IRAQ: Iraq's rushed constitutional process has deepened ethnic and sectarian rifts and is likely to worsen the insurgency and hasten the country's violent break-up, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said yesterday.
"The constitution is likely to fuel rather than dampen insurgency," said Robert Malley, head of the think-tank's Middle East and North Africa programme, introducing an ICG report.
"A compact based on compromise and broad consent could have been a first step in a healing process. Instead, it is proving yet another step in a process of depressing decline."
Iraqis are to vote on October 15th in a constitutional referendum on what the ICG calls a weak document that lacks consensus. Its report says the draft, endorsed by Shia Muslim cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, as well as Shia and Kurdish parties, is likely to pass despite fierce Sunni Arab opposition.
The Sunnis, it says, are unlikely to muster the two-thirds of votes in three provinces required to block its passage.
"Such a result would leave Iraq divided, an easy prey to both insurgents and sectarian tensions that have dramatically increased over the past year," the ICG says.
To avert this outcome, it urges the US to broker a last-minute political deal among Sunnis, Shias and Kurds, that would assuage Sunni fears of a Shia "super-region" emerging.
The parties would commit themselves to acting after December elections to limit to four the number of governorates that can fuse into an autonomous region, and not to bar Iraqis from office just because of past membership of the Baath party.
The ICG is an independent think-tank which analyses international crises. It is funded privately and by many governments including Ireland's. - (Reuters)