Word: bremer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...election has transformed the distribution of power in Iraq. The U.S. remains in control of the security forces, both Iraqi and American, but it no longer controls the political space in the way that it did when the government was in the hands of U.S. administrator J. Paul Bremer and, subsequently, a U.S.-picked leadership. The election produced a new political leadership over which the U.S. has very little influence, and which may differ substantially with Washington on a range of issues, including - perhaps most importantly - the training, equipping and deployment of the Iraqi security forces, and the future...
...terse tone, and the testy response it elicited from some Shiite leaders underscores the difficulties the U.S. will face in negotiating a relationship with an independent Iraqi government in the months ahead. The Defense Secretary went to Baghdad demanding continuity with the transition begun by U.S. administrator J. Paul Bremer, but the elections turned out to be a break with what had gone before. The resulting government won't be much impressed by Rumsfeld's warnings against corruption and cronyism; after all, those are qualities Iraqis have long complained were all too present in the U.S.-installed Allawi administration...
...among legislators, TV coverage was cut off in order to stop the broadcast of an embarrassing spectacle. But the reason for the deadlock is not simply a failure of Iraq's elected leaders to achieve consensus. The rules of Iraqi democracy, as bequeathed by outgoing U.S. administrator J. Paul Bremer, require the support of a two-thirds majority in the Assembly for the creation of a new government, a standard that the U.S. political system might struggle to meet...
...Bremer's Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) looks likely to create a relatively weak central government in Baghdad, that was its intent - restraining any one ethnic or religious group from dominating others on the basis of a simple majority. But the price of that restraint has been to give the Kurdish minority the means to blackmail the majority, which in turn sets the scene for an acrimonious aftermath. The Kurds want to resolve such contentious issues as Kirkuk while their power is at its peak; the Shiites insist it should be done on the basis of a consensus achieved...
...Bremer's rules were designed to force Iraq's sectarian political leaders to work together and find the compromises necessary to build consensus. But they may also have inadvertently built in a basic instability to the system. The Shiites, in particular, will be watching carefully to see that democracy gives their leaders a political dominance equivalent to their demographic dominance. If the Bremer rules are perceived to be holding them back, they'll challenge them. After all, the primary purpose of the new National Assembly is for the Iraqis themselves to design their own rules for the next stage...