Iraq: Constitution Stands in Way of Power-Sharing Deal

Reidar Visser writes in Foreign Affairs that the current power-sharing deal in Iraq is “disconcertingly lacking in substance.” Visser details the various machinations that have been put forward to tempt Iraqiya, led by Ayad Allawi, into forming a coalition government with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki‘s State of Law and the Kurdish parties. Visser identifies the core of the problem: “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.” In fact, he says, the “main responsibility for the fragile character of Iraq’s ‘power-sharing deal,’ however, rests with the Obama administration. Washington continues to spend more energy pursuing its own, idiosyncratic exegesis of Iraqi politics than it does engaging with the real world.”