stories from Baghdad

Iraq is not Afghanistan: Drawing the constitution will be the struggle of life

There are a lot of similarities between the Coalition forces intervention in Iraq as it was in Afghanistan. Assuming similar assumptions, the coalition forces intervened in Afghanistan and worked on setting up a democratic government. This setting up a constitution consisting of a presidential system and a parliament with deputy representative to the president with no clear mandate for a prime minister. The president to be elected by the people and not by the parliament. After 2 months of negotiations and almost one year and half from the coalition presence in Afghanistan, the Afghanis finally put together a constitution even though not necessarily welcomes by the people, it is the basis for enforcing a governmental system that would look into putting the country together. If assuming the same formula for Iraq, I believe the Coalition forces are about to witness major challenge as the Iraq is not Afghanistan and bad feelings and tribal and ethnical struggle date back to centuries before. Taking the same amount of time to draw an Iraqi constitution will not only be a disaster for the Americans, but a long waited war unless the Americans devise a plan to deal with the situation. As it stands, the causalities among the American forces combined with low moral, resentment for the push administration combined with upcoming elections which will indefinitely lead to the toppling of the Republican system is yet to determine how the coalition’s strategy might change. One key idea, the Americans can not continue as it is. Nether those back home or those abroad are happy about it and we are wait to see.