IRAQ: As hundreds of thousands of Shias converged yesterday on the Iraqi city of Kerbala for the climax of their most important religious rite, Iraq's Governing Council strove to reach an agreement on an interim constitution, writes Michael Jansen
While Shia devout struck their bare backs with flails of chain to commemorate the seventh-century slaying of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, the council debated the role of Islamic law, federalism, women's status, and the composition of the post-occupation executive. Wrangling over the interim basic law has been protracted because it is likely to be used as the framework of the permanent constitution due to be drafted ahead of elections.
The US chief administrator in Iraq, Mr Paul Bremer, who set Saturday as the deadline for adoption of the document, met with councillors in an attempt to bridge wide gaps between secularists and Islamists, Arabs and Kurds, conservative men and modern women, and ambitious politicians determined to secure seats on the proposed presidential council.
The stage for confrontation within the 25-member council was set on Friday, when a majority of members cancelled a directive, adopted last December, abrogating Iraq's 1959 secular civil code governing marriage, divorce, inheritance and succession, and replacing it with Sharia, Islamic law. Outraged Shia Islamists and their allies stormed out of the meeting, compelling Mr Bremer to shuttle between the two groups.
This sharpened the division between secularists and Islamists over Sharia. While both Shia and Sunni Islamists favour Sharia as the law of the land, a majority of council members argue that Sharia should be only one of the sources of law.
Mr Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish Sunni, said: "I think this is as far as we can go. We want \ to be a democratic state. We don't want an Islamic state, we want a state which respects religion. It should be a balanced formula."
Mr Bremer has indicated he would veto any attempt to adopt Sharia as the sole basis of law.
The council's 19 Arab members objected strongly to the demand of the five Kurds that Iraq should become a loose federation. The Kurds want to retain their 60,000-strong ethnic militias and have the right to reject decisions made by the central government. They also want to expand their area by annexing the city of Kirkuk and its oilfields. Since Kirkuk's population is evenly divided between Arabs, ethnic Turks, or Turkomen, and Kurds, the Kurds have been importing Kurds from elsewhere, stirring resentment amongst Arabs and Turkomen.
On Saturday, 2,000 Shias, led by a radical cleric, Sayyed Muqtada Sadr, marched through Kirkuk carrying Iraqi flags to show that the area should not fall under the banner of Kurdistan. The demonstration coincided with a strike by the city's 300,000 ethnic Turkomen who refuse to submit to Kurdish rule.
The two female members of the council insisted it must accept the principle that women should be given 40 per cent representation in the future legislature, a demand dismissed by a majority of male members who may accept a lower percentage. Fearing subjugation by conservative males and clerics, Iraqi women have organised political action groups to defend rights granted under civil law.