| 2007: Iraq urged to spread power to provinces |
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September 22, 2007 Frustrated with Iraq's deadlocked central government, the Bush administration is pushing for more power to be given to Iraq's provincial councils; in the hope that local elected leaders will be more accountable to the people they serve. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to set a date for new provincial elections as soon as possible, hoping that the rise of local politics in Iraq will spur better governance and grass-roots reconciliation between Shi'ites and Sunnis. Sunnis, who boycotted the 2005 provincial elections, are grossly underrepresented on the councils. The push for new provincial elections - a key benchmark on which Congress is judging Iraq's progress - is part of the Bush administration's increasingly urgent effort to show improvement in Iraq. But it is facing opposition from both Iraqi politicians and officials at the United Nations, who say the 2005 elections were free and fair, and that the country is not yet ready for another vote. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Maliki are slated to discuss Iraq's progress today at the United Nations in New York with international donors and neighbors. But the subject of provincial elections has already been a source of friction. UN officials advising Iraq's nascent electoral commission say that the country is at least a year away from being ready to hold credible elections in the provinces, due to ongoing resistance to dissolving the current councils, whose mandates expire in 2009, and other difficulties with voter registration and passing an electoral law. "The United States has pushed for provincial elections without fully understanding the problems," said a UN official who asked that his name not be used because he did not want to offend anyone at today's meeting. "Empowering the Sunnis is a good argument, but at the end of the day, they chose to boycott and these councils are considered democratically elected." He also told the Globe that the United Nations has complained to US officials about a recent White House report that states that the United Nations, alongside the United States, is "strongly encouraging the Government of Iraq to set a date for provincial elections." "We are not strongly pushing for elections," he said. "We maintain that this is a sovereign country and it is up to the Iraqis when the elections take place." Many Iraqi leaders are resisting the US push, fearing that new power centers in the provinces could loosen the central government's already tenuous hold on the country. Feisal Istrabadi, who recently left a post as Iraq's deputy representative to the UN, said the United States could be creating more problems for Iraq's government by pushing for early elections that extremists will almost certainly win in many provinces. Politicians loyal to anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who boycotted with Sunnis in 2005, are now poised to sweep elections in Basra and other provinces. But current and former US officials working on Iraq policy insist that holding new provincial elections and providing for a greater role for the provincial councils are crucial to stabilizing Iraq. They point out that in Ninawa Province, which is predominantly Sunni, no Sunnis currently sit on the council. In the Sunni province of Anbar, where only two percent of voters turned out, the council lacks public support. The debate is still raging in both Baghdad and Washington about whether new provincial elections should be held everywhere at once, on a rolling basis, or only in places where Sunnis are considered underrepresented. Iraq has 18 provinces, but three make up the Kurdish semi- autonomous region ruled by a single Kurdish assembly. For years, the US strategy in Iraq centered on the central government in Baghdad in the hope that top-down actions by national politicians would solve Iraq's problems and avert a civil war. But after Maliki's unity government became bogged down in disagreements and failed to deliver basic services to Iraq's population, US officials began to concentrate on building up governance in the provinces as a way to spur progress. The new strategy for Iraq that President Bush announced in January doubled the number of US diplomats and development workers in the provinces. During the recent round of congressional hearings on Iraq, US officials, including President Bush, touted the successes of local, "bottom up" initiatives. "Some of [the provincial councils] have made remarkable progress in providing essential services," said Matthias Mitman, director of the Iraq policy office at the White House, in an interview. "Sunnis, Shi'ite, and Kurds are getting together to make decisions about what should be funded." Joost Hiltermann, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said that holding new provincial elections is a good idea in theory, but that they could lead to violence. In areas of mixed populations, new elections would force Shi'ite Islamic parties and Kurdish parties to cede some of their power. In predominantly Shi'ite areas, such as Basra, new elections will exacerbate the current struggle between the radical followers of Sadr and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, a powerful party in Maliki's government. But even if Iraqi leaders agreed to new elections, the country is simply not ready to hold them, UN officials say. Meanwhile, the UN is focusing on drawing up a voter registry, not preparing new elections. "If you have any voter exercise, you will need political parties to be on board, you will want them to agree that this is a good thing, so they don't boycott it and they ensure that the turn-out is calm," said the UN official. "The benchmarks have gained momentum in the administration that 'This is what needs to be done,' without understanding the difficulties of doing it quickly and without gaining the full support from the Iraqis." Source: Boston Globe |