Parsing Iraq's TAL: why bother?
My dear friend Juan Cole has recently devoted quite some space on his blog to his own and others' parsings of the notorious "Transitional Administrative Law" (TAL) that desert fashion maven Jerry Bremer tried to foist onto the proud people of Iraq back in March 2004.
Well, many of us have spent time in the past parsing the 62 articles of that egregious document. I did so myself, back here and on other occasions around then, too.
But now, I ask myself, Why bother?
What was the "status" of that so-called "law", anyway?
(Answer: It was a text adopted by an "Interim Governing Council" that had been appointed by the occupying force.)
Why on earth should that have any status at all, in comparison with, for example, the will of the people?
Okay, okay, I do know that the "will of the people" is a tough concept to necessarily operationalize or get a good grasp of. It is frequently fickle; it can be capricious or disturbingly majoritarian. But discerning it and operationalizing it are, at the end of the day, what democracy and good governance are all about.
And yes, I know too that there were many, many flaws in the election that was held three and a half weeks ago now, in Iraq...
But still, despite those many evident flaws-- which included the use by members of at least one list of governmental powers and resources to try to steer the election their way; the overwhelming presence of occupation forces in many parts of the country; the intimidation campaign launched by militant anti-occupation (and militant anti-Shiite) forces; and the many, many reported irregularities or worse in the conduct of the election-- Yet, despite all those flaws, in the January 30 elections the Iraqi people spoke.
The clarity of what they said was necessarily muffled and distorted by all the flaws described right there. But still, I think we can hear a couple of clear things in what they said. Which were, for a significant majority of them, these two statements:
- (1) that they believe strongly the legitimacy of rulers springs from the popular will (which was, after all, why they turned out to vote); and
(2) that they reject a leader (Allawi) foisted onto them back last spring by the occupying force-- this rejection, note, came despite the fact that Allawi enjoyed all the well-known advantages of incumbency.
But if we can say that the Iraqi "people" sent those two basic messages on January 30, I think it can help us cut through a tremendous amount of currently fevered speculation.
Not only the speculation about the precise "meaning" of this or that clause of the TAL. On that one, frankly at this point after the elections, who gives a damn? At this point, after the elections, the TAL has been transformed into-- at most-- a suggestive or perhaps "first draft" type of a document.
Remember, as I had cited back in that early March 2004 JWN post of mine, that Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa that stated,
- any law prepared for the transitional period will not gain legitimacy except after it is endorsed by an elected national assembly. Additionally, this law places obstacles in the path of reaching a permanent constitution for the country that maintains its unity and the rights of its sons of all ethnicities and sects.
Let me repeat. Allawi had all the advantages not only during the election period but in the entire eight-month period leading up to it. And yet, the people roundly rejected his candidacy. From where is he going to cobble together a coalition to defy the will of the UIA leaders?
From nowhere.
So right now, according to the definitely Rube Goldberg-esque and anti-democratic "arrangement" prescribed by the TAL, the people elected to the Iraqi Assembly have to agree on a three-member "presidential council", by a two-thirds majority vote, and then the "presidential council" needs to come to unanimous agreement on the name of a prime minister. The PM and the Council of Ministers then need to win a simple majority vote in the assembly before they begin work.
Where is democracy in this? Where is the will of the people as expressed in the elections? Where is accountability? Where are deadlines?
It is 24 days already since the election. It took the authorities an inordinately long length of time to certify the election. And now, where is the presidential council?
But why, at this point, should anyone give a darn about that whole cumbersome contraption "prescribed" by the TAL?
I am supposing that nothing much has happened in the past eleven months that has caused Ayatollah Sistani (and his supporters) to change their views regarding the status of the TAL. We have now had the election-- an election for which Sistani has pushed and pushed ever since Day 1. So what's the holdup? Why does it seem as though some people are still eager to deny to the Sistanist list the victory that it won?
Sure, the UIA people still need to work very hard to try to craft new terms of positive engagement between Iraq's Shiite majority and its Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and other minorities. But there's every sign that they can do that. They've shown extraordinary restraint in the face of terrible, terrible anti-Shiite provocatins over the past 18 months. They've said and done many things that indicate their desire to reach out to their non-Shiite compatriots, and their understanding of some of the sensitivities involved in doing so.
So why don't the Americans just take a big step back right now from their continued, very meddlesome engagement in Iraqi politics, and let the UIA people, the Kurds, and the Sunnis all get on with what they need to do, which is to work together primarily to negotiate the terms of the country's longterm Constitution?
As for the TAL, with all its extremely complex provisions for what should be happening right now? (But also, I note, no provision at all for what should happen if it should prove impossible to get the 2/3 majority needed for the presidential council, or whatever... In other words, a deeply flawed and inadequate document... )
But who needs the "TAL" anyway? It has performed its main and most important political task, which was to define rules for the country's first post-Saddam election. Now that that has happened, maybe everyone should let "the will of the people" take over.
Dear Helena,
I agree with your second conclusion regarding the Iraq elections that Allawi was definitively rejected.
However, I am more sceptical of the conclusion that Iraqis "believe strongly the legitimacy of rulers springs from the popular will (which was, after all, why they turned out to vote)".
Another interpretation would be that Shiites and Kurds voted because their authorities had endorsed the elections and, in effect, instructed their followers to assert themselves through the ballot box. After all, Sistani made voting a religious obligation, and it was clear enough who he supported. For the Kurds, it was essentially an expression of their desire for independence. Likewise, Sunnis did not vote because their authorities rejected the whole process.
I tend to agree with William Pfaff when he writes "The truth would seem to be that Iraq's affairs will not finally be decided by popular elections but by the consensus of the elders of a society whose authority structures remain mainly tribal. It is not a nation of political individualists."
Pfaff's article "The only option for Iraq", is found here: http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/30/news/edpfaff.html
Good site!
Dear Helena,
I could not imagine that Bush would find himself playing Stalin's game with the Kurds. Let me know what you think of the h-mideast-politics post below and the next one about whether this was really a "democratic" election or a power referendum, please
best to you Daniel Teodoru
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From: Daniel E. Teodoru
List Editor: Charlie Brown
Editor's Subject: Russian and American Ethnic Exploitation [Teodoru]
Author's Subject: Russian and American Ethnic Exploitation [Teodoru]
Date Written: Wednesday, March 2 2005 06:10 pm
Date Posted: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 15:16:15 -0000
The saga of Yugoslavia's explosion into many ethnic
pieces that still seem to fragment violently, has
reminded us that in this century we have yet to escape
the binds of ethnocentrism that have plagued
civilization for so long. In fact a physical
anthropologist, F.J. Gil-White, in a fascinating
analysis (with expert commentaries appended)in CURRENT
ANTHROPOLOGY 42:515-555, Oct. 2001, concluded that
ethnicity is seen as "natural" because,
"humans process ethnic groups (and a few
other related social categories) as if they were
"species" because their surface similarities to
species make them inputs to the "living kinds" mental
module that initially evolved to process species level
categories. The main similarities responsible are (1)
category-based endogamy and (2) descent-based
membership. Evolution encouraged this because
processing ethnic groups as species—- at least in the
ancestral environment—- solved adaptive problems
having to do with interactional discriminations and
behavioral prediction."
That ethnic identity is a natural, however,
heuristically does not seem to damn mankind to endless
conflict. Rather, it is the exploitation of ethnicity
to promote violence to warfare that is at cause.
The most recent egregious exploitation of ethnic
proclivities can be seen in Chechnya and in the way
Putin has been breaking Transnistra from Moldavia,
exploiting the Russian immigrants to that region. The
media and Congress had hopelessly called on Bush to
condemn this practice in the Bush-Putin face to face
meeting. Yet, as Bill Safire, neocon par excellence
himself, lamented on MEET THE PRESS:
"I was disheartened and dismayed by the
way he went eyeball to eyeball with President Putin
and Bush blinked. Here is a president who has been
talking eloquently about extending freedom and
fighting for democracy around the world in his
inaugural address and the State of the Union. And as
soon as he comes up against the man who is doing more
to stop the extension of freedom than anybody else, he
wimps out all of a sudden. I think this was as big a
blunder as his father made when he gave the chicken
Kiev speech, saying, 'Stay within the Soviet
Union.'"
I would propose that the reason why Bush did not
criticize Putin for his dismemberment of Moldavia, and
other exploitation of CIS ethnic tensions, is because
Bush is doing some exploitative exasperation of ethnic
conflicts himself.
As the election returns came from Iraq in January,
many in the press noted the non-too-surprising Shi'ia
victory, given that sect's majoritarian position. But
Mr. Bush took a "not to worry" attitude, despite press
speculation that the pro-Iran Shi'ites would dominate.
Why?
