Iraq

Richard N. Haass, president of CFR and head of policy planning at the State Department during the outbreak of the Iraq war three years ago, says that in hindsight, while history’s judgment will depend on how things turn out in Iraq, the impact on U.S. foreign policy at this point is "clearly negative."

This publication is now archived. What are the specific charges against Saddam Hussein?The first case to be brought against Saddam Hussein at the Iraqi Special Tribunal involves his role in the 1982 execution of 148 Iraqi civilians in Dujail, a predominantly Shiite town north of Baghdad. Saddam is charged with ordering the executions following a failed assassination attempt. Several of his top deputies have also been charged in the massacre. Among other charges, Saddam stands accused of ordering the slaughter of some 5,000 Kurds with chemical gas in Halabja in 1988, killing or deporting more than 10,000 members of the Kurdish Barzani tribe in the 1980s, and invading Kuwait in 1990. He could face the death penalty if convicted. Who else is being charged by the court?In addition to Saddam, eleven high-ranking Iraqi officials have been indicted or are awaiting indictment, including Abid Hamid al-Tikriti, a former presidential secretary, Ali Hassan al-Majid (“Chemical Ali”), Saddam’s cousin and adviser, and Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister. It’s not clear how many individuals or cases will be tried by the court in total. Several Iraqi war-crimes suspects remain at large, experts say.  Under which body of laws will they be tried? A combination of international and Iraqi national law that existed prior to Saddam’s ascension to power, legal experts say. One source of law is the 1971 Iraqi Criminal Procedure Code, which some experts say is an outmoded legal code that requires little burden of proof and makes convictions too easily obtainable. There was some early speculation that Saddam might be tried under sharia, or traditional Islamic law, which has not been officially applied in Iraq since 1925. Most legal experts, however, say this is unlikely and would be a mistake. “It’d be an ad hoc creation,” says Neil Hicks, director of international programs at Human Rights First, formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. “You’d be sort of inventing law to try a certain set of detainees, and your interpretation of sharia would have to be written in the form of a modern penal code.” What is the jurisdiction of the tribunal?The IST has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Iraq or abroad (e.g., in Iran or Kuwait ) between 1968 and 2003 by former regime members. Unlike previous ad hoc tribunals—temporary courts set up to try suspected war criminals—the IST is not under the auspices of the United Nations but run instead by Iraqis, with U.S. support. There is also no clear timeline for the court’s termination. “I don’t think there is a judge in the world who could predict when it will be finished,” said Raid Juhi, the tribunal’s chief judge, in a Washington Post interview March 22. Some legal experts say the case against Saddam could wrap up as soon as early next year. Has the tribunal’s legitimacy been challenged?Yes. Saddam’s defense team refuses to recognize the court’s legitimacy based on a provision in the Geneva Conventions that they argue prohibits occupying forces from establishing judicial systems in another country. M. Cherif Bassiouni, a professor of law at DePaul University’s Human Rights Law Institute, says the tribunal lacks legitimacy because its statutes were passed by L. Paul Bremer’s U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority, whose occupation of Iraq technically ended June 30, 2004. Under international law, he says, “the powers of an occupying force end at the time the occupation ends.” Bassiouni, who directed a project in Iraq to restructure the country’s legal education, suggests Iraq’s parliament pass a new law that confers legitimacy to the tribunal. What is the makeup of Saddam’s legal team?In mid-August, Saddam Hussein’s family dismissed his Jordan-based legal team, which consisted of some 1,500 mainly Arab volunteers and approximately twenty-two legal specialists from countries including the United States, France, Iraq, and Libya. Among them were Aicha Muammar Qaddafi, daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, and Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. attorney general. The family was unspecific about the reasons for their dismissal but hinted they were upset that Arab and Western members of his legal team had leaked information to media outlets and spoken on Saddam’s behalf. Saddam has since been represented by Khalil Dulaimi, an Iraqi lawyer. Two lawyers representing Saddam’s codefendants were killed in November 2005, prompting criticisms that administrators were not providing adequate security. Who are the judges on the tribunal? The Iraqi Special Tribunal comprises roughly sixty-five judges, native Iraqis mostly of Shiite or Sunni ethnic origin, who will independently investigate each case and prepare indictments. Each judge is nominated and vetted by the Iraqi Governing Council. Five judges preside over each trial with no juries present. Concerns over the safety of judges persist; a judge and a lawyer were slain in March 2005, and two lawyers for Saddam’s codefendants were killed in November of that same year. The chief judge in Saddam’s case, Rizgar Mohammed Amin, resigned in January 