Washington has been pushing to get the constitution adopted as part of its goal of establishing a relatively stable pro-U.S. regime in Baghdad. U.S. officials played a major role in the process of drafting the text and negotiating between different factions to win their agreement.

Sunni Arabs on the constitutional negotiating committee objected to provisions that would make Iraq a federal state allowing for the creation of an autonomous region in the predominantly Shiite south. An autonomous region in the largely Kurdish area in the north already exists. They also oppose a provision that would ban the former ruling Baath party, arguing that it would bar many Sunnis from public life.

According to press reports, compromise language submitted to Sunni politicians declares Iraq a federal state but postpones details of its implementation to a future decision by the National Assembly.

Leaders of the ruling government coalition, an electoral bloc of Kurdish and Shiite-led parties, said the ban on the Baath party would apply only to what they called the “Saddamist” branch.

The Hussein regime maintained its power partly by fostering divisions between Sunni and Shiite Arabs and Kurds. The latter two groups both faced discrimination while Sunnis were offered job patronage and other relative privileges. Wealthy Sunni Arabs were the main beneficiaries of that capitalist regime and are now the backbone of financing and organizing groups carrying out armed attacks against U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces.

Many Sunni politicians say they will campaign to defeat the constitution in the October 15 referendum. That would require a two-thirds vote against the document in any three of Iraq’s 18 provinces.

In the majority-Sunni town of Tikrit, some 2,000 protesters rallied August 29 to denounce the proposed constitution. They demonstrated outside the offices of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a leading Sunni clerical group that opposes the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Some carried posters of Hussein and of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who also opposes the draft constitution. Similar rallies have been held in other cities and towns with a large Sunni population.

Bahrain’s Gulf Daily News said 100,000 Iraqis marched in eight cities to protest lack of electricity, water, and other social services, and to oppose the draft constitution. About 20,000 marched in Sadr City, a working-class district of Baghdad. The protests were organized by supporters of al-Sadr, who has opposed the draft constitution as part of an ongoing struggle with rival parties for influence in the predominantly Shiite regions.

The power struggle between al-Sadr and leaders of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), one of the main Shiite-based groups represented in the National Assembly, spilled over into armed clashes in mid-August. According to press reports, militias loyal to al-Sadr and those organized by SCIRI fought each other in several cities. At an August 25 press conference al-Sadr called for an end to that conflict.

Meanwhile, the regional parliament in Iraqi Kurdistan approved, under some pressure from Washington, the draft constitution, although it fell short of Kurdish demands to include oil-rich Kirkuk in its autonomous region. Adnan al-Mufti, head of the Kurdish regional parliament, said, “Although the draft is not up to our expectations, it represents a big step for us in this period,” reported Agence France-Presse.

Kurds took advantage of the weakening of the Hussein regime following the 1991 U.S.-led war against Iraq to establish an autonomous Kurdish region. The leading Kurdish parties have allied themselves with the U.S. government in exchange for Washington’s toleration of a degree of Kurdish autonomy.

A provision in the draft that establishes Islam as the basis of Iraqi law will not apply in the Kurdish region, according to a Washington Post report.
 
 
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