The reason is that in his imposition of "democracy" on
Iraq, he may be repeating Stalin's imposition of
"democracy" on Iran at the end of WWII. Both are using
the Kurds, a tribal people, whom a Sunni Iraqi
physician described to me as "gypsies with guns
instead of just knives." That is, as tribal people who
never managed to congeal into nationhood. The sudden
disappearance of their champion, Gen. Garner, did
seemed to me a bit premature, given Kurdish allegiance
to America as an illusory champion of their
independence, much as Stalin was a half century ago
when he supported their break away from Iran. As so
aptly described by Archie Roosevelt in Gerard
Chaliand's A PEOPLE WITHOUT A COUNTRY, the Kurds were
manipulated into an independent Azerbaijani republic
through manipulation of the "Committee of Kurdish
Youth" and the Barzani tribe, in order to intimidate
Teheran into a position away from the West and more
favorable to Moscow. Now, GW Bush is similarly working the
Kurds, so as to impede Iraqi independence from the US,
with the threat of a break-away Kurdish republic. The
TAL law imposed by Paul Bremer and in force when
the new National Assembly meets is classical "divide
and conquer" ethnic exploitation in that it does not
permit any electoral victor to form a government or to
rule without accord of the breakaway Kurds.
This is a clear demonstration to the nations of the
region what America has become under the Bush
Administration. Muzzled by HR3077, vetting
ALL Islamic studies through Zionism friendly
Congressional Committees, many academics may fear to
comment on Bush's new Stalinist bend. But clearly that
is what was referred to in the private Bush-Putin
meeting, calling on Bush to look at his own practices
before hitting at Putin's exploitation of ethnic
conflicts.
Daniel E. Teodoru
**********************************************8
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 11:35:16 -0800 (PST)
From: "Daniel E. Teodoru" Add to Address Book
Subject: Democratic election or plebiscite on US domination of Iraq?
To: h-mideast-politics@h-net.msu.edu
Mr. Bush seems to think that he can propagandize the
world with the Iraqi election long enough to sustain
US entanglement there for a long time more. Whereas
the leading Democrats for the 2008 presidential
campaign have taken to "we must stand by and not
abandon our Iraq obligation," he can take heart in
their posture (see Senators Clinton and McCain form
Baghdad some weeks ago on MEET THE PRESS). But,
please, do not consider the Iraqi elections as a model
of democracy. Perhaps, because of the Bush
Administration's inability to distinguish propaganda
from policy, they might have forgotten that the
essential backdrop to democracy is SECURITY. One must
feel secure against political violence in order to
make free political decisions. Whatever our military
has or has not provided Iraq, security is in no way
one of them.
One could consider the 58% eligible voters voting in
the election a sort of plebiscite that went against
the Resistance. But, when considering the vested
interests in Shi'ia, in pro-Allawi liberal secularists
and the Kurdish power play, one sees interest blocs
effectively mobilizing their supporters, not
individuals democratically driven to political action.
In 1967, a presidential election was held in South
Vietnam. There, as in Australia, voting was a
mandatory obligation. But the Viet Cong took voting in
the presidential elcection as betrayal of the
revolution, declaring any who participate condemned to
a violent death at the hands of Viet Cong terror
squads. The 80% plus proportion of the population then
voting is best judged, not a democratic election, but
a plebiscite for or against the Saigon government.
Similarly, the Iraq vote-- with only 58%
participation-- is best seen as a vote of confidence
or no-confidence in the process begun with American
invasion; no more.
But that is not democracy. It is good mobilization,
period. Most voters did not know much about the
candidate blocs, the candidates themselves nor the
parties. They only knew the ethno-religious groupings
and voted according to the instruction of the group to
which each belonged. As for the Constitution writing
and provisional governing that this elected Assembly
is supposed to perform, Proconsil Bremer's bunch had,
in advance, done much to make it a contained tempest
in a tea cup that will not affect America's domination
of Iraq and its sell-off of the nation's assets to
foreign corporate interests at bargain-basement prices
(only their reluctance to buy is making that project a
dud).
The made in America constitution, with its 2/3
requirement for passing of this and that office or
promulgation, has insured a minimal interference with
the invader for a long, long time (allwoing the buying
off or intimidation of anonymous delegates), unless
Iraqi groups can all cross bloc lines and agree on
limiting American dominion. Given the price of that,
loss of American security and material support, this
does not seem to be in the cards.
Sen. Clinton may be right, we may have to stay (more
on this in another post), but there is no reason to
call this election anything less that a lease on life
for the American dominion of Iraq, NOT "democracy at
work."
It is also occasion to pause and thank the Lord that
the Founding Fathers were so distinguished and
distinct from the predatory carnivores around Mr.
Bush.
Daniel E. Teodoru