of Iraq should be Arabic; however, Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish should be official language where Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens are majority. In Turkmen regions, the rights of education in Turkish should be guaranteed. Same rights should be given to Kheldo-Assyrians and others.

9. Families are the basis of a society. Therefore, nation-state should protect families, provide health and social services, and the right of education for them. It also should provide the rights of education and employment for women.

10. It has to be adopted that the future of Kirkuk and the adherence of it to any part are not regional matters and has to be decided by all the Iraqis.

11. Principles of separation of powers, independence of justice and subordination of armed forces to civil authorities should be adopted. All militia forces should be abolished. There should be army an army which is created to defend the country; and the army should not intervene in policy.

The Turkmen repeatedly proved their loyalty to Iraq. For example, the recent (September) attack on Tal Afar "was mainly about punishing the Sunni Turkmen for allying with the Sunni Arab guerrillas." I am citing here Juan Cole: "In the continued ‘scorched earth’ policy of the US military in the Sunni areas, a joint US/ Iraqi (mostly Kurdish) force appears to have levelled entire neighborhoods in Tal Afar, a northern Turkmen city [70 percent Sunni Turkmen and 30 percent Shi’i Turkmen], making most of its 200,000 inhabitants refugees living in squalid tent camps or with friends and relatives elsewhere." And only some time before (August) in Kirkuk, Turkmens and Arabs, both groups mostly Shi’is and followers of Muqtada al-Sadr this time, demonstrated against federalism, denouncing it as likely to lead to the partition and weakening of Iraq; denouncing it also as an imperialist and Zionist plot.

From the very first day of the Occupation, the Turkmen and the Arabs of Kirkuk resisted the Kurdish Peshmergas’ hold on the city and the plans to incorporate the province in an autonomous Kurdistan. The situation in the province has been potentially explosive since then, because of the oil fields and their significance for the Kurdish separatist project. Supporting the Shi’a Turkmen in Kirkuk, Muqtada al-Sadr (August 2003) said he "condemned any attempt to isolate the north from the rest of the country" and complained about the ethnic cleansing undertaken by the Kurds streaming back into Kirkuk and reclaiming their homes from Arab squatters. Also, supporting the demonstration (December 2003-January 2004) of 300,000 Turkmen residents who went on strike over Kurdish plans for Kirkuk, Muqtada al-Sadr fielded 2,000 men of his militia, the Army of the Mahdi, to the city - the population of the contested Kirkuk includes Turkmens, Arabs, and Kurds; the traditionally dominant Turkmen are now overwhelmed by the Kurds who are probably close to half.

The Turkmen and the Shi'i Arabs in the province of Kirkuk desperately do not want to be part of Kurdistan. The Turkmen have demanded a semi-autonomous Iraqi Turkmenistan in the event of (unovoidable) federal partition of Iraq:

Iraqi Turkmens Call for Equal Representation in Iraq
11th session of Working Group on Minorities – United Nations - Geneva
2005-06-01

[...]
Unfortunately, despite the regime change in Iraq in 2003 after the war and the occupation by the Anglo-American forces, the Turkmen tragedy continues.
Today, the Turkmen continue to be marginalized as the US helps its Kurdish allies and promotes their hegemonic ambitions to control the north of Iraq

- By repeatedly bombing Turkmen cities in Mosul.
- By allowing the Kurdish extremists and Kurdish militants (Pashmargas) to suppress the Turkmen identity of the Turkmen in Erbil.
- By allowing the Kurdification of major Turkmen cites like Kerkuk, Daquq, Tuz Khurmatu etc.... 350.000 Kurds were brought to Kerkuk city after the occupation of Iraq in 2003. Almost all the high positions and government posts in the local governments of the Turkmen region were given to the Kurds.
- By neglecting the Turkmen political parties and by ignoring their leaders and activists in appointing only one Turkmen lady from the civil society, with no political background to the Governing Council to represent the 13% of the Iraqi Turkmen, while 5 Kurds were appointed to represent the 17% of the Iraqi Kurds.
- By appointing only one Turkmen academic without any political history in the Interim Government to represent the Turkmen community.
- By allowing and accepting all sorts of manipulations and malpractices to happen in favor of the Kurds in the Turkmen region during the last elections of 30th January 2005: only 2 voting stations were opened in TAL- AFAR a Turkmen city of 300.000 inhabitants, the majority of whom could not vote.
- By allowing the Kurdish political parties to interfere in the Turkmen affairs in order to divide the Turkmen people and limit their political influence in Iraq. This interference was clearly demonstrated in Erbil on the 24th of April 2005 where the following Iraqi Turkmen Front offices and buildings were occupied by the Barazani militants:
- Head office of the ITF in Erbil city
- Turkmeneli Television station
- Turkmeneli radio station
- Turkmeneli Printing House
- The Publication of Turkmeneli Newspaper has been stopped since then.

