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The Iraqi
election is one of the most burning issues in Iraq, both
literally and metaphorically. Many people have drawn a line
in the sand and the elections are one of defining
characteristics of modern Iraqi history – possibly
re-defining Iraq’s history as a territorial unit.
I do not
want to sound too dramatic but this is a critical issue
which is being faced by Iraq and by the Arab and Muslims.
The results may be positive and beneficial or they may not
be. You can’t over state the importance of these elections.
If you
believe in cause and effect these elections came about in
terrestrial terms because of the American invasion,
occupation or liberation of Iraq – depending on which side
of the argument you come down on. Without that cataclysmic
moment it would be very difficult to envisage the coming
elections in Iraq. It would certainly be difficult to
envisage any democratic elections in the context of the
former regime.
We are at
the brink, we are at the point where the country can tilt
one way or another – it can move towards reconciling a
number of age-old issues and problems that have found a
battlefield in Iraq. These are issues dealing with
ethnicity, sectarianism, national identity – the cross roads
of various cultures and civilizations which happened to
cross Iraq. Iraq is in many ways a transit station for
various cultures and civilizations. It is not only the
battle ground between Arab and Persian. It is also the
battleground between Arab and Arab, between Turk and Persian
and various international interests that have found in Iraq
the place where they want to resolve disputes.
So Iraq is
not any old state. The resolution of these issues in Iraq
will have a critical impact on the evolution of democracy in
the region.
One of the
first things we have to understand is why am as an
individual and why are many Iraqis participating in these
elections. Many questions have arisen about the elections:
can they be seen as legitimate, can you hold elections under
occupation, what is the meaning of an election if a segment
of the population refuses to participate or if there is
only a certain percentage of a turnout. These are ethical
questions, questions of political theory. What is our
understanding of democracy? What is it that we are calling
for when we call for elections? Are we calling for a
democratic order? Are we calling for a representative
government? Are we calling for the introduction of rights?
What kind of rights? Natural rights? Civil rights? Ethnic
rights? Community rights? All these issues are the backdrop
to the elections in Iraq. They have not been articulated but
they are certainly there and there is debate raging inside
the country and outside, both amongst Arabs, Muslims and in
the world at large.
When the US
talked about bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq what did
it actually mean? How do we as Iraqis understand democracy.
Nobody questions now that some kind of representative
democratic order is the way forward in the country. I don’t
think any group including the Islamists on the fringes of
the political movement do not dispute the need for some kind
of electoral system through which a representative
government is formed. There are some eccentric groups who
demand the return of the khalifate and their influence
inside the country is marginal.
So
representative government, democracy, elections are accepted
now as part of the political discourse inside Iraq. What is
not accepted is what these terms mean and how is this going
to be brought about. Are we going to have a democratic
order? How do these elections fit into this system?
From the
first days when the Americans invaded the country there was
some serious questioning not about their intentions but what
do they actually mean when they say they want to introduce
democracy to the country? Actions speak louder than words.
If one reviews the history of the American pronouncements as
to the correct political order inside Iraq there are
enormous changes. There are at least six or seven different
permutations in a very short space of time as to how this
country is going to be governed. None of them have any
democratic elements to them.
On the
earliest occasion when the issue of the governance of Iraq
arose, that was in the London Conference of December 2002,
there was an underlying empathy on the part of the US
administration that a government composed primarily of exile
groups who were going to emerge in the form of a leadership
council were going to be involved in running the country.
So we went
into the London conference believing that the US and the
Western world was going to back the formation of a
transitional government that was going to be composed mainly
of opposition elements and that the levers of power would be
handed over as soon as the military aspects of the campaign
were over. This was in fact confirmed in another conference
in Salahudin in northern Iraq a few weeks before the
outbreak of the war. The US representative Khalizad
confirmed that is US policy at that point to support the
formation of a transitional authority that would be
composed primarily of exiled opposition parties and groups.
No sooner
had this happened than all sorts of other noises came about.
There was no talk about democracy and elections. The talk
was all about a transitional appointed government composed
of Iraqis who were going to run the country and they would
come up with the transitional mode through which elections
would come about.
A few weeks
after the war and subsequently in May the representative of
the US government again explicitly stated that we are
waiting for the formation of a transitional government,
composed primarily of exile opposition groups, peppered with
some opposition personalities from the inside with whom they
had some earlier contacts. That was the set policy of the US
in April 2003.
