Iraq political ‘surge’ uplifts U.S. officials

Politics has broken out in Baghdad.

Long derided as dysfunctional, Iraq’s parliament in recent weeks has passed a package of laws on the budget, elections and sectarian reconciliation that have given cautious hope to U.S. officials and private analysts that the gains from President Bush’s military surge are finally being matched by a political surge as well.

Daniel Serwer, a specialist on post-conflict societies, recently led a delegation from the Washington-based U.S. Institute of Peace to Baghdad to assess the political scene and interview the major Iraqi players inside the Green Zone.

“The popular image is that things are completely deadlocked in Baghdad,” he said. “That’s not what we found at all.”

Instead, he said, the delegation found Iraqi politicians cutting deals, making compromises and forming alliances based more on power and votes that on religious or ethnic bonds.

“There’s a lot of floundering, a lot of thinking and rethinking, a lot of new voices emerging,” he said. “But it’s a good deal less polarized than we anticipated.”

Mr. Bush and his fiercest critics on Iraq have long agreed that the tactical gains of the U.S. military surge will matter only if they are followed by political gains among the country’s feuding ethnic and sectarian camps.

Even top U.S. officials conceded last fall the early political returns were meager, with the Iraqi parliament failing to act on a string of political “benchmarks” set by Washington, and failing at times even to obtain a quorum to conduct basic business.

In a typical comment, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on his campaign Web site faults the military surge in Iraq for failing to produce political change.

“Iraq’s leaders have made no progress in resolving the political differences at the heart of the civil war,” the senator from Illinois said.

But that Web site may have to be revised.

After passing a law in January easing restrictions on lower-level members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, parliament last month broke a deadlock by passing a trio of bills approving the government’s budget, offering amnesty to mostly Sunni political detainees in Iraqi jails and setting a date for provincial government elections.

The three main power blocs in the Iraq government — Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds — all objected to one or another of the three bills, with parties staging regular walkouts to block progress.

But in a maneuver familiar to legislatures around the world, lawmakers bundled the three bills into one and forced a single vote.

“Yes, it moves in fits and starts and it can be very frustrating to watch,” Iraq’s U.S. Ambassador Samir Sumaida’ie said in an interview last week. “But that is normal politics — it looks like nothing is getting done and suddenly everything happens in a flurry.”

Mr. Sumaida’ie credited the U.S. military surge for doing exactly what President Bush had hoped, creating the breathing space for political compromise.

“If not for the surge, this kind of deal making could never have been sustained,” he said.

Skeptics say each of the laws must be examined in detail and implemented fully before the political surge can be judged.

But James Gluck, a former U.N. adviser to the Baghdad government on constitutional issues and a member of the Institute of Peace delegation, said the parliamentary deal cutting and log rolling was a major achievement in itself.

“On their face, [these bills] may not look like monumental events, but in the context of Iraqi politics that’s just what they were,” he said.

U.S. and Iraqi officials got another bit of good news late last month when hard-line Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his militia to extend a truce with U.S. forces for six more months.

But even the biggest supporters of the U.S. surge concede that Iraq’s government faces huge challenges, despite the recent glimmers of progress.

Major work is still needed on such central and volatile issues such as a new national oil law, revising the constitution and deciding the status of the ethnically divided city of Kirkuk. Efforts to streamline the bloated Cabinet have also been blocked by factions protecting their ministerial perches.

Even last month’s breakthrough in passing the three key bills was undercut when Iraq’s three-man presidential council vetoed the provincial elections bill, citing constitutional concerns.

Iraq’s parliamentary speaker denounced the veto and vowed to pass an amended version of the bill as soon as possible.

President Bush said even the veto was proof of a political revival in Baghdad.

“I understand the use of the veto,” he said at a White House press conference Thursday.

“I thought it was a healthy sign that, you know, these people are thinking through legislation that has passed, and they’re worrying about making sure that laws are constitutional.”