Demands
In view of the above stated facts and problems faced by us as a Turkmen in Iraq, I address this assembly on behalf of the Turkmen, requesting your support and asking the UN to intervene in our favor to defend our just cause with the Iraqi authorities. So that finally the 3 million Turkmen obtain full rights equal to those obtained by the Arabs and Kurds and that these rights be clearly stated in the new Iraqi Constitution.

• If a federal system is accepted by the entire Iraqi nation, then the Turkmen should be given the right to govern their own federal region where they constitute the majority.
• Since all the Iraqi census was designed to serve state policy and the last election was mainly to serve the occupation authorities and the Kurds, we request that the upcoming census and/or upcoming election be monitored by the UN and the international community. The Kurdish administration be prevented from interfering in the election and census processes in the Turkmen region and security should no
longer be exclusively in the hands of the Kurds but should be provided by neutral police force from Central and Southern Iraq.
• We demand that the Turkish language be accepted as an official language along with Arabic and Kurdish in Iraq.
• We demand that the Turkmen who suffered discrimination, material, physical and psychological losses be fairly compensated.
• We demand a fair representation of the Turkmen in the Commission charged with the writing of the new constitution in order to safeguard our minority’s rights.
• We demand that the Kurdish militias be disbanded and disarmed and the Kurdification of Turkmen regions be stopped.

I thank you for your interest and attention.

Attempts to change the demographic structure of Kirkuk city by the American supported Kurds (pdf)
Iraqi Tukmen Human Rights Research Foundation
September 17, 2004

After the war and occupation of Iraq by the Anglo-American forces in April 2003, the Kurdish political parties KDP and PUK who had supported it with their armed militias - for their own old political agenda to take control of Kirkuk province and its oil wealth - were rewarded for their collaboration with the Americans who allowed their militias to enter Kirkuk and perpetrate in this mainly Turkmen city the exactions, human rights abuses and looting that they allowed to happen in all other parts of what they called "liberated Iraq," as we have all seen on the TV screens last year.
[...]

__________________________________________________________

IRAQI TURKMEN
__________________________________________________________

Geographical Features:
The majority of the Muslim Turkmens are concentrated in the northern Iraqi provinces of Mosul, Erbil, Kerkuk, Salahaddin and Diyala. There are also significant numbers of Turkmens in the central provinces of Baghdad, Wasit, Kerbala and Najaf.

Population:
The Turkmens are the third largest ethnic group in Iraq after the Kurds and Arabs. The number of the Turkmens is estimated at 3 million or %13 of the Iraqi population. They form a cultural buffer zone between Arabs in the south and Kurds in the north.
The Turkmen region has large natural resources such as Oil, gas and Sulphur. In addition, there is an abundant production of wheat and cotton.

Read more >>>
__________________________________________________________

Against the Draft Constitution

2005-10-13T02:42:00.000+02:00

Only a tight consociation can guarantee the unity and survival of Iraq.

1. There is no question about the draft constitution meeting every requirement of loose federalism and three-state solution for Iraq: Provisions on decentralism and con-federalism ensure not only the supremacy of regional law over federal law but stripes the Iraqi Supreme Court (i.e., the conventional federal "rule of judges") of juridiction over regional laws and Kurdistan’s laws in particular; provisions on distribution of natural resources ensure regional control of oil resources; and provisions on army ensure the acceptance of militias as the official military force of the region - we may skip here the controversies over whether the draft constitution opens the door for partition or it only ratifies a break-up that has already happened; also, whether it destabilizes the geopolitical balance in the region, or is instead the "peace treaty" of the de facto independent states of former Iraq.