We than
began to hear all sorts of other permutations: statements
about a military government. There was a serious debate that
Iraq should be run as an occupied country directly
controlled and run by an American general. That gave way to
something called the Office for Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Affairs whereby the occupation was Iraq was
seen primarily as an issue of reconstruction and logistics.
General Jay Garner was brought in to kick start the
reconstruction process while this provisional government was
being formed.
So we now
have three – possibly four – permutations as to the
governance of the country with not a word about democracy or
the actual workings of the machinery of democracy which was
to be introduced in Iraq in order to consult the people as
to how they were going to be governed.
No sooner
had we adjusted to this state of affairs then along came
Paul Bremer who was appointed, initially with vice regal
powers. This is from his own mouth and it has been repeated
to others so it is not a secret. The conditions under which
he accepted the job of the chief civilian administrator
were that he would have vice regal powers for at least five
years.
There was no
discussion about democracy or elections. Iraq was going to
be run the way in which Germany and Japan were run. This
created a huge up roar with the opposition politicians who
had thrown in their lot with the USA. After increasing
pressure a consultative arrangement was made and there was
an attempt to create a council whose role was going to be
advisory. That was the precursor to the Iraq Governing
Council which was established in June 2003. Reluctantly it
started off as a consultative affair and subsequently began
to have some power. Nothing to do with elections and nothing
to do with consulting the people.
It is at
that point in June 2003 that the voice of Ayatollah Sistani
was heard. He had kept his peace until now and had made no
public utterance as to his real position and his views about
how the country should be governed. He merely stated that
the occupation should end as soon as possible. In June he
made it explicit: there will be no acceptable constitutional
arrangement in Iraq, no legitimate power without consulting
the people through a democratic election. He did not use the
world ‘democratic’ but he used the world ‘election’. In June
of that year little attention was paid to that statement. It
was taken as just a position that had to contend with the
reality of American power, the reality of the American
attempt to create an arrangement with the former opposition
parties. He was viewed as distant and not central to the
affair.
The next
cycle in the saga of introducing democracy and elections in
Iraq was the issue relating to the establishment of a
governing administrative authority – an Iraqi cabinet. This
took about two months before Mr Bremer conceded that he and
his group could not run the country directly and had to
operate through Iraqis who knew the country and who knew how
to administer it and on that basis the cabinet was formed
through the initiative of the Governing Council with the
approval of Mr Bremer.
Then other
events happened that changed the American perspective about
how to govern this country. The first and most important one
was the assassination of Sergio de Mella and the increasing
level of violence that took place in the summer of 2003 and
also the assassination of Mohammed Baqir Al Hakim. At that
time a kind of panic descended on the United States that
these arrangements that they have in place could withstand
the apparent legitimacy of governing bodies that they put
together and intensive discussions began to take place about
how the transitional arrangements were going to take place
whereby America, the CPA and the coalition is going to
transfer authority to the Iraqis.
At that
point the issue of drawing up a constitution arose. The
first step that the Americans and CPA proposed, and it was
about to be proposed by the Governing Council was that there
should be a kind of constitutional convention drawn from
representatives of the various provinces, nominated through
closed caucus systems. The idea was that the process would
have caucuses in the 18 provinces and these in turn would
nominate leaders who would then assemble in the form of a
constitutional convention and they would come up with a
constitution for the country which would then determine
political progress in the country.
It was then
that Ayatollah Sistani intervened once again by insisting
that no constitutional convention can exist in Iraq and can
be authorized to write the constitution without a reference
to the people directly. The Governing Council was on the
verge of accepting the American proposal of caucuses and if
it were not for the intervention of the Grand Ayatollah in
this it would have been highly probable that the caucus
system would have gone through and we would have had a
constitutional convention that would have come up with a
constitution which would not be a democratically elected
convention through universal suffrage. It was going to be
done through indirect elections in a controlled manner
whereby the end result would have been pre-determined to
some extent by the choice of candidates.
It was then
that the CPA and the Governing Council understood the real
power that the Ayatollah had amongst a large number of
people in the country. At that point not a single party (and
I am including those who were outside the Governing Council
and purported to oppose the American occupation and the
coalition had discussed the issue of elections or raised the
demand for democratic elections to resolve the conundrum as
to how to transfer power from the CPA to a legitimate,
sovereign, Iraqi state.
