Baghdad — Iraqi lawmakers reached a minutes-to-midnight deal late Sunday, clearing a path to national elections early next year that are seen as crucial to a smooth U.S. troop withdrawal.
The Iraqi parliament approved a revised elections law that expands the parliament from 275 to 325 seats, and redistributes them among the country’s 18 provinces to satisfy sparring religious sects and ethnic groups.
No final date for the elections was set, but the United Nations has proposed that they take place Feb. 27. The elections were supposed to have taken place in January, a date made moot by weeks of political fighting that increasingly took on sectarian overtones.
The elections, and Iraq’s political stability, are critical to President Barack Obama’s hopes of withdrawing all U.S. combat troops by August 2010, leaving some 50,000 U.S. military personnel here.
The final deal, voted on at about 11:45 p.m. Baghdad time, came only after repeated intervention by U.S. diplomats and U.N. advisers here, according to Iraqi lawmakers and other officials.
They said that Obama administration officials pushed hard on leaders of Iraq’s ethnic Kurds to accept fewer seats than they were demanding for their semi-autonomous northern region. The Kurds’ eventual, if reluctant, agreement sealed the deal.
“If it wasn’t for the American intervention in the first degree … the law today would not have passed,” said Salih Mutlak, a Sunni Arab lawmaker. “This is the first time that the Americans use wisdom and logic and pressure the Kurds.”
“The Americans didn’t place pressures, but they gave us important guarantees and tomorrow the White House will probably issue a statement about it,” said Feriad Rawanduzi, a Kurdish parliament member. The guarantees, he said, include a census next year in Iraq _the country hasn’t had one since 1987 — and U.N. help in settling Arab-Kurd disputes over a broad swath of territory, including the oil-rich Kirkuk region.
“We must say that the result was acceptable to a certain limit, there was no other alternative,” Rawanduzi said.
Parliament passed an original elections law Nov. 8, but it was vetoed by one of the country’s two vice presidents, Tariq el Hashimi. Hashimi, a Sunni complained that it didn’t give enough representation to an estimated 2 million Iraqis who have fled the country, many of whom are believed to be Sunni Muslims.
Sunday night’s session took place under the threat of another veto by Hashimi if his demands were not met, and the specter of a political vacuum and reignited violence.
In the end, all sides appear to have won something from the deal. Sunnis got greater representation, Kurdish areas increased their seats in parliament from 35 to 43, and Shia Muslims, who form Iraq’s majority, also got more clout.
While agreements have been reached in the past only to fall apart, there were high hopes that this one would stick. Hashimi withdrew his veto threat early Monday morning.
“We are talking about rescuing the whole political process … democracy in Iraq,” said Omar al Mashhadani, spokesman for parliament speaker Iyad Samarrai.
Dulaimy is a McClatchy special correspondent.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy