POST-SADDAM IRAQ CONFERENCE SERIES (03/03/2003)

And there would have been an Iraqi nation more or less–might have been cohesive and hopefully could have been more democratic. But they inculcated to the people–and not only in Iraq, I mean, all over the Middle East. Because this notion spread–and then Nasser came in Egypt, and so on and so forth–that basically they are all members of the Arab nation, the Arab nation should unite. I mean, this is the notion of Baathism. What is the ideology of Baathism? The ideology of Baathism is basically that, you know, one Arab nation with eternal destiny.

And therefore there is a mental dissonance. So the people in the Middle East are torn. They are neither fully fledged local patriots or members of a nation. They are not members of the Arab nation, because in the final account, no matter how hard you work, you cannot create something out of nothing. And in my view–and again, as I said, some people may oppose it–there is no Arab nation.

And therefore I think one of the major things is, again, that Iraq rids itself of all these penalties. Because it’s only when the Iraqis can educate themselves that they’re all Iraqis that you can hope that, over the long-term, the differences between Shiites and Sunnis, Kurds, and others will be diluted and all of them will feel themselves members of one nation. If you fail to do this, I’m afraid democracy is not going to be successful in Iraq.

Thank you very much.

MR. GERECHT: Hi, I’m Reuel Gerecht. And first I’d like to just thank the panel. And I would also–I’m just going to ask one question, take advantage of my position as moderator, and then I will throw the questions out to the floor.

My question to the panel is how do you implement a constitutional federated system with the Iraqi army? I mean, the Iraqi army has been probably the most troublesome element in the Iraqi identity, without which it could not–the various dictators could not have actually reigned in Iraq. And how do you handle the fact that the Iraqi army, back all the way to the Ottoman period, was overwhelmingly, in the officer corps, Sunni? How do you deal with that problem? Do you have an affirmative action program for Shiites and Kurds and others? Or if you think that’s a bad idea–I think it probably is–how do you change a few hundred years of history? Thank you.

MS. FRANCKE: Do I start? Not a few hundred years, no. Not quite.

MR. GERECHT: No, actually with the Ottoman Empire, it is a few hundred years.

MS. FRANCKE: It’s true there were Sunni officers in the Ottoman army from Iraq, if that’s what you’re referring to.

MR. GERECHT: No, just the Ottoman elite and the–in the Ottoman army was all Sunni. It was a Sunni state. The Shiites were not part of the military apparatus.

MS. FRANCKE: Well, you ask a very important question. The Iraqi army as a whole has to be rebuilt, really, from scratch. First of all, the officer corps that is now there in the upper echelons, especially the Republican Guard and so on, is, if not loyal to the regime, at least has been implicated in all kinds of human rights abuses and crimes. And therefore I imagine that I would–what I would like to see and I think should be done is that a certain layer of the top echelon of Iraqi officers have to be disbarred. They don’t have to be killed, they don’t have to be tried, but they should certainly be retired very quickly.

The other important thing is a massive reeducation of the Iraqi army, and this is something that takes a very long time. Somebody has to undertake it. It is not going to happen overnight. It’s not true to say that just because Saddam is gone, this army is going to transform itself.

You spoke about affirmative action. This has been in fact suggested by some Shiite, that we have to have affirmative action in the army. I agree with you it’s not such a good idea. You have to downsize the army, you have to depoliticize it, you have to make it an all-volunteer army and give up notions like drafting people and so on.

And I think within the constitution there has to be some language about what the role of the army is. Again, that doesn’t guarantee, but at least you have to set up some yardsticks. You have to know when the army has transgressed against the constitution and so on.

It is a difficult problem. There are no easy answers. But there are some guidelines that I think one can take.

MR. GERECHT: Mr. Karsh.

MR. KARSH: Yeah, I agree with much of what has been said. I think, first of all, you have to basically disband the army and build it from scratch, as was said here. But the fact of the matter is that this must be done at a time where you have American military presence in Iraq. I mean, this is one of the actors that we didn’t mention before, and this is one of the problems that you have today. Because whether you have American presence or whether you don’t have American military presence, I mean, you are running a major risk. I don’t think all of this can be done without American army being present in Iraq over a prolonged period of time. Because, you know, many people who lived in the army, they had the good life for too long. They are not going to give up that easily the positions of power. You have to disarm many people. I mean, the Middle East is an area where private weapons are quite widespread, and you may have to go to certain tribes in certain areas and disarm them and so on and so forth. So it means that you’ll have the Americans there.