2. Federation, be it loose as in the present case or tight as some would like it, doesn’t solve the complex distribution of territory, economic resources, and population in Iraq. (See population map.) The federation’s shortcomings are acknowledged by the very champion of the draft constitution Peter Galbraith, since he in fact suggests a consociational solution int the case of the Kirkuk province. And especially as he implies such a solution for Baghdad and the whole Sunni Arab region – not to mention the more than one million Sunni Arabs in the south and center who would fall under Shi’i domination.

The current demands coming from the Sunni Arabs to amend the draft constitution before the Oct. 15 referendum (here), namely the demands to expand the powers of the federal government and decrease powers of the regional governments, are therefore useless. They are as useless as the propositions, usually made by intellectuals such as K. Makiya and the Dawishas, to conceive of the federated units in purely geographical terms or to dramatically increase their number – compare the proposed 18 states for 26 million Iraqis with the actual 16 länder for 82 million Germans and 50 states for 297 million Americans.

Many agree that the only way for Iraq to avoid catastrophe is a political accord among Shi’is, Kurds and Sunni Arabs; that is, a national compromise based on the preservation of Iraq as a unified state in which resources and political power are fairly shared and citizen rights protected. However, what the Iraqi state needs is not some "genuine" or tighter type of federalism; Iraq could be politically consociational and yet territorially a unitary state. I am not the only one to think so; it is indeed hard to see how a centralized Iraq run by Shi’is could serve the interests of its Sunni population. In particular, I think only the general consociational features of the draft constitution, rather than its specifically federalist ones, may well be a better guardian of the rights of the Sunni Arab minority than a unitary state in which majority rule would probably leave them routinely short of the voting strength necessary to have an effective say in their own governance.

3. Also, while tight consociation is obviously the best solution for Iraq, it should be noted that the loose federalism of the draft document actually builds on a few loose-consociational presuppositions. For example, the provisions on autonomous taxes and legal systems for Kurdistan and provinces grouped into regions for Shi’is and Sunnis are drawing on models of communal, ethnic and confessional, self-government. The draft thus says the Kurdish north may opt for modern secular law, the Shi’i south for Islamic Shari’a law, and any individual may choose as he or she sees fit. As P. Galbraith (below) puts it, "each Iraqi, for example, can decide whether he or she wants disputes over personal issues such as divorce or inheritance settled according to his or her sect's religious law or according to the secular civil code." In other words, what has already been named "the most decentralist constitution on earth" is probably the most multiculturalist constitution on earth too.

Last Chance for Iraq
By Peter W. Galbraith
October 6, 2005

The Kurds viewed the Iraqi constitution largely as if it were intended for a [Shi’i] foreign state. As a result, they were not prepared to block a deal because of concerns to protect secularism and gender equality for others as long as any objectionable provisions about either one did not apply to Kurdistan. … The Shiites were mostly willing to concede that the Kurds (and any other region) could legally opt out of many provisions of the constitution because they knew this to be the price of having the constitution endorse Islamic law.
[…]
Still, for all the attention that has been given to the constitutional provisions concerning women and Islam, the federal constitution is largely irrelevant to the actual treatment of women and the application of Islamic law. Regional constitutions and law will, according to the federal constitution, have primacy concerning these matters. This arrangement enables Kurdistan to preserve its secular status and to keep human rights protections in its constitution that are superior to those in the federal constitution. But this also means that the Shiite region (or regions) will apply a much stricter version of Islamic law, particularly in the federal constitution.

Similarly, the Western imported or US dictated federal mechanisms, to some degree, build on local consociational practice and Ottoman millet tradition (Iraq's pre-1958 monarchical constitution actually reserved a certain number of seats in parliament for Christians and Jews):

Drafting Iraq’s New Constitution
Principles and materials
Minority Rights Group International
May 2005

The demand for a central role for shari’a in the new Iraqi constitution has to date come primarily from certain Shi’a leaders. The population distribution by sect in Iraq is however very different from that of Iran. Although Sunni Arabs make up only about 20 per cent of the population, the great majority of Kurds are also Sunni Muslims. The Shi’a-Sunni split among Muslims as a whole is therefore approximately 3-2. This would work against any specific school of shari’a assuming constitutional dominance (unless, perhaps, a system of radical regional autonomy was agreed).

