By Liz Sly
The Chicago Tribune, 13 May 2007.
BAGHDAD—As Democratic leaders were pushing in the U.S. Congress to tie funding for the Iraq war to measurable signs of political progress in Iraq, the Iraqi parliament was having a typically fruitless week last week.
Tuesday's session was called off because of an electricity blackout. Wednesday's was dominated by a debate on whether to sue Al Jazeera TV network over comments deemed insulting to the top Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Thursday's was adjourned in an uproar after only 30 minutes when the speaker accused the parliamentarians of responsibility for the violence raging in Iraq, prompting an angry walkout.
At no point were any of the core issues on which U.S. officials are demanding progress addressed—because they haven't even been presented yet.
In the face of mounting pressure from Washington and threats by Congress to impose deadlines for so-called benchmarks on progress, Iraq's political process is deadlocked among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions that must reconcile deep and abiding differences before any progress can be made.
"When the Shiites agree, the Kurds say no. When the Sunnis agree, the Shiites say no. When the Kurds agree, the Sunnis say no," said Christian parliament member Yonadem Kanna. "This is the problem we have. Everything is stuck."
Draft laws languish for months
Laws governing oil, the distribution of government power and the rehabilitation of former Baathists excluded from public life are among the key measures that the Bush administration says must be implemented if Iraq is to be stabilized and U.S. troops brought home.
Congressional Democrats are now seeking ways to tie continued funding for the troops to a timetable for meeting the benchmarks.
But what Washington impatiently calls benchmarks address life-and-death issues to Iraqis—the essence of the conflict threatening to tear their country apart—and they aren't easily going to be resolved by setting deadlines or legislative timetables, Iraqis say.
That's why lawmakers bristled at the suggestion, pressed by Vice President Dick Cheney during his visit to Iraq last week, that parliament should postpone its scheduled two-month summer vacation in July and August.
"America's agenda is not our agenda," said Shiite lawmaker Jalaluddin Sagheer, who said he was sure the lawmakers would agree to postpone their vacation if the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki asked them to.
"But these are not simple issues," he added. "These are the issues that are the cause of all the problems in Iraq, and it's going to need time."
Since President Bush first spelled out the benchmarks in a speech announcing his new Iraq strategy in January, there has been little discernible progress on any of them. Draft laws languish in government offices, or on al-Maliki's desk, or in the office of the speaker of parliament, awaiting the still elusive consensus between Iraq's factions that would be required for them to be enacted.
Parliament members point fingers at a government that is paralyzed by factional differences and institutional incompetence, the government blames a parliament that is equally divided and inept, and both sides blame a system that was devised to share power but instead has only induced deadlock.
Some of the issues have been lingering for months. Though a draft oil law was approved by Iraq's Cabinet in February, it has yet to be presented to parliament. Sunnis and Kurds say they will oppose the law as it is written because of clauses attached later by the government to the draft.
A new de-Baathification law that went a long way toward meeting some of the chief grievances of Iraq's Sunnis by allowing former senior Baathists to resume their jobs was announced with much fanfare by al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani in March. It too has dropped out of sight, amid an outpouring of opposition from Shiite parliamentarians who regard its clauses as too lenient on those they suspect of sympathizing with the former regime.
'A parliament coffee house'
A review of Iraq's Constitution, promised in 2005 as a means of persuading Iraq's Sunnis to participate in the political process, is already a year behind schedule. A new deadline of Tuesday is unlikely to be met.
Some parliament members are blaming al-Maliki, saying he lacks the muscle to force unpopular decisions past the powerful parliamentary blocs. Sunni leaders suspect he is deliberately delaying the legislation because he is reluctant to make the concessions to Sunni demands that they would require.
"This government is incapable of taking any serious measures to build confidence between the people and between the political groups, because they don't have the mentality," said Sunni lawmaker Saleh al-Mutlaq. "They are more for vengeance than reconciliation."
Others blame the finely tuned political system designed to ensure that no one group can force decisions past another, but which has served to cement the sectarian divide. For any bill to be presented to parliament, it must be signed by the Sunni speaker and by each of his Kurdish and Shiite deputies. Without a consensus, laws simply don't reach the legislature, Kanna said.
With little in the way of substantive business before it, Iraq's parliament has become little more than "a parliament coffee house," in the words of the Deputy Speaker Khalid al-Attiyah, addressing one recent session.
Grievances of peripheral relevance are raised at random, shouted about, and then set aside.
One recent debate focused on big salary raises for parliament members. Another discussion, unresolved, focused on a suggestion that legislators should sit in alphabetical order, rather than in political groupings, as a means of helping them to get to know one another.
The legislature has proved it can be decisive on matters of core concern to the biggest bloc, the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance. When U.S. troops launched a raid near a Shiite shrine in Baghdad, parliament swiftly voted to ban U.S. troops from approaching the shrine. A decision to sue Al Jazeera for insulting Sistani was overwhelmingly approved after a brief debate.
But simple majority voting wouldn't resolve the so-called benchmark issues, even if a majority of votes could be mustered to pass the required laws, Iraqis say. Because the purpose of the laws is to stop the violence, consensus between all the factions is required for the laws to have a chance to succeed.
Most of the decision-making is therefore taking place behind closed doors, in bargaining sessions between the political and religious leaders who wield real power.
Will public accept compromise?
Many lawmakers say they are growing frustrated, too, and welcome the pressure from Washington as a means to hurry along the factions.
"Pressure from Washington is important and essential, but deadlines give the wrong message to Iraqis and terrorists," said Shiite lawmaker Abbas Bayati. "They tell the Iraqis the Americans will abandon them in the middle of nowhere, and they give the wrong message to terrorists, that they won this war. That is why the question of deadlines is a sword over our heads."
The Iraqi government, concerned at the prospect that the U.S. Congress could withdraw its support and force U.S. troops to be pulled home, has dispatched senior figures to Washington to try to persuade lawmakers there not to abandon Iraq.
Legislators also are starting to realize that they have to unite and overcome their differences or risk losing U.S. support altogether, said independent Shiite legislator Shatha al Musawi.
But the lawmakers also have to look to their constituents—the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds who are dying daily on the streets and who also may be unwilling to accept the tough compromises required of their leaders if the laws are to be passed.
"The real obstacle is how to transfer this understanding to the street," Musawi said. "All the sides are going to have to admit they were wrong, and this is something that is very difficult for them."
Citation: Liz Sly. "U.S. Benchmarks Elude Iraq," The Chicago Tribune, 13 May 2007.
Original URL: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070513benchmarks-story,1,2810344.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true