The reason
I am saying all these things is to show you the influence
that a single man has had on the flow of political events
inside the country. Without looking at things in perspective
I think we fall into the trap of seeing things in terms of
the current crisis: the red hot crisis that affects the
issues today. So putting them in context will allow us to
see how the role of the marjiah, the principle source of
Shariah-based authority, to the majority of the population
of Iraq – what role they played in pushing the country
towards a democratic, elected alternative.
Once the
issue was raised in that way, once politicians fell into
line with this being translated into street demonstrations
demanding that the idea of the caucuses be abandoned and
demanding that elections were the way forward the CPA caved
in and the Governing Council found its courage and they
confronted the CPA about the caucus method of selecting the
constitutional convention for the country.
The next
battle ground which I was involved in directly, was to do
with the date by which these elections were going to be
held. The Grand Ayatollah, and those politicians who picked
up their queues from him insisted on as short a period as
possible. The CPA along with a large number of Governing
Council members wanted to extend that process – the
transitional arrangement for the country – for three,
possibly four years. They thought of even getting the
Governing Council to renew its mandate and the coalition
continuing until 2008 before there would be general
elections for a constitutional convention.
The Grand
Ayatollah then took the lead in demanding that elections be
held as soon as possible and practical. He would not accept
the claim of the CPA that these things need a great deal of
time to prepare and need a great deal of logistical and
legal work. He insisted that UN come in and examine the
possibility of holding elections as soon as possible and
certainly not later than June 30th, 2004.
The UN came
with a mind set against holding elections sooner rather than
later. The lady who came, Karenia Perzi, is a world class
expert on elections, she heads the UN’s elections monitoring
and supervising office and I spent nine days with her and
her team to address the issues. This was mine, and possibly
most Iraqis first experience of managing elections. The
problems seemed insurmountable: questions of who is going to
be on the electoral list, who is an Iraqi, what do you do
with the Iraqis abroad, what about the need for a law
governing political parties – all the technical parafenelia
that they could use to thwart the holding of elections were
used convincingly until they convinced the Grand Ayatollah
that elections could not be held on June 30th.
The main
issue that they raised was that there was no kabast – a book
which can act as an electoral register. We were positive
that the food coupon system, or food rationig system, which
was administered then by my Ministry of Trade had a broad
enough scope and was sufficiency technically sophisticated
to be seen to be all inclusive. They started attacking it
and attacking its inclusiveness and pointing to all kinds of
holes in it which even I was not aware of. The view that
these elections could not be held in June won the day. I
think they were very much influenced by the CPA and by a
general fear – at that time it was not very articulate,
about the desirability of holding elections - even if
feasible in a short period of time.
So we had
this awkward situation whereby the CPA, the US and the UK
had already agreed to transfer sovereignty to an Iraqi
government by June 30th but without elections
being held to install a legitimate government that would
legitimize the whole process of sovereignty. We had the
situation under which the Transitional Administrative Law
acted as a kind of interim constitution and an interim
government was authorized by UNSC 1546 that was going to
manage the period from the time of the withdrawal of the CPA
and the period whereby elections would be held.
Most of the
problems that we have now would not have arisen, I believe,
if we had followed the advice and the representations of the
Grand Ayatollah to hold elections by June 30th.
None of the claims that the UN used in this period proved to
be true. In fact, elections now are going to be held based
upon the register of those people who had the oil-for-food
coupon.
The system
that they had denounced as being imperfect and incapable of
acting as an electoral register is the very system that they
are basing the elections on and the very system that they
are insisting is going to be fair and adequate. I believed
from the beginning that it was fair and adequate. One of the
few things that Saddam did that was of any consequence was
the good rationing system. It was all encompassing except in
the northern areas which had their own programme and that
was also quite inclusive.
The current
statistics show that the gap between what is the effective
population of Iraq and the population of Iraq as
represented by the food coupon programme is less than
200,000. So it was a pretty effective way of designing and
defining an electoral system.
So after
this saga of politicians who were not sure where they stood
in terms of elections - the CPA was not sure about the way
in which elections would go, what was the public as a whole
going to accept, uncertainty as to what the general Western
or US position as to what constitutes an acceptable income,
and fear and loathing of a large number of groups inside
Iraq and especially in nearby Arab countries as to what the
elections might produce, we ended up with this compromise.
But the main weakness of the system that was put in place to
manage the transfer of authority from the CPA to a sovereign
Iraq government is the six or seven month of the current
government. It is neither fish nor foul. It is a government
which has sovereignty attached to it as a result of the UN
resolution but has legitimizing presence in the country.
