Will one more week make the difference in adopting an Iraqi constitution? We’re about to find out. Considering the progress that’s been made so far, there’s reason to think it might.
U.S. officials have reportedly been pushing hard behind the scenes to get negotiators for Iraq’s three major ethnic groups to compromise on key points. As Monday’s deadline came, however, a handful of big issues remained unresolved. Among them: the role of Islam in Iraqi law (which will largely dictate whether women will have any meaningful rights) and the autonomy of Iraq’s Kurds. Parliament opted to give the negotiators one more week to resolve those issues and present a complete draft.
A one-week extension is preferable to seeing Shiites and Kurds, who together dominate the Iraqi parliament, steamroll minority Sunnis. That surely would backfire, assuring the popular defeat of the constitution in an October referendum (Sunnis, if united, have great enough numbers to vote down any proposal at the polls) and could have further fueled the Sunni-dominated insurgency.
Compromise is proving difficult in this ethnically-diverse nation, as many predicted it would. It will be necessary, though, if the schedule of an October popular vote, followed by December elections on a permanent government, is to be met. If that schedule falls apart, so will hopes of an imminent U.S. military withdrawal that leaves Iraqi soldiers and police in a position to fend off the insurgency. Popular support for the war here at home, already sinking, could all but disappear.
That’s plenty of incentive for the U.S. to keep the pressure on negotiators, who must be made to realize that without a draft constitution next week, their country may well spiral into a long civil war.
There is reason for optimism. Shiites and Kurds have welcomed Sunnis into the negotiations, despite the fact that few Sunnis hold parliament seats because most boycotted last year’s elections. Agreement has been reached, according to negotiators, on 99 percent of the constitution’s clauses. Political momentum has been building for months, and it must continue if the draft constitution is to win a popular vote and become the new law of the land.
That optimism, though, as well as the massive U.S. investment of lives and dollars to secure democracy in Iraq, must be rewarded with progress. For such sacrifices to be vindicated in any way, Iraqis must prove they understand that democracy requires compromise.
They have one more week to do so.
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