I agree the army should be much smaller, it should be volunteer. But still, it should represent overall the social composition of Iraq. Which means, in the final account–I don’t know how you do it, whether it’s through affirmative action or by other means–I mean, it will come to be that the Shiites will have a proportionate role to play in the military service just as you’ll have in other parts of the administration. There is no way around it.

MR. KAMBER: I think with the Democratic Principles we discussed this point quite a bit, I mean, and at the end in the report there is about a few pages concerning how to democratize the army. And the idea wasn’t really to get rid totally of the army. To keep an army, as [inaudible] mentioned, that it should be really–consist of all Iraqis. And it should be a volunteer. So it should not be really based–and army in Iraq, it’s like you go to work. In Iraq–I mean, just like you go to work, it’s a position. It’s a living in Iraq, the army. It’s not like here, a professional army, you see.

So to get rid of the whole army is going to take some time. But in the future, I really would love to see, just like what he mentioned, that it should be a volunteer and it should be no discrimination. It should be for all Iraqis. But it’s going to take some time. You cannot get rid of the army in the first month or two. But I think the American, or the Iraqis, they will need help on that point, really, to rebuild the army so that it will help to unify Iraq, not to really support only one group of Iraqi segments.

MS. FRANCKE: Quick item. You need an army for security. And I think that in the future Iraqi security has to be part of a regional security system in which the United States plays a big role. That, I would imagine, is going to be a very important–I hope it’s going to be an important subject of discussion in a post-Saddam era.

MR. GERECHT: Well, I just hope the American army can tell the difference between Sunnis and Shiites.

All right, I’ll throw it open to the floor. First question to Harold.

QUESTION: In listening to the three lecturers, one of the things which sort of turns on a red light, at least in my mind, is the declaration in London which declared Iraq a Muslim state–basically the religion of the state is Islam. And what we’re doing now is something new. It’s a brand-new thing. And here is a real chance to change things. I mean, if you define the state as a Muslim state, the question is that–Shiite or Sunni, all these things do is create problems.

The question is that if we cannot come up with a solution–“we” meaning those of us who are involved with this, and certainly and most importantly it’s the Iraqi people–where this can be avoided, then it seems like we’re going to go down the same road that we’ve had up to now. I mean, I, frankly, strongly oppose a–that the state should protect the Assyrians, should protect the Sunni religious establishment.

Is there a way–and I know we’re talking theoretically now, we’re not there now–where these religious institutions or ethnic whatevers are simply outside of the state? Or could you have a parliament which is part a representative totally of Iraqis as Iraqis, and the second, possibly, to have ethnic or religious interests? Because, you know, look, the amount of Assyrians leaving the country is quite high. What happens in the future if there are six Assyrians in the country? I’m not advocating that, please. I’m–but if you have these static things here, it creates very, very serious problems.

MR. GERECHT: Who would like to take that one first?

MR. KAMBER: Yeah, well–

QUESTION: And I’m certainly not anti-Assyrian or anti-anybody.

MR. KAMBER: That’s all right. Well, as an Assyrian, I will tell you I am not happy with the conclusion of the Iraqi meeting in London. I was one of the people there in the meeting. We don’t like to see the religious to be the dominant in a government, in a new government. We would like to have a secular government that would respect all the people regardless of their ethnicity and their religious background.

But what will happen really depends on what the Americans are going to do and how they’re going to rebuild that country. That’s very important. And you can see–I mean, I talk about the ignore of the Iraqi opposition for their minorities. You can see that now, in Erbil, they actually established a, what they call it a Leadership Committee. There are six people in there. There is one, two, and three Shia; two Kurdish; and one Sunni. There is no Christian or Assyrian on that committee. So how are they going to represent all the segments of the Iraqis? I don’t understand it. And how are they going to really sit and rewrite the constitution of the country?

So it is very important that–we hope that the Americans they will actually protect and safeguard the human rights of all Iraqi peoples.

