Iraq’s ‘sovereignty’

The United States yesterday went through with the sham of appearing to transfer sovereignty to Iraq, two days before the long promoted June 30 deadline. The reason advanced for the bringing forward of the handover was that disruption of the transfer ceremony had been planned by insurgents. The abrupt bringing forward of the date had been designed partly as a move to pre empt plans by groups opposed to the governing council. The make-believe Iraqi government is being offered up by the United States as in control of Iraq subject to any emergency situations created by rebel groups. As an added precaution, the ceremony which was covered by major international television networks was held at an undisclosed location.

The precautionary measures, however, served to underscore the across the board opposition in Iraq both to the US hand picked government of new Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawai and the US led coalition occupation forces which will be propping up Allawai’s regime. PM Allawai’s pledge at yesterday’s handover ceremony to protect what he described as Iraq’s sovereignty and democratic system was not without irony as his country, even with the handover, has neither. It lost any pretense to having a democratic system when former dictator Saddam Hussein assumed power, and to sovereignty when coalition forces overran the country a little more than a year ago. In turn Allawai’s provisional government which will remain in office until elections are held is dependent on the presence of more than 100,000 coalition troops.

A major error in United States thinking on Iraq after overcoming Saddam Hussein’s forces was its disbanding of the Iraqi army. The US was fearful that any Iraqi army loyalty to Hussein could have posed problems for the US and other troops. But without the army there was no force capable of maintaining order. In turn the alienating of former generals, etc. created new and clearly unsought problems for occupying troops. Few would question Iraq’s right and indeed the right of any country and people to be free, but yesterday’s protestations by Allawi and others of the emergence of freedom for Iraq were clearly a collective absurdity.

Regardless of what Prime Minister Allawi’s administration may believe and/or offer for domestic and international consumption, theirs is a puppet government with neither constitutional nor moral authority. At best yesterday’s handover of sovereignty has qualified for the award of the farce of the year if not of the century. In turn, for yesterday’s installed government to work with the United States and Britain while seeking to assure the Iraqi people that it indeed has moral authority to even exist, it will have to walk a diplomatically correct tightrope. Time will tell if this will be possible.