Many other communities in Iraq will also be concerned to preserve their religious belief and practices. Here it is instructive to look again at the Ottoman millet system that was previously applied in Iraq. The system, based on the recognition of personal laws of each community and cultural and religious councils with autonomous powers over the community in these matters, was adopted by the League of Nations when Iraq was granted its independence in 1932 on the termination of the mandatory regime. At that time the Iraqi government agreed, among other minority provisions, that non-Muslim minorities would be allowed, ‘in so far as concerns their family law and personal status, measures permitting the settlement of these questions in accordance with the customs and usages of the communities to which those minorities belong’ (art. 6 of the Declaration made by Iraq on 30 May 1932). In addition they would have the right to establish and fund religious, educational and charitable organizations, and to provide education in their own languages. These provisions had in fact been already included in the 1925 constitution.

4. The Iraqi draft constitution creates no conditions whatsoever of tight consociationalism. To create such conditions, it need from the outset take an uncompromising stand (excluding all forms of federalism) on the country’s territorial unity and the indivisibility of its sovereignty, security, and natural resources. Once it has, it need be steadfast in initiating a common Iraqi standard of political rights and duties - not to be confused with abstract universal human rights.

Indeed, the draft constitution fails to adequately protect internal communal critics and members dissenting from confessional conformity. In particular, the provisions on the rights of women need not be confusing or unworkable; that is, they need not be so if matched with stipulations instituting consociational courts. Consociational law (not "civil code") should be standing above all sorts of communal laws - ethnic or confessional, religious or secular - equally. It should intervene whenever parties to conflict assert their rights with reference to different laws respectively. On the other hand, pleadings must aim at some standard of integrity, as each conflict partner cannot make use of more than one communal law at the same time. Procedures such as in international private and public laws could be then resorted to – when necessary, pre-Islamic cultural practices could be invoked too.

In the same way, the draft constitution fails to adequately promote active Iraqi citizenship; it fails in upbringing patriotic citizens critical to communal (e.g., Shi'i) insularism and nationalist (e.g., Kurdish) separatism as well as to foreign meddling and international moral paternalism. (Compare Amnesty International’s Call for a human rights based constitution with the organization’s silence on Iraqis’ self-determination right, Open Letter to Amnesty International on the Iraqi Constitution.) More particularly, provisions on "de-Ba’thification" and "war on terrorism" are nowhere matched with any provisions on legitimate resistance or foreign troops withdrawal. (See Docena and Riverbend below.)

How the US got its neoliberal way in Iraq
By Herbert Docena
Sep 1, 2005

…The media have tended to focus on the cultural and sectarian provisions of the constitution, ignored the significant insertion of economic provisions, and altogether missed the link between the two. What most likely happened was this: the US tolerated the adoption of religious provisions in the constitution and agreed to the establishment of a federal system in Iraq, as demanded by the Shi'ite and Kurdish parties, in exchange for the introduction of neo-liberal economic provisions in the constitution.
[…]
One other thing worth mentioning is that Iraq’s will probably be the only constitution in the world that enshrines "fighting terrorism" as one of the state’s objectives. Given how "terrorism" in Iraqi discourse has been used by pro-occupation Iraqis and US officials to refer to the resistance movement, the clause could be invoked to legally justify continuing military offensives against political forces that refuse to come to terms with the occupation and the political process it has bred. As has happened in other countries, the "war against terror" could also conceivably be used to justify continuing US military presence in Iraq.

Riverbend, Baghdad Burning
September 17, 2005

The most interesting article in Chapter 1, however, was in the first draft of the constitution published on August 22 by some newspapers but it isn’t in the final draft (at least it’s not in the New York Times English version). It is numbered Article (16), in the version of the draft constitution it appeared in:

Article (16):
1. It is forbidden for Iraq to be used as a base or corridor for foreign troops.
2. It is forbidden to have foreign military bases in Iraq.
3. The National Assembly can, when necessary, and with a majority of two thirds of its members, allow what is mentioned in 1 and 2 of this article.

This one is amusing because in the first two parts of the article, foreign troops are forbidden and then in the third, they’re kind of allowed… well sometimes- when the puppets deem it necessary (to keep them in power). What is worrisome about this article, on seeing the final version of the draft constitution, is its mysterious disappearance- in spite of the fact that it leaves a lot of leeway for American bases in Iraq. Now, in the final version of the constitution, there is nothing about not having foreign troops in the country or foreign bases, at the very least. The "now you see it"/ "now you don’t" magical effect of this article, especially, reinforces the feeling that this constitution is an "occupation constitution."