QUESTION: Can I make one small point? There is [off-microphone, inaudible].

MS. FRANCKE: You know, I, too, would like a secular state and I would like the constitution to talk about separation of church and state. If, however, that doesn’t happen and there is a statement that Iraq is a Muslim country–reflecting, after all, the vast majority–the important thing is to make sure that this does not go beyond the page of the constitution and has actually no repercussions in how the country is run. That’s the important thing.

MR. KARSH: I fully agree. In fact, it’s part of what I wanted to say. But don’t forget that in the Middle East, you know, religion has constituted and still constitutes the linchpin of political order. I mean, Islam, unlike Christianity, has never separated between temporal and political power. And this is one of the major things that basically have to happen in order for democracy to succeed. So how you achieve it, I mean, it’s really an uphill struggle in many ways.

I think, as was mentioned here, in the final account, I mean, no matter how you write it, you have to sit with that in fact there is a separation, in real life, in daily life.

I read, by the way, the other day, Kanan Makiya, there was a big article about him in the New York Times the other day. And he said that–according to the reporter–that Iraq should be secular. I looked. It is reported as real in the handout, and he doesn’t say it. So you see they are very careful–you have to break a few taboos, you have to break the taboo of Arab nationalism and you have to break the Islamic sway over societies in the Middle East in establishing democracy. And you have to do it very carefully.

QUESTION: Yeah, but Shiism has an answer to solve the separation of church and state, or religion and state, here. And that is that the type of Shiism, for example, in Iraq–again, as you all said, is the majority–is that until the awaited imam reappears, all political rule is illegitimate. Therefore, it basically has to separate. Religion cannot be the basis of rule in Shiism.

QUESTION: I’ll let that go, though I would just add Hakim Abdawa [ph] would disagree with you. I’ll pass it back to Patrick Clawson.

QUESTION: Patrick Clawson from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Several of the speakers referred to the problem of ensuring that a diffusion of power that’s written into documents becomes reality and that power isn’t de facto recentralized. And I really didn’t hear very many suggestions about how to accomplish that, and would be interested in more of your thoughts about how to ensure that whatever diffusion of power is written into these political procedures is not undermined in practice.

And in that light, I was surprised that there wasn’t more discussion about how it is that these–the transition to this new government occurs, in that I would have thought that, for instance, if the new governance are reconstituted and given de facto authority well before the national government emerges–so that the governance have a certain reality for a year or two before the national government appears–that that could make a difference. And certainly my understanding of the–meager as it is–of the experience with federalism around the world is that federalism works a lot better if it’s a group of entities that come together to form a central authority, rather than a central authority announcing, oh, by the way, we’re going to hand out power to all of you, which tends often not to work in practice.

MR. GERECHT: Who’d like to take that first?

MS. FRANCKE: Yeah, Patrick, in fact I was trying to think if there was any case, any country which started off as a centralized system and actually devolved. Britain, perhaps, is one that I can think of, but it did not go the way of federalism. But you’re right, mostly it is much looser entities that came together.

In terms–I think it’s important also to distinguish between the administrative diffusion of authority and political diffusion of authority. Now, if you devolve–in a devolution, you devolve authority, administrative authority to the parts. And that can easily be done. They run their police force, they run their schools, and so on and so forth. But how do you–the question is how do you devolve political authority, and in fact can you devolve political authority except in the classic separation of powers that we look at–parliament, legislative, executive, et cetera?

And I don’t have an answer. The administrative distribution of authority is really quite simple. It is the political that is going to represent problems. For example, to the extent that armies represent political clout–for example, the Kurds have said we want to retain our peshmerga not just as a police force, but as an army, or as part of the Iraqi army but under our command and our jurisdiction. Now, that is a political move.

It is going to be much more difficult to figure out how to disperse political power as opposed to administrative. In other words, I don’t have an answer for you.

MR. KARSH: I think it’s a 60-million question. I don’t think I know much more than Mrs. Francke, but I think in principle you should build up a nation, which means that regional institutions, some of them will have to go. So I think something like the peshmerga and other military militias–I don’t think they exist, really, under Saddam, but–the Kurds are a unique case, because they managed to break from Saddam’s grip. I think the peshmerga should be disbanded. I think the Kurds–and again, we come to the first question, it was about affirmative action in the army. I think the Kurds should become part of the Iraqi army. It should be a representative army, the army of the Iraqi nation, and they should become part of it.