2006 amid criticism that he had been too lenient in allowing Saddam to speak out of turn and question the court’s legitimacy. A Kurdish judge, Raouf Abdul Rahman, was named interim chief judge after another candidate, Saeed Hamashi, was accused of having ties to Saddam’s Baathist party. What else is controversial about the court? Human-rights advocates have accused the court of not upholding international legal standards of due process or sufficiently protecting the rights of the accused by not allowing sufficient access to legal counsel. Some international legal experts would have preferred a so-called mixed tribunal, similar to the court set up to try crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone. That court was co-established by the United Nations, includes both local and international judges, and operates under both domestic and international law; the IST allows non-Iraqis only to serve as advisers or observers. In contrast, “you have this chicken and egg role in Iraq,” Hicks says. “The United Nations hasn’t played a role because of a lack of safeguards, and it’s opposed to the death penalty.” The court is criticized for its acceptance of capital punishment by Amnesty International and other human-rights groups. Will the trial be open and fair?It’s unclear, experts say. On one hand, the trial is accessible to the Iraqi press, held in Arabic—Iraq’s lingua franca—and expected to be partially broadcast on Iraqi television to ensure openness. Its judges and lawyers will also have been trained by U.S. legal experts in human-rights law, and international monitors will be in the courtroom. “This is not going to be a political trial,” assured Mouwafak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national-security adviser, in a July 31 interview with CNN.On the other hand, some human-rights lawyers have charged that the IST does not offer sufficient protections for the accused, nor does it uphold Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees a defendant’s right to a “competent, independent, and impartial tribunal.” Hicks accuses the court of holding detainees for months without access to legal counsel. Others say IST’s procedures are in violation of international law, including the court’s lack of requirement for proof beyond a reasonable doubt (judges must merely be “satisfied” of guilt) and its allowance of trials in absentia.Then there are those who say that recent inflammatory statements made by Iraqi leaders have compromised the tribunal’s ability to be fair and impartial, particularly Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s comments last month that “Saddam deserves a death sentence twenty times a day.” What is the U.S. role in the trial?The tribunal, whose costs are covered by the new government of Iraq, was originally established with the help of around $75 million in U.S. funds. The United States also supplies the court with legal experts and training. Some critics, however, accuse the tribunal of adopting too many traits of the U.S. justice system, including the proposed use of plea bargains, which are viewed in most parts of the world as an Anglo-Saxon style of adversarial criminal justice. Others say the tribunal is too beholden to U.S. interests to be truly impartial and fair. For instance, in a March 12 article in The Nation, Ari Berman, Ralph Shikes fellow at the Public Concern Foundation, questions whether the court would be willing to call U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to testify about his meetings with Saddam in 1983 and 1984. Why has the tribunal taken two years to get off the ground? The prosecution has spent the bulk of its time trolling through an estimated two tons of data from over two million documents, collecting information from some 7,000 witnesses, and reading reports by forensic experts from roughly 200 mass graves throughout Iraq. "It’s not as easy as trying someone who simply pulled a trigger," says Nathan Brown, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, pointing to the difficulty of proving that atrocities committed were under Saddam’s direct authority. The tribunal, originally slated to begin operation in 2006, has accelerated its timetable under pressure by the U.S. government to help combat the growing insurgency, and, as Brown points out, "to show the Iraqi government is able to get something done." Some critics of the court have accused the U.S. government of accelerating the tribunal’s timeline to fit its own domestic political calendar.   How is the trial expected to affect most Iraqis?Most Iraqis, particularly Kurds and Shiites victimized under the former regime, want to see justice served and crimes punished. Experts say the trial will provide some form of closure to a grim and gruesome chapter of Iraq’s history. Others, however, warn that the trial could further inflame the pro-Saddam and ex-Baathist elements of the Sunni insurgency. Unlike past war-crimes tribunals, legal experts expect a speedy trial and a swift death sentence. “It’s going to be a pro-forma trial for public consumption,” Bassiouni says. “Everyone’s convinced he should be hanged high and dry, but they need to put on some sort of show.” Another problem, Bassiouni points out, is most Iraqis still have little knowledge about the workings of the tribunal; he favors establishing a “public information campaign” or “Iraqi truth commission,” not unlike South Africa’s, “to teach generations of Iraqis about the horrors of the past.”

