Iraqi ministries to be allocated on ethnic lines

IRAQ: Portfolios are to be given to new ministers in the interim Governing Council on the basis of which community they belong to, writes Michael Jansen, in Nicosia

Iraq's interim Governing Council has decided to allocate ministries in the cabinet, expected to be formed next week, on a communal basis.

Mr Muwaffaq al-Rubai, a council member from the Shia Islamic Dawa party, said that the posts would reflect the make-up of the 25-member council.

There will be 13 Shias, five Sunnis, five Kurds, one Christian and one Turkoman. Four new ministries have been added to the 21 in the former government.

The extra portfolios are for environment, immigration, and human rights, and the ministry of telecommunications and transport has been split in two.

The new ministers will be in office until elections are held in a year or 18 months. According to Mr Ibrahim Jafari, the current council president, oil and finance would go to the Shias, while foreign affairs would be given to a Kurd. Soon after the council's creation, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the senior cleric of the 60 per cent Shia majority, expressed the view of most Iraqis when he criticised the US appointment of council members and their selection on the basis of ethnic affiliations.

Spokesmen for the formerly influential Sunni community charge that Shias and Kurds have been granted positions at the expense of Sunnis.

Women, who make up 55 per cent of the population, complain that there are only three female members included. Christians and Turkomen argue that they are under-represented and small communities say they are excluded from the political process. A banner hanging over a main Baghdad street states: "The council is an insult to Iraqi efficiency to elect those who represent them."

According to Iraqi analysts, the decision to divide the cabinet is a major blow to the democratisation process.

Acutely uneasy with the sectarian composition of the council, two of its members Dr Adnan Pachachi and Mr Nasir Chadirji, recently told The Irish Times that they expected ministers would be technocrats selected for their expertise rather than politicians chosen because they represent a certain sect or ethnic group.

They clearly did not count on the determination of seven core council members who, with the acquiescence of the US chief administrator, Mr Paul Bremer, seem to have imposed the sectarian formula on the cabinet.

A member of an Iraqi independent democratic grouping said yesterday: "The Lebanonisation of Iraq is taking place before our eyes. We never used to take into account a person's religion or ethnicity when considering him for a position.

"By choosing ministers in this way, the council is creating a political precedent which will be impossible to ignore. This formula will come to dominate the political scene and the bureaucracy just like the formula imposed by the French before independence has put Lebanon into a sectarian straitjacket from which it cannot escape."

Six weeks after its establishment, the interim Governing Council has accomplished nothing tangible.

Iraqis complain it has not brought them security, electricity, water or jobs. Mr Bremer speaks of handing over responsibility to the council but does not do so. He controls the financing and security of council members, and issues orders to US consultants placed with ministries.

Council members have not even been paid their salaries which cannot be fixed in the absence of a finance minister.

This week an Arab satellite television station broadcast a death threat against council members issued by three Iraqi anti-occupation groups.

"They formed this council to hurt the resistance and Iraqis," stated a masked man. Death to the spies and traitors, before the Americans."

He claimed to speak for Islamic Jihad, the Iraqi Liberation Organisation, and Muslim Youth, which has previously warned the UN and its members against sending peacekeepers to Iraq.It is unlikely the next Arab League foreign ministers' meeting on September 9th and 10th in Cairo will allow the council to appoint a representative to take Iraq's place at the conference table.