I think part of the thing that we have to break is this factionalism. This is–and again, it goes back one hundred years ago, because this factionalism existed when the Ottoman Empire collapsed. Rather than develop it into nationalism, they left them somewhere in between. You have to build up a nation. You have to–I think the parliamentarian system has to be–there has to be, I think, proportional elections, you have to establish parties, you have to have separation of powers, as was mentioned here. You have to ensure maybe things we are not talking about that work in democracy. You have to ensure in the constitution and some arrangements and through American presidents for several years that this parliamentarian system is not abused. Let’s say if you have one major Shiite party and it becomes a majority, establishes the government without the rest, how do you see to it that it doesn’t start suppressing the rest? Because until now, this is the political culture that they have had.

So I think you have to put institutions in place and the structure, and you have to get it right. And then you have to remain there. I mean, Americans–and this is something I–this is my great fear, to be frank. I know, again, Kanan Makiya spoke against American military presence in Iraq. He thinks they can go, the Iraqi exiles will take over from Saddam, and the Americans can pull out. At least, he said so on one occasion. I don’t know if he thinks so to this very day. I think he lives in a fantasy land. I don’t think if the Iraqi exiles come–and if–a government will be established based on the Iraqi parliament and so on and so forth, the exiled parliament. They’ll need the Americans to shore up the regime, because otherwise they’ll be out of power very quickly, in my view.

Now, the question is does the American administration, perhaps this administration, realize this? But you are not sure it will remain in power for the next four years, and you’re not sure, even if it remains in power, where the problems will start coming, arising. And they will. Because there will be violence in Iraq, and the American army would like to go here and there and to use force to ensure law and order–whether they can stay the course. And this is the main issue. If they can stay the course, then yes, I think once you put the structures in place, they can regularly start operating. If the Americans are going to pull out quickly, having established the structures but not nurtured them for a long enough time, it’s going to be a disaster.

MS. FRANCKE: Actually, one way to distribute political power is something that exists in the American system. And that is that some decisions by the central government do not depend only on the institutions that are in Baghdad, but have to be approved by legislators in the federated regions.

Now, the most obvious example of this that I can think of is the need, if you want to change the U.S. Constitution, to get–correct me if I’m wrong–two-thirds of the states to approve. And in Iraq, similarly, if we really want a devolution of political authority, then we are going to have to have some decisions that require a majority vote from the regions.

I must, maybe, digress here a little bit and take issue with something that Professor Karsh said. And that is the question of majority rule. This frightens the hell out of me. Because we are so conditioned in Iraq–and, unfortunately, Americans are conditioned to think about Iraq–in terms of majorities being ethnic or religious majorities. We talk about a Shia majority or Kurdish majority in the north and Arab majority.

This is not–if we want to build, if we truly are interested in building democracy in Iraq, we must begin to think about majorities in a completely different way. Not in terms of ethnicity or religion, but about a political majority. Why should political parties in Iraq, that arise in Iraq, be a Shia political party or a Sunni political party, or indeed a Kurdish political party? I think that is the antithesis of any hope for democracy that we might have.

I do not wish to see the rule of the majority equating to the rule of the Arabs or to the rule of the Shia. I want the rule of the majority to be a political majority, which–and the important point about this is if you take it to mean national or religious, ethnic or religious majority, it can never change. But if you think of it as a particular political majority, then of course it can change, because this majority party one day can be overruled by a political party, another.

Now, of course it requires far greater political maturity to achieve that. It is so much easier to fall back on primary identifications–I’m Arab, I’m Muslim, I’m Shiite, and so on. But that is not the way in which democracy is going to flourish. It has to be clear. It may be the easier way, but that’s not how democracy will flourish.

MR. KARSH: No, I agree. I mean, this is a very important question and very interesting, and I think this will determine the success or failure of this exercise.

But the problem is, again–as I said before–that we have 100 years missed. You know, these are lost, wasted 100 years in which Iraqis were not, you know, educated to develop a true Iraqi national identity. And this has to start now. But you cannot start running before you know how to walk.

