Calling Bush's bluff while Iraq's post-war political fate is being shaped

After Saddam's capture, the Bush administration is in rather a buoyant mood and George Bush is himself striving hard to hammer out a model of democracy which, in his vision of democratic Iraq, will become a role model for the entire Arab world. Ironically, however, his vision of democratic Iraq itself is precisely the cause of collision between him and Iraq's Shiite leadership, at the helm of which is now a spirited Ayatollah al-Sistani of Najaf's respected and influential religious school, the Hawza Ilimiya. The man commands the unswerving loyalty of the country's Shia majority, refuses to even meet Paul Bremer, and has already forced the American administration in Baghdad to tear up its first political plan for post-war Iraq.

Learning lessons from the imperialistic skullduggery of the past, the Iraqi Shiite bitterly knows that Bush's version of democracy (for Iraq) is one that is controlled and contrived to do Washington's bidding in everything from economic policy to defence to foreign affairs. The seeds of Bush's controlled democracy are embedded in the agreement reached last November 15 between his viceroy Paul Bremer and the puppet Iraqi Governing Council (IGC). The agreement has a hallmark of an American controlled induction of putative democracy in which all the shots will be called by the Americans -- be that from inside Baghdad or from Washington.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

The Bremer or Bush blueprint for democracy, for all its hypes, defies the very fundamentals of universally understood democracy, i.e. a government for the people, of the people, and by the people -- in other words -- a representative government. Instead, it speaks of a fundamental law currently being drafted ostensibly by the IGC, but in reality by the Americans themselves, which would be introduced soon to become the bedrock of Bush-controlled democracy. Bremer has already on occasion boasted that the document will incorporate the high ideals of American democracy, including a bill of rights.

But the law gives no privilege to the Iraqi people to influence what flows from it in any manner. It gives them no right to choose the people who will supposedly draft an interim constitution for Iraq. That right lies with the IGC which, instead of holding an election for the purpose, would select delegates to be sent to the Constituent Assembly. And the same hand-picked assembly will, by the end of the June this year, name a provisional government of Iraq to take over the country's sovereignty from the occupiers.

Obviously George Bush is unprepared to take any chance on elections of any kind that may interfere with the jugglery of dispensing with his brand of democracy in Iraq. Because, that alone would ensure him having his cake in Iraq and eating it too.

President Bush has reasons to expect that the puppet government designed by him and his war cabal will oblige him by signing up to keep a hundred thousand American troops in Iraq for years to come. The troops will be under the exclusive authority of the US military and act independently of the indigenous Iraqi government to safeguard the vital US interests in the region, and at the same time will become the kingpin of the wholesale plundering of Iraq's vast mineral assets. The arrangement will also hold the region in the thrall of US military domination.

The plan is hunky-dory indeed! But all these grandiosities are under imminent threat of collapse unless al-Sistani plays the game by Bush's rules. And there are few signs that he will do that; neither can he be made to do that. All earlier American attempts to subvert or supplant Sistani's enormous political clout as well as their challenges to his authority just petered out. That there are fresh trouble for the US on his account is clear from their attempts to buy more times for handing Iraqis the much awaited political power. The irony with the occupying fakes is this that the sage emerged from the inspired encounters with the Americans every time unscathed and more venerated than before. Therein lies his greatest strength and he continues to command absolute sway over Iraq's 65% Shia and is thus a mortal threat to Bush's game plan for post-war Iraq.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.