"There Are Still a Lot of Things to Discuss"
Iraqi women demonstrate in Baghdad, calling for equal rights in the new constitution.
News: As the deadline for Iraq's constitution draws near, the disputes over the future of the country are no closer to being resolved.
August 2, 2005
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On Monday, Hamam Hamoudi, the head of Iraq's constitution committee, announced at a press conference that a draft document would be delivered by the August 15 deadline, to be voted on in a nationwide referendum to be held in October. The announcement came amidst rumors that the committee was considering an extension.
"I see the constitution in my sleep," Hamoudi said during an interview last week.
The fight over major issues continues, with many urging that some of the disputes be dropped until after ratification.
"This is the time for statesmanship, for thinking long term and for making the necessary compromises, not to disappoint the people of Iraq and the people of the world and I have every expectation that they will succeed in producing a good draft in a timely fashion," said US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who met with members of the committee last week.
"There are still a lot of things to discuss, especially federalism," Hamoudi said last week. "We hope to make some decisions. But the American constitution has been changed many times." (So has the headline on most reporter's stories: the different statements regarding deadlines and discussions, coming from various members of the committee in recent days, have caused a great deal of confusion.)
In the minds of Sunni Arabs in Iraq, the federalism issue amounts to little more than a land grab by the Kurds. Kurdish leaders have pressed for a greater degree of independence for their already-autonomous northern region, and have demanded a greater share of oil revenue from the giant fields in the nearby city of Kirkuk. Last week, Kurdish members of the committee introduced an article in the constitution that would make Kirkuk part of the de facto Kurdish state. The Kurds have also encouraged some of the southern Shiite-governed provinces to make similar demands for autonomy and increased control of the oilfields down south—though for some, little encouragement seemed necessary.
The relative stability of Kikuk largely depends on how the debate over federalism is settled.
"It is a very dangerous issue — Iraq doesn't need any more problems," says Jabir Habeeb, a political science professor at Baghdad University. "I don't think it can be solved in the coming days or months or years."
The federalism issue remained unresolved in Iraq's interim constitution, the Transitional Administrative Law, and is unlikely to be fully resolved any time soon. Other sticking points in the constitution are the debates over Iraqi's identity—whether it should be considered a part of the Arab Nation as well as whether it should be an "Islamic" country—as well as the question of whether Farsi, the official language of Iran, should be included as a national language.
Other issues, such as women's rights, have been getting short shrift from the committee—though on the ground, people are beginning to speak out. Women from across the country held a demonstration in the capital recently, handing out fliers to passersby and wading into traffic to give pamphlets to drivers, to demand that Iraq's constitution contain an article ensuring equality for women. The most recent draft of the document lacks such an article, and would potentially place a number of matters of personal status under sharia, or Islamic law, thus putting women at a legal disadvantage in matters such as inheritance, divorce, and child custody.
The women held their demonstration in Firdos Square, less than a kilometer away from where Mijbil Issa, one of the constitutional committee members, was assassinated the same day. The demonstration was one of the few places in Iraq that Naghem Khadim, a women's right's activist from the conservative Shiite holy city of Najaf, two hours south of the capital, could find herself in the minority while wearing a hijab.
"We are not against sharia. But it should not be the only basis for writing the constitution. The liberals should be allowed to go ahead with their own ethics," Khadim said.
She also said that January's elections, for which the law stipulated that a third of the candidates should be women, were marred by the fact that many of the candidates remained anonymous because of security concerns, and that women had, as a result, elected women that did not represent them.
"We are under pressure from religious extremists and tribal influences," Khadim said. "We would like to get away from those and to have our human rights and to be treated like women anywhere else in the world."
The committee to draft the constitution now consists of nine women and 61 men. Four of the women on the council represent conservative Islamic political parties, which have been at the head of the push for sharia to play a major part in the document.
On Sunday, Sundus Abbass, a women's rights activist, met with Hajem Hassani, the speaker of the Iraqi National Assembly, and later in the week with prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari and president Jalal Talabani.
"We will do our best to rebuild the draft of the constitution and we hope that we can make something and continue to pressure the other members of the assembly," Sundus said. "If all these efforts cannot do anything, I promise you we will work our best to gather all the Iraqi women to say no to the constitution. They cannot build the new Iraq alone."
One issue women's rights activist are angry over is a clause preventing the legislature from making laws that contradict sharia edicts. "This is an open door," says Musa. "We have not discussed it yet." But Hamoudi, the head of the constitutional committee, said the debate over this point was over.
"On the contrary, the women have their rights, economically and politically," Hamoudi said. "The first women who led a political demonstration was the daughter of Mohamed, and the first martyr against Saddam Hussein was Bint Al-Huda, the sister of Mohamed Bakr Al-Sadr [a resistance leader during the Saddam era]."
Nabil Mohamed, a political scientist at Baghdad University, doubts that women in Iraq could secure enough votes to prevent ratification. (The constitution can be voted down if either a majority of Iraqis, or two-thirds of voters in any three governates, reject the document in the referendum.) More likely, Mohamed thinks, is the emergence of a rejectionist voting bloc—a coalition of the pissed-off—that may at least partially represent the elements supporting the armed resistance.
"You can't just say that it's just of the people of Anbar or Ramadi [largely Sunni areas feeling particularly pressed by the government at the moment] that will vote against it," Mohamed said. "This is a matter of the identity of the Iraqi state."
The issue of Sunni Arab representation plagued the initial committee meetings until last month, when 15 Sunnis were added to the body.
"It's better for the Sunnis to have a constitution that is written by Iraqis in their hands, written with Islam and written with Arabs," Hamoudi says. "It is much better than a constitution that is written by Americans."
Another contested issue is how electoral districts will be drawn in future parliamentary elections. Kurdish members of parliament went so far as to abstain from a session on Sunday over this issue, forcing cancellation of the meeting for lack of a quorum. The Kurds on the committee are pushing for representatives to be elected nationally—which was the method used in the January elections—while the Sunnis want representatives elected by district. (Under the latter method, the Sunni provinces would always be guaranteed the same number of representatives in the national parliament no matter how low turnout was.) Most Shiite members appear to be pushing for a single district, but one political scientist who asked his name not be used, thinks governorate-based elections could be a point of agreement for Sunnis and Shiites.
"I think there is pressure from [Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the Shiites spiritual leader]," the professor said. "But right now, people in the south say they are not represented in the national government. They elected a national list and got representatives that aren't from their areas."
Nabil sees the whole process as rushed, on account of "the instability and the lack of confidence between parties. I think they need more time to decide what are better for national interests, not their interests personally or as a party."
David Enders is a freelance journalist who has been working in Iraq for most of the last two years. His first book, Baghdad Bulletin, is available from University of Michigan Press.
Photo: AFP