Consociational Patriotism

2005-04-18T18:48:00.000+02:00

I must say that, apart from political scientists, no involved party, whether in Lebanon or Iraq, is expected to self-evidently acknowledge virtues of consociation. Naturally, every party would rather see its own values adopted by every other party. I mean, no one person is entirely happy with compromise solutions; compromise systems are only reluctantly tolerated.

As to Arab popular reserve against consociational democracy, and apart from a certain grievance against the part played by the French in the 1932 Lebanese census, it is simply unfounded. For example, according to wide spread belief among Arabs, Lebanon’s confessional system was a French colonial imposition on the Lebanese people; the truth is, the system was rather imposed upon the French by the people of Lebanon.

One need only consider the diametrically opposed constitutional archetypes; the French -- state-unitarian, majoritarian, secular, liberal -- and the Lebanese -- consociational, power-sharing, confessional, communitarian. Should we, on the other hand, attach great importance to the common republican aspect, we must then admit that a very strong alteration or hybridization of French metropolitan law had taken place on Lebanese colonised soil. (Following in emigrants’ wake, this subversive process has now reached the very French metropolitan soil, where much energy and money is spent these days in order to stop the new specter haunting la République or what the French call with strong disapproval "le communautarisme.")

Indeed, the proportionality system from 1926 ("the quota system") was not so much colonial as it was pre-colonial, Ottoman (Millet system) and more generally Islamic. The 23 May 1926 French Constitution for Lebanon, while inspired by constitutional laws of 1875 French Third Republic, made actually official the local traditional system of power-sharing between communities, with Article 95 in particular providing that communities were to be fairly and proportionately represented in public office, ministry and parliament. Mandatory power France was then pressured by then prevailing international law, in general, and precise recommendations by the League of Nations from 24 July 1922, in particular -- minority protection was of course much stronger prior to our UN. The nearly parity system of the 1943 National Pact, on the other hand, was conceived in purely anti-colonial consociational-patriotic spirit. As for the more or less integral parity system of the post-civil war Ta’if Accord (1989), this, in addition to strengthening Lebanon's confessional political system, was a definitely post-colonial legacy, as no colonial powers whatsoever were directly involved in it.

"Modern" Arabs in particular are reluctant or reticent, not only because of their after all understandable sectarian motivation and natural pan-Arabist leaning, but because they literally feel ashamed of the confessional system in Lebanon. Whether their fetishizing attitude toward secularism stems from their long standing in awe of the former French colonial power is an open question. The fact remains that general inferiority complex towards Westerners inhibits the appreciation of a local original achievement. Hence, the constitutionally inscribed character of confessionalism as an always temporary arrangement. And hence the modernizing part devolved upon (sic) the Syrians in Lebanon, and hence the motive (or alibi) provided by the Ta’if Accord for them to stay until de-confessionalization is completed.

More on this in the 25 April issue of SWANS:

What’s Consociational Patriotism?
By Mohammed Ben Jelloun
April 25, 2005

Consociational patriotism is national power-sharing and national self-determination, simultaneously. In the case of Iraq, it is partly premised on a timetable for US evacuation with international guarantees for the withdrawal of all forms of foreign presence and partly premised on a politics of national unity and power-sharing for major, ethnic and confessional, communities in the country. It is premised on patriotic reconciliation between Kurds and Arabs in the first place. The reconciliation is comparable to the historical compromise in 1943 Lebanon, which united Christians and Muslims against their own drifting, Francophile and pan-Arab respectively. Indeed, compared to well known historical consociational models (Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Northern Ireland, etc.), Lebanon’s is a nearly unique experiment in patriotic consociationalism. Lebanon’s is a typically colonial, anti-colonial and postcolonial consociationalism and therefore particularly telling in the case of Iraq.
/.../
Lastly, while parliamentary, executive and economic quotas should stay open to negotiations and package deals between the main Iraqi communities, a quota of a no more or less than 50% for the Iraqi Shi’a may in fact promote cooperation with other political blocs and prevent majority tyranny. To be sure, Sunni Iraqis would be over-represented, but fewer so compared to Lebanon’s Christians since the 50:50 agreement of 1989. (The Sunni 50% could be in turn equally parted along ethnic or belief lines; between Arabs and Kurds or Islamists and secularists.) This sort of quotas could be used immediately to determine the choice of troops, international or regional, to replace the occupation forces in a transitional period.