Three years after the war in Iraq began, experts weigh in on whether U.S. forces are winning or losing.

Wayne White, who was the State Department’s top intelligence analyst on Iraq from 2003-2005, says he is “very gloomy” about the situation in Iraq, and advocates that the United States set a “date certain” two years from now for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

W. Patrick Lang, former head of Middle East Affairs and Counterterrorism at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, tells cfr.org the attack on the Askariya Shrine will not scuttle Iraq’s political process or impede the insurgency. In this interview, he discusses the looming threat of a general civil war, the role of Shiite militias in stoking violence, and what this all means for U.S. forces in Iraq.

Iran continues to raise concerns in Washington that it is intent on destabilizing postwar Iraq. Most recently, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad accused Iran of meddling in Iraqi affairs by financing and training militia groups that sow sectarian violence.

Matthew Sherman, former deputy senior adviser and director of policy to Iraq ’s Ministry of Interior, discusses the influence of militias, U.S. counterinsurgency efforts, and Iraq ’s rise of organized crime with cfr.org’s Lionel Beehner.

Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution outlines a plan to re-shift the U.S. strategy in Iraq as it relates to security, economics, and politics.

This publication is now archived. IntroductionThe December 15 elections in Iraq for a four-year, 275-member parliament were, for the most, successful, say Iraq’s leaders. Voter turnout, particularly among Sunnis, was high by Iraqi standards. Early estimates show that more than 10 million Iraqis—or some 70 percent of the registered voters—cast ballots last Thursday. Violence was also relatively low, notwithstanding a few explosions in central Baghdad. And accusations of voter fraud and other abuses have been minimal. In a series of speeches, President George W. Bush called the elections “a major step forward,” but admitted they are not a cure-all forIraq’s ongoing violence. What is the timeline for forming Iraq’s government?Iraqi officials predict the ballot-counting will take around two weeks. The new government is supposed to assume office by December 31, but Richard Lugar (R-IN), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned last week that Iraq’s government might not be up and running for at least four months. According to Nathan Brown, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the parliament has fifteen days to convene once the results are certified by the Independent Electoral Commission for Iraq (IECI). What is the process for picking Iraq’s top government positions?Once in power, the parliament’s first order of business is to select a president and prime minister. This requires selecting a so-called presidential council, comprising a president and two vice presidents, which must be approved by a two-thirds majority in parliament. Experts say the presidential council will likely be made up of a Kurdish president and two vice presidents, one Shiite and one Sunni Arab. The presidential council then selects a prime minister, ostensibly the leader of the largest bloc represented in parliament, who must then win parliamentary approval. Experts say the prime ministerial post will likely go to a Shiite, while the speaker of the parliament will be a Sunni. The prime minister, once approved, has thirty days to nominate a cabinet, which comprises approximately thirty ministerial portfolios and includes the two deputy prime ministerial posts. The cabinet, whose makeup will not necessarily reflect the ethnic breakdown of parliament, must be approved by a simple majority. Which political faction fared best in the elections?Results are not finalized. But with roughly 89 percent of the ballots tallied in Baghdad province, the biggest of Iraq’s eighteen governorates, Iraqi officials say the main Shiite bloc, the clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), has won roughly 58 percent of the votes. The UIA is a collection of mostly conservative Islamist parties—some with alleged ties to Iran—that favors strictly enforcing the new Iraqi constitution, strengthening Iraq’s regional governments, and prosecuting ex-Baathist criminals. Experts predict the political coalition will take at least 120 seats—it currently holds 140 seats in parliament—allowing the alliance to pick the prime minister. The alliance’s main party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), has said it would not support the nomination of current Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, whose tenure has been criticized by Shiite clerics. The early frontrunner, experts say, is Adel Abdul Mahdi, Iraq’s interim finance minister and a high-ranking SCIRI member. How did the Kurdish bloc do?Preliminary results suggest the Kurdistan Coalition List fared well, though its representation in parliament—roughly a quarter in the interim government—is likely to shrink because of the surge in Sunni voting. The bloc, which consists of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), looks