The Iraqi governing council, set up by the US as a step towards self-rule, has proved be so ineffective and shambolic that Washington is beginning to consider alternatives, it was reported yesterday.
Frustration with the council has been building for some time within the Bush administration, which selected the panel of Iraqi politicians in July and gave it until December 15 to come up with a plan for drawing up a constitution and holding elections.
But progress has been minimal as only a handful of council members have been turning up regularly for meetings, and there has been little oversight of the new Iraqi cabinet ministers, who are supposed to be the council’s responsibility.
”It has not been a coherent council. Members are not aware of legislation passed in their names,” said Laith Kubba, the president of the Iraqi National Group, a liberal democratic organisation that is not part of the council. ”They are not aware of what ministers are doing. Although the council is made up of 25 members, there are only five main players and the rest are there in a very ineffective way.”
The Washington Post yesterday quoted US and French officials as saying that the administration was even considering the idea put forward by Paris and other UN security council members for an interim Iraqi leadership chosen by national conference — along the lines of the loya jirga held in Afghanistan.
If such a system were chosen, the US would reverse the order of the transition, handing sovereignty to the provisional government before a constitution was written and an election held.
This suggestion had been rejected by Washington, but it is beginning to look more inviting as the US death toll rises amid the clashes in Iraq, and there is now a greater urgency to withdraw US forces in time for next November’s presidential elections.
”If our exit is going to take longer, if it looks like it could go more than two years to get it all done, then there’s an incentive to look into a transitional phase and some other governing mechanism,” a state department official said.
Kubba suggested that the leaks to the Washington Post were more likely meant to focus the minds of the council than to be a concrete plan of action.
”The frustration has been there for some time so I am not surprised by it,” Kubba said in a telephone interview yesterday. ”I would be surprised if they tried to complicate their difficult situation at the moment by upsetting the governing council.”
Robert Blackwill, an official from the national security council, who was given the job of coordinating the political transition, is reported to have begun an unannounced visit to Iraq at the weekend, reportedly to try to put pressure on the council members and discuss alternatives with the head of the occupation authority, Paul Bremer.
The Iraqi governing council was intended to represent Iraq’s ethnic diversity, and includes Shias, Sunnis, Kurds and a representative of the Turkoman community. It included three women, but one, Aqila al-Hashimi, was assassinated in September.
Most of the prominent Sunnis on the council are former exiles, and Kubba said the council should be expanded to include more representatives from the provinces and the main Sunni tribes, which he said had been marginalised by the occupation authorities.
Those groups would have to be convinced that they would wield real — rather than symbolic — power. – Guardian Unlimited Â