Say Anything Blog

It looks that way, and I think it would be a good thing for Iraq.

BAGHDAD, Iraq—Iraq’s fractious ethnic and religious parliamentary groups agreed Sunday to open debate on a contentious Shiite-proposed draft legislation that will allow the creation of federal regions in Iraq, politicians said.

The agreement came after a compromise was reached with Sunnis on setting up a parliamentary committee to amend Iraq’s constitution, a key demand by the minority. The constitutional committee will be set up on Sept. 25 and the federalism bill will be read to the body a day later, politicians said. . . .

The legislative deal opens the way for Iraq’s Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds to move ahead politically and break a two-week political deadlock that threatened to further sour relations between the communities. If left unresolved, the deadlock could have further shaken Iraq’s fragile democracy and led to more sectarian violence.

The head of the largest Sunni group, the Iraqi Accordance Front, said the constitutional committee would be formed Monday. “It will be formed and the day after the federalism bill will be read,” Accordance Front leader Adnan al-Dulaimi said. . . .

The federalism legislation calls for setting up a system to allow the creation of autonomous regions in the predominantly Shiite south, much like the self-ruling Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Sunnis have said they fear the legislation will split Iraq apart and fuel sectarian bloodshed. The Kurdish north and Shiite south hold Iraq’s oil fields, while the predominantly Sunni areas don’t have anything but desert.

A federal Iraq is something Bayan Rahman of the Kurdistan Development Corporation favored when I asked her about it in our interview back in July.  She said that the optimum situation for the country would be to have it split up into five semi-autonomous states much like states here in the U.S.  The Kurds would have a state, the Sunnis would have a state, the majority Shiites would have two states and Baghdad, the capital, would be a state by itself.  Such a situation would, I think, alleviate a lot of the sectarian tensions that are currently pulling Iraq apart.

In the modern era I think a lot of people have forgotten the genius that went into the federalist style of government America’s founding fathers developed.  See, the framers recognized that one-size-fits-all democracy wouldn’t work in a large and socially diverse nation so they created a system of government that allowed for multiple solutions to the most contentious, controversial issues that would arise.  This is why our Constitution is, for the most part, little more than a framework for federal government and a list of certain rights that cannot ever be abridged.  Beyond that, all issues were left to the states.  That way nasty social issues like marriage and abortion could be addressed in various ways to the satisfaction of majorities in the various states.

Sadly here in America we’ve gotten away from that with many preferring to pervert the Constitution by demanding the court jam one-size-fits-all solutions to these issues down the throats of Americans, but that doesn’t mean federalism wouldn’t work in Iraq.

I’m interested to see what comes of this compromise and proposed bill.  It could well be the key to a successful, thriving democracy in Iraq.