likely to win around fifty-five seats in the new parliament. Its splinter group, the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), will probably take five seats. The KIU recently broke from the alliance over accusations the main Kurdish parties wielded too much power in Kurdistan’s politics. Both blocs, however, say they will vote in unison on major Kurdish issues like federalism and the status of Kirkuk, an oil-rich city. It looks likely that the position of president, a largely ceremonial post, will go to a Kurd. Some say Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s current president, may retain his title, though recent press reports suggest he wants more political power. “There is a bit of debate going on because Talabani is not just a figurehead,” says Howar Ziad, Iraq’s ambassador to Canada. How did Sunnis fare?One of the biggest surprises of these elections, experts say, is the high turnout of Sunni Arabs, who comprise at least 20 percent of Iraq’s population and largely boycotted the interim elections last January. Even in Ramadi, a Sunni insurgency stronghold, turnout reportedly eclipsed 75 percent; in Fallujah, the turnout was as high as 95 percent. Experts expect Sunnis to win at least fifty to fifty-five seats in parliament. The main Sunni political bloc, the Iraqi Accord Front, has three main goals: expelling U.S. forces from Iraq, ending de-Baathification, and amending the constitution, which the group’s spokesperson, Zafir al-Ani, recently called a “readymade recipe for civil war.”  Which parties fared worst?So far, it appears the political bloc of interim Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi, the National Congress Coalition, has fared much worse than expected. Preliminary results in Baghdad seem to indicate that Chalabi’s political bloc—a loose collection of mostly liberal, secular, and Shiite parties that defected from the UIA—only won 1 percent of the vote. Other secular Shiite coalitions fared only slightly better. The Iraqi National List, led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, may win between twenty and twenty-five seats. How much behind-the-scenes jockeying is expected by political players? Lots, experts say, particularly given that UIA does not look likely to win a majority of the seats. Because the cabinet’s executive officers require two-thirds parliamentary approval, many of the main political leaders will need to set aside ethnic and ideological differences to make political deals and form coalitions. Some experts predict radical shifts in alliance formations. For example, the UIA, which needs around ten more seats for a majority, is reportedly already reaching out to members of Allawi’s Iraqi National List and the Sunni-led Iraqi Accordance Front to forge a political partnership. Allawi’s group, which includes a number of ex-Baathists and shares several common interests with the main Sunni groups—among them ending the de-Baathification process and pushing for a strong central government—may link up with the main Sunni bloc. Another scenario, though highly improbable, is a so-called national-unity government comprising leaders of all the major political blocs. Others predict that the secularist Shiite parties, which have a long history of political feuding, may partner up with the Kurdish coalition to prevent Iraq’s leadership from becoming too Islamist. Such behind-the-scenes negotiations are likely to last for several weeks, if not months, until a new government is formed. What is the process for amending the constitution?By April, Iraq’s parliament is expected to put forth a series of reforms to the country’s constitution. But significantly altering the document, a primary goal for most Sunni politicians, is a complex process, Brown says. Parliament must first form a committee, which then proposes a package of amendments. Next, the parliament votes on the amendments as a package, not individually, and this requires a simple majority. If passed, the bloc of amendments must then win approval from the public in a nationwide referendum, similar to the one held on the constitution October 15. “[The system’s] structured so that the constitution will not develop significant changes,” Brown says. What about investigating instances of voter fraud?There have been some complaints of voter irregularities, by both Sunni and Shiite leaders, most of them leveled against the UIA. More than 200 complaints were filed before December 18, the deadline for registering an irregularity with the IECI, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Moqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric, has called for an independent commission to be formed to recount the ballots. Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni leader, claims there was voter obstruction in several polling stations in Sunni areas. And two days before the December 15 elections, Iraqi border police seized an Iranian tanker reportedly filled with thousands of forged ballots. A spokesperson for the IECI told the Christian Science Monitor that voter irregularities would be investigated by the electoral commission but that no re-votes would be held.