It is a
government whose sole function, in my mind, was to
administer and manage the elections but a government which
in the process has been used to push certain security
policies and at the same time has been used to push certain
internal security arrangements that would affect the nature
of the Iraqi state. In the last two months this government,
which is supposed to be a neutral arbiter, a government
that was organized principally to manage the process leading
to elections has become partisan. Parts of it have become
partisan and parts of it have in fact disintegrated and
ceased to act as cohesive unit, as a cabinet. It acts more
and more as a group of political parties competing for
political power.
I have said
this to show that there is a great deal of wisdom on the
part of the 70 plus Ayatollah in Najaf. And the army of
consultants, the army of western technocrats and Iraqi
politicians and would be politicos who came up with 1001
alternative scenarios would not have led us into this
position we are in now if it were not for the insistence of
the merjaiah in Najaf on the need and necessity of a
legitimizing election.
So this is
really the background to the process in Iraq. It is just a
follow-up to what is going to come. As we all know the
violence in the country has escalated, large numbers of
people feel that these elections cannot be legitimate, a
large number of people are going to boycott and, most
dangerously it would appear, that the constituent
components of the Iraqi body politic, which was the Arab
Sunni community, may boycott these elections in a
significant way, thereby rendering the outcome perhaps (and
I say this guardedly) illegitimate or potentially
illegitimate.
There are
issues relating to the continuing of violence. Can you hold
elections under such violent conditions. There are also
issues relating to the technical and logistical aspects of
these elections and I would like to address each one of
these.
The main
argument for postponing these elections has been that a
certain essential component of the tripartite composition
of Iraq may feel it will be short changed. It feels that
the process leading to this has been confirmed and
therefore they have decided to boycott elections. My own
belief is that this is not the community perspective on the
part of the Sunnis. The Arab Sunnis do have a sense that
what has happened in the past two years has been to their
detriment and has led to the marginalization of their
communities. It may lead to their loss of power and a
re-definition of the identity of Iraq which will not
necessarily work to their advantage. There is no doubt about
it. I think a significant number of Sunnis do not see
democracy as an alternative to the exercise of power. They
do not see democracy as an alternative to exercise of power.
They do not see democracy as an alternative to potential
marginalization and they do not see the safeguards in a
democratic order as an alternative perspective on what Iraq
as a country is all about.
Their
perspectives are real, they have to be addressed and they
have to be engaged with. You can’t isolate them and say let
the ballot box rule. The ballot box will rule because the
adverse of the coin is also invalid by any democratic rule.
You cannot hold a majority hostage to a minority
irrespective of what it may – Sunni, Shia, Kurd, Arab,
French, English, Catholic, Protestant. It has to be taken as
a factor, as a restraining, constraining factor in an order
whereby the majority does not exercise its majority
tyrannically.
The
opposite as far as democracy or any theory of justice or
equity, be it Western, Arab, Islamic, is not valid. You
cannot hold a majority perspective permanently hostage,
permanently ransom to a minority’s veto. So the engagement
with the Arab Sunnis cannot take place prior to holding the
elections. It must take place when the majority accepts
certain rules and constraints on the exercise of power and
proposing grounds for engagement in resolving any issues
that may arise.
What has
happened is that a violent minority has seized on the sense
of uncertainty and anxiety and has decided to use that to
legitimize its own inexcusable exercise of terror and
power. The intimidations, car bombs, assassinations,
kidnappings, infiltrations – these are all unacceptable
methods and cannot be tolerated in any system moving towards
stability and democracy.
So the
argument that the Arab Sunni community is going to be
marginalized and has fears and therefore one should postpone
the elections because an element of them have decided to
take up arms and to use force in order to reflect the
anxiety of the others is an unacceptable argument and should
not be allowed to stand. Its not that you give in you
terror. It is not that you do not give in to terror – we
have given in to terror in certain parts of the world in
certain cases – but in this conflict you cannot keep a
majoritarian perspective irrespective of its composition. It
has to change to a minority.
The
violence in Iraq is not going to stop if the elections are
going to be postponed or cancelled. The violence in Iraq is
part of a global plan. The Americans claim to have de-capitated
the Saddam state. Certain elements of it were removed. Some
were imprisoned, some were incarcerated. There was a very
chaotic de-Baathification programme that led to some
innocent firings but in the main to a large scale removal
from office and then re-absorption back into office of a
number of people. It was not effective in changing the
nature of the state in Iraq. The state was allowed to
fragment. And the Saddamist state, the elements of the old
state moved from exercising power into the shadows.
