The Iraqi Constitution has made it past the drafting stages. But this most recent victory for the nation-building process is as hollow as last January's election, with Sunni Arabs, who largely stayed home then, adamantly opposed to the new charter. Understanding what is upsetting the Sunnis is therefore the key to unraveling the insurgency.
The mainstream American press offers little beyond the simplistic formula that the majority Shi'a Arabs of Iraq were repressed under the Saddam dictatorship, and so they welcome democracy, while the minority Sunni Arabs miss the power they wielded under Saddam, and are thus being a bunch of terrorist rotten eggs.
The Sunni resistance needs to be understood within the context of Iraq. Iraq is not "multi-ethnic" in the same sense as New York City. Except in very few places, Iraq is divided into three territories - Sunni, Shi'a and Kurd - and within those territories an overwhelming proportion of the population belongs to one ethnicity. Iraq is more like three separate countries than one diverse society, and holding a "democratic election" in Iraq is kind of like telling the United States, Canada and Mexico to elect a common President. Since Canadians and Mexicans are both less numerous than Americans, they would have no chance to win the election, and be perpetually dominated by Americans - making the whole notion of "democracy" nothing more than a justification for colonization. This is the situation of Sunnis in Iraq: forced to pit their votes against the more numerous neighboring Shi'a community.
However, unlike the other smaller nation in Iraq - the Kurds - Iraqi Sunnis would not be happy if their country were divided along ethnic lines. There would be no greater disaster in Sunni eyes than for Iraq to break up into a Shi'a Islamic Republic led by Ayatollahs in the south and an impoverished Sunni rump state, with no access to the ocean or to oil, around Baghdad. Historically, the nationalist aspirations of Sunni Arabs in Iraq have also been supported by many Shi'a, making theirs an essentially Arabist vision, which challenges the sectarian, religious views of the Shi'a leadership. The opposition of Sunnis to a constitution without federalism is thus motivated by both economics and culture.
The interpretation that Sunnis miss the days of Saddam, which is held by some in religious Shi'a communities and perpetuated by the American press, falls by the wayside if we take a look at the actual demands of the Sunni leadership, which were outlined on August 27 in a thirteen-point letter sent to the Iraqi National Assembly. Rather than calling for a return to dictatorship, the Sunnis want to be acknowledged as victims of the Saddam regime, alongside the Shi'a and the Kurds. And while they support acknowledging the rights of Iraq's northern Kurdish community to autonomy, they want all references to specific ethnic groups removed from the charter. The Sunni leaders believe that a Constitution centered on ethnic distinctions isn't a good foundation for a unified Iraq. They want a document that emphasizes being Iraqi as more important than being Sunni or Shi'a, and portrays the Saddam dictatorship, accurately, as a brutal regime that terrorized the entire Iraqi populace.
Sunnis are not opposed to Iraq's moving away from the era of Saddam, but they are opposed to the direction the country's transformation is taking. Sunni aspirations to create a strong nation founded on a common Arab Iraqi identity may be impossible if the ethnic sectarianism of the Iraqi Shi'a proves to be too powerful. In that case, Iraq may well become another Yugoslavia.
As long as Iraqi Sunnis believe their choice lies between Iraq disintegrating along ethnic lines and being led from the center by Ayatollahs, the insurgency is unlikely to stop. The perception of being "damned if they do, and damned if they don't" is fueling the cycle of violence.
The irony is that the very insurgency that has proven such a frustration for the Bush Administration is largely motivated by goals that might have been drafted in the White House - keeping Iraq united, preventing it from becoming an Islamic Republic like neighboring Iran and turning away from ethnic divisions to found an Iraqi identity based on a common Arabic language and democracy.
Michal Zapendowski '07 has an 18 constitution.
