Baghdad’s Phantom Power-Sharing Plan

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In mid-November, after eight months of political deadlock, Nouri al-Maliki was finally designated for a second term as prime minister of Iraq. In the West, talk swirled about a supposed power-sharing deal that lay behind the apparent breakthrough. The most optimistic accounts have portrayed the new, yet-to-be-formed Iraqi cabinet as a “government of national unity” with real power given to the four biggest winners in the March parliamentary elections: the secular but increasingly Sunni-leaning Iraqiya; the two biggest (and recently merged) Shiite Islamist coalitions, State of Law, headed by Maliki, and the Sadrist-dominated Iraqi National Alliance; and a coalition of Kurdish parties.

But so far, the power-sharing deal has been disconcertingly lacking in substance. Right now, it appears that the notion of power-sharing in Iraq is nothing more than a spin-doctor operation by the Obama administration -- to which Iraq’s dominant Shiite Islamist parties are happy to pay lip service. Looking at the distribution of influential positions in the new government, only one player has been given true power: Nouri al-Maliki.

Iraqiya, besides having gained the speakership of the parliament -- an important position but one that remains checked by deputy speakers with relatively strong powers -- has only been promised a castle in the air: the presidency of a projected National Council for Strategic Policies. The council, which ostensibly would give Iraqiya influence in all major decisions regarding defense, internal security, and economic and energy-related issues, is thus far being treated by Maliki and his allies as a deliberative think tank whose main function would be to offer advice.

As for the Kurds, they have apparently received promises from Maliki on key demands regarding disputed territories and possibly the oil sector; in terms of specific cabinet positions, however, they, too, have few guarantees. The presidency, which the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani had demanded for personal reasons, is now an essentially powerless position. This new office lacks the strong veto power of the transitional three-man presidency council, which expired when Talabani was elected as an ordinary president without any deputies on November 11, bringing the five-year transition stipulated in the Iraqi constitution to an end.

Despite the weaknesses of the projected National Council for Strategic Policies, the Obama administration refers to it as the centerpiece of the supposed power-sharing deal. It is essentially a consolation prize, created by U.S. policymakers who wanted to accommodate Ayad Allawi, the leader of Iraqiya, which won the most seats in the election. His ambitions for the prime minister office were never really taken seriously by Washington (for which anything other than a Shiite Islamist prime minister, such as Maliki, seemed impossible to imagine).

From the beginning, the U.S. effort to push for the council was dominated by wishful thinking and attempts to circumvent the Iraqi constitutional framework. Initially, U.S. policymakers considered reviving Iraq’s so-called Political Council for National Security, a mostly dormant committee that came into being in 2006 without any legal basis. (Its functions were agreed upon by its members without approval from parliament.) Moreover, the internal bylaws of the council required it to make decisions by a two-thirds majority -- often a virtual impossibility, given that the body was comprised of nearly all the top members of the Iraqi government, who have long demonstrated difficulty in reaching agreement on anything. Accordingly, the idea of using this institution to satisfy the aspirations of Iraqiya was always going to be unrealistic.

Unsurprisingly, Allawi showed little interest in serving as chairman of the proposed body when the United States first suggested the possibility this past summer. So U.S. officials then shifted to the idea of giving the presidency to Iraqiya instead. But this move, too, rested on a faulty reading of the Iraqi constitution and legal framework. Now that the transitional three-man presidency council has expired, the Iraqi presidency is mostly symbolic; to make it a genuinely powerful position would require the approval of a supermajority in parliament and a popular referendum. Such an outcome, of course, is far from guaranteed, which would predicate the entire government-formation process on hypothetical future events, leaving Iraqiya in a highly vulnerable position if it accepted the presidency under those terms.

As it happened, the Kurds strongly resisted these plans, and at the same time, Iraqiya was intimidated by Iranian moves to back Maliki as prime minister. As a result -- and with much U.S. encouragement -- Allawi and his Iraqiya party opted for another scenario with hypothetical propositions: the original idea of a security council now modified as the National Council for Strategic Policies.

But the central problem, which both the United States and Iraqiya refuse to recognize, remains the same as before: public talk of councils, and even signed agreements by the country’s biggest political blocs, cannot override the demands of Iraq’s constitution and laws. At a minimum, in order to reach a true power-sharing deal, the Iraqi parliament would need to pass a law clearly defining the powers of the projected council before a vote of confidence in the next government.