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August 15, 2005
Can a U.S.-Brokered Constitution Bring Unity to Iraqis?
Dexter Filkins, one of The New York Times' Baghdad correspondents, stated in a news analysis in the August 14, 2005 edition of The Times:Zalmay Khalilzad, the new U.S. ambassador here, has publicly prodded the Iraqis to finish the constitution by tomorrow [August 15, 2005], the date they set for themselves. On several occasions Khalilzad has described the constitution as a national compact, a document symbolizing the consensus of the nation.
"And there's the rub," the correspondent added. "When the Americans smashed Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, what lay revealed was a country with no agreement on the most basic questions of national identity. The Sunnis, a minority in charge here for five centuries, have not, for the most part, accepted that they will no longer control the country. The Shiites, the long-suppressed majority, want to set up a theocracy. The Kurds don't want to be part of Iraq at all. There is only so much that language can do to paper over such differences."
This reminds me of what happened in Yugoslavia in the decade-and-a-half following President Josip Broz Tito's May 4, 1980 death.
Posted by Munir Umrani at August 15, 2005 10:18 PM
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