It was a moment for which Iraqis had yearned for generations: Parliamentary approval of a government with a mandate won at the ballot box. For Shiites, especially, last Thursday's vote was a moment in history: For generations, going back to the Ottoman imperial rule that ended with World War I, Shiites, accounting for 60 percent of the population, have been a political underclass. Until US troops toppled former president Saddam Hussein two years ago, political power rested with the Sunni minority, accounting for no more than 15 percent to 20 percent of the country's 25 million people.
The moment found its expression in the new prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, a 58-year-old physician and a devout Shiite, who fled into exile in 1980 on the day an arrest warrant was issued that would probably have sent him to the gallows. Among many Shiites, that has made him and the party he leads, Dawa, totems of repression under Saddam, especially of religious groups, that led to scores of mass graves.
But Jaafari and his Cabinet, who are expected to be sworn in this week, face daunting challenges. One reading of Thursday's events was that they marked the start of the most difficult passage yet in the US enterprise in Iraq: An eight-month period, up to fresh elections for a full, five-year government in December, in which issues basic to Iraq's future and its prospects of emerging as a stable democracy -- at worst, of avoiding a civil war among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds -- can no longer be papered over. That, in effect, is what occurred during the 15 months of US occupation to last June, and under Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's interim government, appointed by the US, which will cede now to Jaafari's.
Allawi, also a Shiite, will retreat to the sidelines and hope for a comeback for his brand of secular politics after Iraqis have had a taste of being ruled, also for the first time, by a government headed by men rooted in Shiite religious politics. The new government, with 17 ministries headed by Shiites, eight by Kurds, six by Sunni Arabs, and one by a Christian, faces a deadline of Aug. 15 to win parliamentary approval for a permanent constitution. That leaves 15 weeks -- not much longer than the 12 weeks it took to form the Jaafari government -- to settle issues on which Arabs and Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, religious politicians and secularists have potentially polarizing views.
Principally, these issues include the role of Islam in the new state, and whether future Shiite-led governments should be free, under the constitution, to adopt Shariah law and other elements of conservative Islam; the division of powers and oil revenues between central and regional governments; and the geographical boundaries -- especially the potentially explosive issue of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, claimed by Sunnis and Kurds alike -- to be granted to the proud and wary Kurds.
Overshadowing these issues is the insurgency, and the particular challenges it poses for the Shiites who will dominate the government. The war has been driven by diehard Saddam loyalists, unreconciled Baathists and Islamic militants, all Sunnis, for whom a Shiite majority government is anathema. Even US officials concede that the accession of the Jaafari government, rather than encouraging hard-core militants to negotiate, may harden their resolve to fight on.
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