The future of Iraq depends as much on melding the many differences between its Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish groups as on integrating its smaller ethnic and religious communities. Among its largest minority sects are Christian Assyrians, who comprise 800,000 of Iraq’s 27 million inhabitants, or 3 percent of the population. But after a rise in attacks by Muslim extremists and political persecution, a growing portion—roughly 100,000 Iraqi Christians since the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003—has either fled the country or been displaced, says Michael Youash, an Iraqi Christian and project director of the Washington-based Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project. Many of them flee to nearby Muslim countries like Syria or Turkey. Syria alone is home to nearly 250,000 Iraqi Christians who have fled their country since the first Gulf war, according to a recent UN report. The most recent series of attacks targeting Christians came on January 29 when four churches were struck and three civilians killed. “We live in a climate of fear,” said Benjamin Sleiman, Roman Catholic Bishop of Baghdad, in a January 30 interview with Agenzia Giornalistica Italia. But he added: “I am certain that there is no premeditated plan against the Christian minority [in Iraq].” Integration of Christians into Iraq ’s political hierarchy has come slowly. Just one Christian—Younadam Kanna, of the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM)—was elected to Iraq’s 275-member parliament last December. Cfr.org’s Lionel Beehner spoke with Kanna about the status of Christians in post-Saddam Iraq, the recent attacks against them by insurgents, and the plight of Christian refugees in the region. Tell me a little bit about the status of Christians in post-Saddam Iraq?In general, we are very pleased for the first time in history to be recognized officially in this country. In the beginning, I was a member of the Governing Council for the Christians and Chaldo-Assyrians. Later on, we were in the [Transitional] National Assembly as well. I mean, politically, there’s a big change. We are free to have televisions, radios, and publications; we are free to educate our kids in our model-language schools. The constitution recognizes our language—Aramaic—as an official language in our region.Explain the breakdown between Chaldeans and Assyrians in Iraq.Those are the names of one nation, but different churches and different denominations. The Catholic Assyrians are called Chaldeans. Now we call ourselves Chaldo-Assyrians, for example, as a political agreement to unite ourselves. We all have the same language, the same ethnicity, the same historical roots. The problem is the leadership of the Church, which is not united. This is the reason why we are so weak in this country. The names have historical roots, but mostly belong to the Church differences. We have a national movement, the Assyrian Democratic Movement, for example, and we are all together in this, regardless of Church or region. So you’re saying Christians in Iraq act as a united bloc? The differences between us are seeded by those outside of our community. Of course, like other Iraqis, we are suffering because of this transitional period of instability and the security lags in Iraq, the same as our other brothers, the Kurds and Arabs.How were Christians in Iraq treated under Saddam?We were fifth-degree citizens. What I mean is first degree were Arab Sunnis, second were Arab Shiites, third were Kurds, fourth were Turkmen, and we were the fifth. Yes, the country was more civil, but the regime was a dictatorship—killing people, discrimination policies, etc. We were never accepted to be in the military as leaders or high-rank officials unless we accepted that we are Arabs and not Assyrians. Several hundred thousand Christian Assyrians fled from Iraq during Saddam’s time, especially after 1991, when he adopted his faith campaign and closed all our businesses that were dealing with liquor or alcohol. More than 300,000 Christians fled after [the first Gulf War]. But weren’t some Christians, such as [former Deputy Prime Minister] Tariq Aziz, high-ranking Baath Party officials?Two or three guys—no more than that—who Arabized, which means they denied their religion and identity as Assyrians. Which issues are most important to you as the lone Christian in parliament? I’d imagine you’re involved with issues related to national identity.First, we will try for an amendment to the constitution, which was under the control of two blocs, the Kurdish and Shiite