What we are
facing now is a kind of civil war between the former state
(the insurgency has the elements of state: money, it is able
to collect intelligence, it is able to exert its authority
inside the government, it has foreign support, mainly tacit
but also organizational particularly from the Syrians, it
finances itself from money it has stolen and partly from
transfers of money, theft and kidnapping. It exercises its
authority in a shadowy way inside the organs of government).
This shadow state of Saddam is not interested in sharing
power – they are just interested in power. They are not
aiming at changing the circumstances and conditions whereby
they can participate. They are there to thwart any attempts
to reach a democratic conclusion whereby this old state that
used to exist and still penetrates very very broadly major
sectors of Iraqi society. There will be a day of reckoning
with that at some point. These people are using the fear and
anxiety and the sense that there is going to be a
marginalization of the Arabs in the community, they are
using that to legitimize their struggle, insurrection,
terror – whatever you want to call it and they are also
expropriating the language of resistance to the occupier and
they have expropriated the language and the symbols of Islam
for their struggle. It does not change their reality.
It does not
change the reality. The reality is that we are fighting a
battle, there is a kind of race between the ex Saddamists in
all its manifestations – it has changed slightly, it has
dropped these absurd Baathist slogans like Arab unity and
socialism and adopted the symbols of radical Islam and is
now fighting this shadowy, dangerous war.
So violence
is not an excuse to delay the elections. The level of
violence may not decrease as a result of the elections but
the measures that need to be taken to contain the violence
and eliminate it will have much greater public support and
much greater legitimation.
The
technical, logistical arguments are non-sensical because the
International Organisation for Migration has done an
exceptional job in organizing the elections both inside the
country. It has been able to organize very efficiently under
very difficult circumstances quite a complicated machine.
Nobody can claim that the electoral register is incomplete
and insufficient.
Will these
elections solve Iraq’s problems? No the answer is that they
won’t. But they are the essential step by which the popular
will is to be expressed. We may end up with a lopsided
result. Sections of the Sunni community may not participate
and the results may be scued
That brings
us to the issue of voter turnout. If the global voter
turnout is high – by high I mean sixty or sixty-five
percent. We need to have these high hurdles is because this
assembly is going to be a constitutional assembly. It is
going to draft the constitution. It needs to have, I believe
quite a high turnout in order to produce an acceptable
result in terms of the number of people participating. If
this result is scued in favour of the Kurdish and Shia
parts of the country then there has to be a counter veiling
power exerted to ensure that these people do not come up
with a constitution that will work against them.
There are
three safeguards to that. The first one is more like a
negative safeguard. In the fine print of the Transitional
Administrative Law which is the interim constitution it says
that any three provinces voting in the majority can block
the confirmation of a constitution. So if the constitution
is not to the liking of three provinces, they in their
majority can vote against it and the constitution becomes
null and void and they will have to come back to the drawing
board. So there is an implicit insistence on what the
constitution writers are going to produce and what is going
to be accepted.
There is a
secondary issue is that there is a dispute as to whether the
terms of the TAL can be allowed to constrain the activities
of an elected assembly. Some people say and so far the
indications are that a freely elected assembly will not be
constrained by the conditions of an unelected group of
people, even though it has UN sanction. UN sanction did not
mention the TAL but it was a political agreement between
various groups making up the governing council and the CPA
that produced it. This veto right was placed mainly in order
to placate the Kurdish provinces. It just so happens that
this may be used to placate the Arab Sunni provinces who may
not accept the terms of the constitution. That is a
negative.
A positive
way of looking at it is that maybe all the political parties
and the majority alliances accept that they must produce a
constitution that would be acceptable to all groups inside
Iraq. So they may or may not accept the statements of
leading political figures to that effect. If there is
insufficient Arab-Sunni participation in parliament then I
think there will be very serious attempts made to reach out
to the opinion leaders in the Sunni community to ensure that
their rights, their sense of empowerment is not reduced.
Whether that is sufficient or not I don’t know but I believe
that there will be after the elections a concerted effort by
the insurgents to discredit this possibility and that the
level of violence will escalate to the point where it will
serious threat. But I believe it will be a short-term hump.
If we overcome this hump I think there will be a decisive
break within the Arab-Sunni community between the majority
perspective and the terrorist- insurrectionist.