So of course, ideally, and eventually if we do it right, you know, yeah, of course. Why shouldn’t the Shiite go together with the Sunni and establish a party, and a Kurd or Assyrian, around an issue? I don’t know that they want to be socialists, they want to be capitalists, they want to be conservatives, democrats, republicans, whatever. Fine. I mean, this is ideally–and this, hopefully, it will come to it. But I don’t think it will come immediately. And in the short term the reality will be such that, you know, in the final account democracy represents the wish of the majority.

Just very quickly about devolution, I think, again, we are running–in devolution we are running the risk of–you need to have devolution, you need to have, you know, as much power devolved to the various federations or federal units, but at the same time you have to be very careful that this devolution doesn’t turn into anarchy. Because, again, we don’t have this total tradition democracy.

And the American example, I’m not sure it’s the right example, because the United States was to a large extent democratic from the outset. And even in the United States, it had to go through a civil war in order to enforce the union. So you see that in a way devolution–some people wanted devolution to go further and further and you had to go through the bloodiest exercise in American history in order to enforce the union. And obviously, you don’t want it in Iraq.

MR. : Just to your point about the American example, if you use it. Please note that the U.S. Constitution specifies that no military base can be built in any state without the approval of that state legislature, and reserves to the state governor, by constitution, the right to appoint the officers in the National Guard. So in the American Constitution, even the military was devolved.

QUESTION: Max Singer, at the Hudson Institute.

I think that there’s been a too-limited vocabulary of the choices a little bit. But before I explain what I mean by that, I want to note that in fact, the recent years, Saddam has been giving an education to Iraqis in Iraqi citizenship. I believe that he has united Iraqis against him, against the Baath, against totalitarianism, and produced a consciousness of a common Iraqi feeling, perhaps more than there was before. And that will be built on.

The heart of federalism is that different political structures deal with and are responsible for different areas of responsibility, all within the same overall territory. And so one of the ways out of these dilemmas which have been so rightly described is to have different units elected and chosen in different ways, dealing with different problems.

And there’s also a very fundamental check-and-balance or a division of authority, and that is between the government–any government–and the people: How much is the government going to decide and how much is going to be left for nongovernmental institutions. So that much of the influence of the traditional organizations, traditional ethnic and other groups, can be exerted nongovernmentally if the government leaves them freedom to do that.

But I think the main under-recognized element in this discussion is the rule of law. That is the sweeping principle that can be used to protect a system. It requires that everybody–citizens, units of all different groups–recognize that if they want to preserve the system and they see that the system is designed to give them some adequate protection, the way they have to preserve the system is to insist on the rule of law. And if everybody comes together to support the law in any case of a dispute, rather than supporting the ethnic group or the particular issue or whatever it is, but the common recognition the law is supreme, that is the acid that cuts through many of the problems. You write a good system of laws to start with.

The United States, by the way, is majority rule in some sense, but the way it works in practice, as is well known, is the principle of the concurrent majority, which means essentially that all groups have to be essentially unanimous to make major changes or institute major policies–although that’s not written down anywhere. That’s the way it works out because there are many sources of power and the rule of law so that a temporary narrow majority cannot make a revolution in the way people live.

It’s also why one of the reasons why small groups do not have to have their own district in order to be expressed. In a complex political system, as any developed democracy is, if you have 5 percent of the people who stick together politically, they have very great power even if they don’t have a single elected representative. Or they can get an elected representative with much less than a majority in any district. So what you can’t do is to get all this power legislated in the structure of the system; what you have to do is see that the rule of law is there and that there is division of functions.

MR. GERECHT: Okay, I’m not sure there was a question in there. I’ll move on. Back there?
QUESTION: I think the sine qua non of the American system is property rights. And certainly when you talk about rule of law, you can’t talk about that without property rights. And I’m wondering if there’s been much constitutional discussion of that and, beyond that, transitioning from a Stalinist system to an open economy.

MS. FRANCKE: Let me understand you. When you say “property rights,” you mean as opposed to a socialist system? Okay. Iraq really was not much of a socialist system in terms of the fact that people could own businesses and so on; it was not a total socialist system. However, most major heavy industry and so on was in fact held by the government.