coalitions. So the preamble of the constitution we are not happy with. We want to add some amendments to make it more fair and equal to all Iraqi people. Second, the religious role of Islam in the state, we have to take care of that. So we must be very careful when we are legislating rules for explaining articles of constitution, because it could be explained in two ways—[first, the letter of the law, and second, according to Article 2 of the constitution, which broadly says all laws must adhere to Islamic principles]—particularly as it pertains to democracy principles, women’s rights, minority rights. How will you as a Christian amend the constitution if your party has just one seat in parliament?Over 50 percent of the national assembly has, if not the same opinion, a similar view of those articles. The Shiites make up maybe 45 percent. If [there are no amendments], then we will not have a stable Iraq .So you will form coalitions with non-Shiite groups?Yes, but even with Shiites. Because Article 2 says no legislation shall contradict with Islam principles, [there are, in effect, two bodies of law]. No one can say which or how many principles—100, 200, 300 principles? Were you disappointed by the outcome of December’s elections? After all, the new electoral system was set up to benefit smaller parties whose support was spread out over the regions. Yet Christians only won one seat. Were you surprised?I’m sorry to say but the way the distribution of those compensatory seats was designed by the major parties for themselves and far away from the spirit of the law. We were supposed to get two seats—one in Baghdad, one as a compensatory seat. But our seat in Baghdad was swallowed by Sunnis and others. Still, I am very happy the political process is going forward. It’s a matter for transition. In the future, we may get more than ten seats. Is part of the problem that hundreds of thousands of Christians are fleeing Iraq? Isn’t that diminishing your voter base?Yes, in Saddam’s time more than 300,000 fled Iraq. Nowadays, only less than 100,000 have fled, but not only to neighboring countries but also to the north. [Christian Chaldo-Assyrians] fled their neighborhoods and cities for other locations in Iraq. For example, Karbala is one of the most dangerous cities in Iraq because it’s a tangent point between Fallujah and Najaf, between the most extremist of Sunni and Shiite [cities]. And now we are there as victims of those two. We are not targeted. So they leave this region to go north. In Syria , more than 50 percent of the Christian refugees were there during Saddam’s time, and they are still there. Will they move back to Iraq once it’s stabilized?Yes, like in Beirut . Once peace came, the people came back. Over the weekend a number of Christian churches were targeted. Is it your impression that Christians are being targeted by insurgents more, and if so, why?This was a reaction by the fanatics by the bad jokes done by some journalists in Denmark and Norway . It was only a message. It wasn’t an attack on Christianity. You mean the cartoons in Denmark ?Yes. It was a reaction from extremists for the bad-color sketches of [Prophet] Mohammed.One of the recent attacks was in Kirkuk. What will happen to Christians there if and when the city is handed over to the Kurds, as some expect in late 2007? We have a community among the majority Kurds in [the northern provinces of] Dohuk and Arbil. And they are living in good relations. We have some individual encroachments here and there. But we have been together since 1991. I was a member of the regional assembly there. We have forty-three modern-language schools there. But maybe Kirkuk may be a time bomb for relations between the federal and regional state. It’s a big problem, but not because we are Assyrian or Christians with the Kurds or with the center. Most of our people are in Kurdish neighborhoods. What about Christian relations with Turkmen? No problems. Bad situations only come from al-Qaeda [in Iraq] and extremists. So just to be sure, you’re saying that recent attacks against Christians as we witnessed over the weekend are not pushing Christians to flee Iraq?I don’t think so because previous attacks were to draw the attention of the international community. It was only five among ninety-five attacks that month, the previous one in August 2004. People said this was an attack against Christianity. It was not.Do Christians expect to win a cabinet post in the coming government?Yes. According to Article 3 in the constitution, all Iraqi communities and sects must be represented in the cabinet.

