PATIENCE, CHILDREN:

A Crucial Window for Iraq: 15 Weeks to Pull Together (JOHN F. BURNS, 4/29/05, NY Times)

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, Thursday's vote was a moment in history: for generations, going back to Ottoman imperial rule that ended with World War I, Shiites, accounting for 60 percent of the population, have been a political underclass. Until American troops toppled Saddam Hussein two years ago, political power rested with the Sunni minority, accounting for no more than 15 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 doctor 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 Mr. Hussein, especially of religious groups, that led to scores of mass graves.

But Dr. Jaafari and his cabinet, expected to be sworn in next week, face daunting challenges. One reading of Thursday's events was that they were the start of the hardest passage yet in the American 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 American occupation to last June, and under Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's interim government, appointed by the Americans, which will cede to Dr. Jaafari's.

Dr. 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 led by men rooted in Shiite religious politics. The new government, with 17 ministries led by Shiites, 8 by Kurds, 6 by Sunni Arabs, and 1 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 land secularists have potentially polarizing views.

Principally, these issues include the role of Islam, and whether future Shiite-led governments should be free 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 die-hard Hussein loyalists, unreconciled Baathists and Islamic militants, all Sunnis, for whom a Shiite majority government is anathema. Even American officials concede that the accession of the Jaafari government may harden militants' resolve to fight on.

Our love of the dramatic makes us went to see each moment as crucial, but that's not the reality. The history of post-Saddam Iraq is being written a bit more sloppily than we might like, but remains on the track set back in '91.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 29, 2005 6:24 AM