There was no discussion of property rights because it was not seen as a threatened element in Iraq. And in fact, what is very interesting is that historically there has been a great resistance to socialism on the part of Muslim clerics because property rights are important in Islam. And so whenever a government has tried to encroach on that, there has been an outcry from the clerics.

This is not to say that Saddam has not taken people’s property away, stripped them of citizenship, thrown them out of the country, appropriated property and assets, and so on. But it was not a focal point of the kind of things that we were discussing.

Now, there were other areas that we did discuss that had to do with property, and that is the importance of property claims of people who have been either–were either internally displaced or have been forced into exile. Because all of those people left their property, those people are going to want to come back, claim property; there are going to be property disputes.

Of course, the other thing is that there are other aspects of property that are not just tangible, not just houses and money. There are, for example, people’s writings, people’s authorship, people’s privacy. One can extend this idea of property much more broadly, and there it becomes very relevant to Iraq because it is those intangible aspects of property that are in fact the most inhibited.

MR. KAMBER: There is another thing about property. It’s actually the government that used it more, as Rend mentioned, to Arabize certain areas in Iraq. Like in Kirkuk, they took over some properties which belonged to Assyrians, Turkomans, and Kurds, and the put some other families in there just to increase the Arab population. They similarly, close to the Mosul area, they actually Arabized a lot of these villages where they belong to Assyrians and other minorities.

So, really, there isn’t any law. It’s up to the government. It can control anything they want in there. And they use that, actually, as an Arabization, a policy reason, to impose their own policy on certain areas or properties.

MR. GERECHT: Another question from the audience? Right here?

QUESTION: [Off-microphone, inaudible.]

MR. KAMBER: Well, I don’t want to see that, to be honest. And I never think that Iraq should be an Islamic state. Because if we want to have a democracy in Iraq, then we should have a rule of law, as he mentioned here. As a Christian, I don’t like, really, to see an Islamic rule in Iraq. Although, I mean, in Iran it’s a different nation, it’s not an Arab nation, so they apply that and they give some rights to minorities, but it is very limited. So we don’t know what will happen when they come and apply the sharia law in Iraq, where there are about 2 million Christians in Iraq. So what will happen? Are they going to close all these religious institutions or are they going to impose their different laws in there? So that’s why I wish that there will be a democracy in Iraq where everybody will be respected and have his own right, regardless of his ethnicity or religion. I think that’s very important for our survival in Iraq, to be honest.

QUESTION: [Inaudible.]

MR. KAMBER: Yes, that’s what I support. I support, really, a democratic, secular government. I don’t support federalism or an Islamic law in Iraq.

MR. KARSH: I don’t see why federalism is opposed, you know, to secularism. I mean, you have this country, for example. But it depends, again, how you define. I mean, personally I don’t think Iraq should be an Islamic state. But let’s say if it’s made, the constitution states that the religion of the state is Islam, the question is how far do you go from there? If this is as far as you go, I’m not happy about this, but, you know, okay, this is symbolic. But if you apply the sharia, like you say, so of course, then you are back to medieval times and then you don’t have democracy.

You have this long debate among Middle East experts, you know–I didn’t get into it too much–you know, whether Islam is conducive to democracy or not. I don’t think it is, and I don’t think in any case, whether it’s Islam, Christianity, Judaism, I don’t think religion should be–politics and religion should be mixed. I think there should be separation between the two.

So this will be an indication, which way Iraq is going.

MR. GERECHT: Back there?

QUESTION: Hello, my name is Scott Carpenter. I have a quick question about the Democratic Principles Working Group [inaudible].

One of the issues that comes to mind when we’re discussing constitutions is legitimacy. And there’s been a couple of comments about the State Department and CIA really not fully supporting the democratic mechanism in a post-conflict Iraq initially. When we talk about constitutions, however, there is a chicken-and-egg question. I mean, who elects whom to go to a constitutional assembly to create a constitution? How is legitimacy conferred on that process? And I’m wondering about the discussions within the Future of Iraq project. Thank you.

MS. FRANCKE: Well, I knew that was going to come sometime. Okay. In other words, if you have a constituent assembly, what legitimacy does it have before elections have happened? Right? Okay.