This publication is now archived. IntroductionIraqi leaders continue to hash out a four-year coalition government after the December 15 parliamentary elections. As the country’s three main ethnic groups vie for cabinet positions, there are concerns that the Shiites—who won most of the parliamentary seats—may shut out Sunni Arabs from the more prominent positions in the new government, especially the ministries of the interior, defense, and oil. On February 12, the Shiite bloc voted to keep Ibrahim al-Jaafari as prime minister, running the risk of alienating Kurds and Sunnis, many of whom find Jaafari a divisive figure. Given the high stakes and horse trading ahead, experts predict it will be several months before the government will be up and running. What will be the makeup of Iraq’s ruling coalition? The United Iraqi Alliance (UIA)—the ruling Shiite bloc dominated by Islamist parties with close ties to Iran—won 130 seats, the most of any political list, in the parliamentary elections. The Kurdish Alliance tallied fifty-three seats, while Sunni-led parties won fifty-five seats. The major Shiite and Kurdish lists fell three seats shy of the two-thirds majority required to control parliament and select a presidential council. Therefore, the two camps must form a coalition with one of the smaller secular or Sunni political blocs. U.S. officials are privately pushing for greater Sunni political participation as part of efforts to form a government more representative of Iraq’s religious and ethnic makeup, diversify its heavily Shiite security forces, and squash the Sunni-led insurgency.  Who will control Iraq’s main government ministries?The allotment of ministries is still a few weeks, if not months, away. Sunnis, given their representation in parliament, are expected to take more portfolios than the eight they currently hold under the interim government. Still, the breakdown of the cabinet does not necessarily have to reflect the composition of parliament. Experts say the most powerful and sought-after portfolios are the ministries of interior, defense, and oil, followed by the ministries of finance and foreign affairs. It’s unclear which political groups will control which ministry, but the issues and candidates at stake include:Interior. The minister of interior controls billions of dollars, oversees Iraq’s 100,000-strong police force, and is responsible for day-to-day local security. Bayan Jabr, the current minister of interior, looks unlikely to retain his position. A high-ranking Shiite member of the Badr Brigade, the military arm of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Jabr was accused by Sunnis of employing militia members within his police forces and torturing Sunni prisoners. Sunni leaders, along with U.S. officials, have pressed for an interior minister with no militia ties. A number of candidates have been floated; some are acceptable to both Shiites and Sunnis, others are less so. Among them is Jamal Mithal al-Alousi, a former member of Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress and ex-head of the de-Baathification committee (charged by U.S. officials with removing remnants of Saddam’s ruling party from positions of power). Alousi lost his post after visiting Israel for a conference in September 2004. One expert even suggested he had ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. Another candidate is Jawad Maliki, a senior member of the Dawa Party. Maliki, who spent much of his adult life exiled in Syria, may be compromised by his alleged association with Syrian intelligence. Others say he is angling to be deputy prime minister instead. A third candidate is Kasim Daoud, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s national security adviser and a member of Allawi’s Iraqi National List. And there’s always the off chance an unknown police captain could be plucked to head the interior ministry, says Kenneth Katzman, senior Middle East analyst with the Congressional Research Service. Defense. The ministry of defense, which administers, recruits, and trains Iraq’s 100,000-strong army, was beset by scandal in 2004 when its former minister, Hazem Shaalan, was accused of embezzling more than $1 billion. “Shaalan did lasting damage to the security establishment of Iraq and set back the Iraqi army by two years,” said