Of course
we have to ask ourselves what people want from Iraq. What
kind of Iraq are we looking at post elections. I believe
that there are five possible outcomes:
(1)
These elections will produce a very powerful sense of Shia
and to a lesser extent Kurdish empowerment and they will
insist on dominating the state. They will create a
centralized state that will prevail. I don’t think this
outcome is likely or desirable. Iraq cannot be run by a
tyranny of the majority even if they hold a very large
percentage of the seats in parliament.
(2)
A
form of regionalization: a great deal of power is devolved
from the centre to three or possibly four regions and the
political discourse in Iraq moves from the centre to the
regions. In some ways this is positive in a sense that it
reduces the inter-ethnic or inter-sectarian conflicts. It
allows regions to get on with the job. It becomes more about
a distribution of resources. Who is going to control Iraq’s
resources. Are they going to be distributed by the regions.
I don’t think it is likely but is not an unacceptable
outcome.
(3)
A
division of the country. If it is impossible to accommodate
these groups the country will split into three.
(4)
The fourth option is the worse: the overthrow of the system
and the imposition of the old order. I don’t even want to
think about this so I won’t talk about this.
(5)
The fifth option which is the most desirable may happen if
enough sane and wise people emerge to lead the country in
the next phase is basically the enshrinement of democratic
principles, the enshrinement of human, civil and community
rights and an insistence on their implementation. Then we
will be able to co-opt, hopefully an increasingly large
number of hitherto alienated groupings into the political
process and isolate the terrorists. This requires a great
deal of political skill. It also requires that the new Iraqi
government continues to insist on the rule of law and
democracy despite increasingly reckless challenges to it. If
it is able to that and overcome this hump it can happen.
Anything
else that has been trotted out to cast doubt as to the true
intentions of the leadership in Najaf, the Shias generally
or the united Iraqi Alliance, the so-called Shia list, what
there aims are is a lot of nonsense. There is no demand for
an Islamic state in the sense of the institutions and
principles that govern Iraq. I believe there is no such
thing Shia theory of the state. There is a Shia-Islamist
theory but there is no such thing as a Shia perspective on
what Iraq should be like. There is only a Shia insistence
that their state of disempowernment and disadvantage ends
and there is an absolute commitment to democracy and civil
and community rights as the basis for any political of
constitutional governance of the country.
We are in a
race against time. So are the powers in the area and the
global powers who have different and sometimes conflicting
agendas as to what they want. I think the United States now
knows that it made a strategic blunder from its perspective
to enter Iraq in this way. Neighbouring countries also have
their agendas and some of them are openly destructive.
There is
going to be a great upheaval and re-definition of Iraq away
from its modern definition as an Arab-nationalist
(Sunni-dominated) state. It will not be a non-Arab Shia
dominated state. But the fact that it has migrated from one
definition to an identity that is different is going to
create a great deal of problems in a number of countries.
The other
problem to do generally with Islam. What is considered to
be legitimate forms of political expression in Islam? As
long as the Shia are confined to Iran most of the theories
governing what constitutes the external face of acceptable
political Islam can be accommodated.
If Iraq
changes its hew from being a state is defined and associated
with the Arab nationalist Sunni Orthodox perspective on
Islam to something else this will create a great deal of
mayhem in Islamic and Arab countries. It is very difficult
for people (I am talking about Arabs) to see the identity of
Iraq changed in this way. This is something they will have
to start to deal with. It is a necessary and essential
change in the understanding of Muslim as to what constitutes
legitimacy and acceptability. A Shia Islam that has a
political expression in Iraq, not necessarily in the form of
identifying the state as such as is the case in Iran, but
one whereby it removes the previous definition of Iraq as
part of this generalized understanding as to what
constitutes legitimate Arab-Islamic rule, this requires a
major change in the mindset and is the next battle that has
to be fought.
Once that battle is won,
and I think it has to be one, then the process of finding
an accommodating, open Islam would have been well advanced.
* Ali
Allawi is the former Trade minister, Defence Minister in
Post-Saddam Iraqi provisional government. He lived in London
before returning to Iraq. In June 2002 he was involved in
organising "The Declaration of Iraqi Shia". This statement,
signed by a large number of Shia exiles, called for "the
establishment of a constitutional parliamentary system" but
also stressed the need to preserve "the Islamic cultural
identity of Iraqi society". After the collapse of Saddam
Hussain’s regime, Mr Allawi was appointed Trade minister.
Later he was appointed Defence Minister until the end of
last summer. He had studied in US and UK in late sixties
and early seventies with BA in Civil Engineering from MIT,
MBA from Harvard and MSC from LSE. He is the Chairman of
several companies. | 