Well, when–let me go back again to American history when all these gentlemen met in Philadelphia in 1776, and again when they drafted the Articles and so on. But who conferred legitimacy?

MR. : The states.

MS. FRANCKE: Well, we could have legitimacy conferred from the governorates. And one of the things that we suggested in the report is that there should be early elections for–early local elections in Iraq. In other words, local elections do not need to wait for two to three years until you have national elections.

But whatever you do–and we came up against this issue of legitimacy very quickly in this working group. And we decided, okay, what legitimacy does Saddam Hussein have now? None. What legitimacy does the national assembly in Iraq have now? Well, none. Therefore, we do not have–we’re not rivalling, we’re not coming in to break a legitimately constituted system. And therefore, if the constituent assembly has somewhat less traditional legitimacy than is expected, then that’s fine. We have revolutionary legitimacy.

But definitely one of the ways was to go back to Iraqi jurists. We have a lot of Iraqi jurists who are judges and so on in Iraq who are competent. Those should be the nucleus of a constituent assembly; they have to be there. We also talked about representatives from major political parties, or from the political parties–forget “major.” We also talked about representatives from the various ethnic and religious groups. And we also talked about regional representatives from the governorates as a result of these early–fairly early elections. We thought of the constituent assembly as a composite, in other words, fully recognizing that it had, you know, not 100 percent legitimacy, but not zero either–and certainly, one way or the other, more than Saddam has.

MS. PLETKA: I’m sorry, I’m indulging myself by asking you a question I could easily ask you afterwards, but I wanted to hear you answer it publicly.

You know, one of the things that people talk about in terms of federalism and in terms of trying devolve authority, and perhaps not even ethnically, is very abstract. And what we see not only here at the table today, but what we saw in Northern Iraq and what we’ve seen in London and in successive meetings of the Iraqi opposition are that minorities and even majorities are unwilling to give up their prerogatives, are unwilling to give up their militias, are unwilling to give up their sawhorses of decades, and are really not interested in becoming vested in an Iraqi state, whatever the definition of that state is.

Mechanically speaking, it would appear that one of the tradeoffs to force them to become interested is to give them a share of that state. And you all have — [change tape] — benefits for your people [inaudible] whether it’s oil or it’s capitalism or it’s anything else. I wonder if you could just address that [inaudible]?

MS. FRANCKE: I seem to be the scapegoat here, the sacrificial lamb. Are we speaking about the transitional period or are we speaking about a post-transition period?

MS. PLETKA: [Inaudible] if they don’t hold out the prospect for that, then the stakes are very low if you do in fact cause trouble.

MS. FRANCKE: I believe, and I’ve actually written this, that an essential ingredient in a successful transition is going to be the measure by which you give all these groups, however you define them, a stake in the center. You give them a vested interest in the survival and in the success of this project. Any group that is sidelined–as, for example, the Assyrians were in Salahadeen–have absolutely no interest in the success of the product.

Now, how you do that is a different matter. But the principle of–and I go back to what I said earlier. There has to be something of a co-equal share. I do not want, for example, the Assyrians to come in as a minor unit in an overwhelmingly Shiite or Arab or whatever government composition. There has to be a much greater balance, even if the Assyrians or others are given a disproportionate role to play. People have to have an interest in the center.

Now, there is a sign of hope in that I think some of the Kurdish political parties have recognized that they have been for the last 12 years–in fact, for the last umpteen years–been far too focused on their little Kurdish territory, on their little interest, and far too little focused on the power play in Baghdad. And some of them at least are now turning their attention to, well, okay, let’s get whatever we can, as much as we can for the Kurdish territory, but let us think about how big a role we can play in Baghdad. And I think this is an important transformation. This is what I mean by the groups feeling that they have a vested interest in the center.

I don’t know, Dannie, if this answers your question a little bit. I don’t know what the mechanisms are, but certainly the principle, I think, is absolutely right.

MR. KARSH: Yeah, but to a certain extent it contradicts what you said before, that basically it shouldn’t be based on ethnic, religious, or other. If you want to give the Kurds a stake in central power, so it means that you view them as Kurds and you treat them as Kurds. Which I think should be, in the short term or the middle term, because I don’t think you can transform the Iraqis into a nation-state in the sense that they lose their distinct identities before quite a long time.

