'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Brahimi report: a realistic way forward

Y'all know that I admire Juan Cole a lot. However, I wish he had read the Brahimi Report on Iraq some before he made the sweeping judgment that, "This way of proceeding seems to me unlikely to be fruitful."

The reasoning Juan provides for this judgment is to note that Annan reportedly plans to send Lakhdar Brahimi back to Iraq to consult with "leading political figures" there over how to proceed-- and then, to completely and quite unjustifiably conflate that latter category with the Iraqi Governing Council!

No other reading of the Brahimi report that I have seen--including my own--supports that conflation. (Tsk, tsk, Juan!) Instead, what the report talks about is the urgent need for consultation "among the Iraqi stakeholders", in order to reach agreement on all the many modalities of the transition process including the elections that will be a central part of it. Elsewhere, it mentions that such stakeholders include a broad spectrum of community leaders in Iraq, of which the IGC is only one among many.

The report itself is definitely worth reading. It presents what seems to me to be a realistic appraisal of the current situation in Iraq, as well as of the prospects for holding the nationwide elections there that at this point--thankfully!-- just about everyone agrees need to be part of any workable and credible transition back to viable Iraqi national sovereignty.

Significantly, the seven-person team that global media star Brahimi headed was one that included both people with solid experience of analyzing current Iraqi affairs and people with solid experience of organizing elections during troubled political transitions. A serious and well-chosen team.

Its expertise shines out throughout the whole report. Paragraph 50, "Recommendations", is obviously central.

Shoot! I wanted to cut-and-paste some of those relevant recommendations in here. But I still haven't figured how to use the "Text Select" tool in Adobe Acrobat, so I can't do that! (All helpful advice on this technique much appreciated here.)

Plus, I'm afraid I really don't have time to excerpt the key points from this document right now. I'll just note that if you go to the link above and don't have much time, head for the Recommendations section on p.12 of the original document (p.14 of the PDF file), and then for Part IV of the "Technical report" that is published here as Appendix 2 (p.23 on the original report; p.25 on the PDF file).

That latter section of the report lays out the precise plan that the UN's "technical experts" were proposing for the election/transition system in Iraq. It lays out in very systematic fashion the authors' readings on the following important questions:

• What is to be elected?


• How will votes be counted for seats?


• Who can take part in the process?


• Who manages the electoral process?


• Description of the institutional framework required


• Elements of the timetable required

I'll just type in here the very last part of Part IV of the Technical Report (para 70):

The timing of credible elections in Iraq will be principally influenced by political, technical and security conditions. In the current circumstances and anticipating continuing positive developments [hey, let's hope so, eh?--HC] elections in Iraq may be scheduled eight months from the date that the necessary basic agreements, a functioning electoral institution and resources are available. For example, a target date for elections in January 2005 would necessitate these conditions having been met by the end of May 2004. In the assessment of the mission, this would permit credible and unifying elections in Iraq.