an Iraqi expert. Sadoon al-Dulaimi, the current defense minister, a Sunni, is seen as competetent and not corrupt. However, he is not popular among Sunnis. Another potential candidate is Hajim al-Hassani, the Sunni speaker of parliament and formerly an investment banker in Los Angeles. “He’s a respectable guy and quite moderate in his outlook,” says one Iraqi diplomat. Experts say the defense portfolio will likely stay in Sunni hands.Oil. “It’s a mess, totally dysfunctional and bureaucratic,” says the Iraqi diplomat, regarding the oil ministry. “That is its history from the old days under Saddam.” Iraq sits on the world’s third biggest reserves of oil but exports fell to a new postwar low of 1.1 million barrels per day last December. Bahr al-Uloum, a Shiite from a prominent Iraqi family, recently resigned for a second time since the December 15 elections over his opposition to fuel price hikes. Hashim al-Hashimi, a member of Fadhila, will replace him as interim oil minister (Uloum, in a recent interview with al-Zaman, suggests that Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari gave the portfolio to Fadhila (Virture) of the UIA slate to shore up support for his own bid to stay on as prime minister). Another candidate being discussed for the oil ministry is Ahmed Chalabi, a co-founder of the opposition exile group Iraqi National Congress and former Pentagon favorite. Chalabi, a secular Shiite who was briefly oil minister last April before being appointed deputy prime minister, did not fare well in December’s elections but looks likely to hold some position of power in Iraq’s permanent government. “Disregarding all his funny political maneuvers, he’s a very knowledgeable manager,” says the Iraqi diplomat. Which ministries will Sadr’s people control?Political parties affiliated with Moqtada al-Sadr, the young extremist Shiite cleric, won thirty-two of the UIA’s 130 seats for parliament, a gain of 50 percent from their earlier parliamentary representation. That should increase the influence of Moqtada al-Sadr on Iraqi politics (Sadr is believed to have been behind the selection of Jaafari for prime minister). Still, Sadr’s followers are not a unified camp, experts say. In general, Katzman says, “he will want to shift the whole UIA bloc toward a less cooperative stance with the United States and pressure us to draw down our forces and start clearing out.” Further, Sadr is less concerned with issues of federalism and less pro-Iranian than SCIRI. His platform appeals more to younger, poorer Shiites from Sadr City, a Baghdad slum named for Moqtada’s late father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and Najaf, a predominantly Shiite city about 100 miles south of Baghdad. According to the Christian Science Monitor, Sadrists are expected to pick up two more portfolios in the future government—most likely the ministries of education and housing—to add to the three ministries they already control: health, transportation, and civil affairs. “The health ministry serves half a million people a day. The transportation ministry serves 200,000 to 300,000 people,” Hazem al-Arraji, a top Sadrist cleric, recently told the Monitor. “But what does the foreign or interior ministry do for poor Iraqis? These ministries are under the control of the occupation; we have no use for them.” Who are the main candidates for president?Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, will mostly likely remain president, experts say. He has complained of his lack of authority and called for additional executive powers, which cannot happen without a constitutional amendment. Besides choosing the prime minister, the president holds a largely ceremonial position in Iraq. Yet the presidency is a potent symbol, as well as a powerful position from which to influence the country’s politics. Some experts say Talabani has not delivered on enough promises for the Kurds. “A lot of Kurds, especially Talabani’s base, the PUK [Patriotic Union of Kurdistan], are worried he is spending too much time in Baghdad playing Arab politics rather than worrying about the Kurdish area and how to secure that,” Katzman says, adding that the presidency may go to a Sunni leader as well. “It would allow Sunnis to say they are no longer humiliated and no longer third-class citizens,” he says.