So, as I said before, I think there should be a federal arrangement in which the various groups will on the one hand receive a proportionate part of power–and again, if the–you know, I think it will be–it will come naturally through the elections as well, but even before we have elections, obviously you have to have affirmative action. I mean, the Shiites have been largely discriminated for 100 years or even before, like you said–the Ottoman Empire. So you have to let them feel that, you know–you know, most Iraqis are Shiites, so why should they be ruled by a minority regime? I mean, you know.

So there should be affirmative action. You should see that there is a Shiite prime minister, I don’t know, Sunni foreign minister, Kurdish something else. Then you can, you know, give them stakes in the running of the country one way or another. But at the same time, I think you should ensure that at least for quite some time the Kurds are distinct identities. Because I think, for example, the Kurds or Assyrians or other will feel frightened if you come and said, oh, okay, as of now you are an Iraqi, you’re not an Assyrian, so forget about this, forget about that. I think it takes time. And you have to on the one hand let them feel separate and equal; at the same time, give them enough, sufficient incentive to play on the national scene.

MR. KAMBER: On the subject of Iraqi opposition meetings and all of that, we are not happy. I mean, a lot of people were not happy as groups, as even women. I mean, there was only probably like .1 percent of women at that conference. So if the women are not going to have [inaudible] in the future of Iraq, how is there going to be democracy? Whether there is affirmative action for Shia or not, that’s another point which I don’t really like, to be honest. I think we have to be all partners in the business of the future of Iraq regardless of whatever ethnic group it is, whether it is majority or minority.

I can read from what [inaudible] Chalabi says in Sulahadeen, which might be of interest. You see, he says here that Assyrians are the oldest people in Iraq. And then he says democracy is how to deal with the Assyrian question, because they are oppressed, and today they are in numbers more in diaspora than inside Iraq because of that.

So how are you going to solve the Assyrian problem? There’s probably, like, at least 1 or 2 million Assyrians living in exile because of–since, like, 1932, when Iraq became a member of the League of Nations. So you need, really, to have respect for all these problems so that they can return to Iraq, they can–if they’re going to return to Iraq, as [inaudible] mentioned, how are they going to go back to their lands? How are they going to return back to their villages? Now they are occupied by Kurds. I mean, there’s a lot of problems we have to really talk about. And these cannot be talked–or represented, these problems, by having a group of three Shia and two Kurds and one Sunni on a leadership committee. You need to have people from all groups represented there so they can actually discuss their future in a democratic Iraq.

MR. KARSH: No, that’s for sure, but it is–again we go back, democracy in the final account is representative of the ethos of the majority. If you look at Europe–today, of course, you have more interculturalism and so on and so forth, and you have some blending of values, but on the whole there are certain ethoses. And the fact is that Assyrians are going to remain minority. I mean, there is not–I mean, you know, even if the 2 million come back, they are still going to remain the minority in Iraq. And part of democracy is that minority are treated in a fair way. I mean, in this country you have numerous minorities–you have Jews, you have Muslims, you have others–and they are treated in a fair way. So why shouldn’t Assyrians be treated in a fair way? It doesn’t mean necessarily that you elect an Assyrian president tomorrow. On the other hand, it does not mean that there cannot be an Assyrian president.
There will be equality to all, there will be equal opportunities. But still, life is what it is. And, you know, we have equality, but still we haven’t had a black president in this country and it may be some time before it will be–and even if there will be one, so still you don’t mean that all blacks will be necessarily equal. And if you look at England, for example, where I’ve been living for 15 years now, the situation for blacks is much worse than in the United States. You don’t even see a university professor that is black, let alone a future prime minister.

So there are certain realities on the ground. I think minorities should be given all the opportunities. And at times–I know, you know, affirmative action may not be a federal ideal in this forum, but sometimes, if you do it right, it can happen.

MR. GERECHT: Okay, I think I’m going to close it up there. I want to thank again the panel for the discussion today, and I’d like to thank all the individuals who came. And once again, I’d like to thank Molly McHugh [sp] for her assistance here, because without it we would not have these panels.

Thank you.

[End of discussion.]

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