Our SCLM has failed to tell the real story that even the
Wall Street Journal has realized. The handover is a sham. But just how much of a sham is it and what happened to Brahimi, who has a reputation for making diplomatically acceptable silk purses out of situational sow's ears? Unlike it's story on the details of the handover, which omitted the important details included in the Journal piece, The
NY Times
has the details of what is going on with the picking of candidates.
In what follows I have slightly reorganized the Times piece and added a little based on what I already knew:
We heard late last week that Brahimi wanted Hussein Shahristani for prime minister, but he ran into a wall of opposition from the leaders of mainstream Shiite political parties, who wanted the job for themselves. That evidently frustrated Brahimi's plans, which might partially explain why word trickled forth on Saturday that Mr. Brahimi had gone to the American-appointed council and its bureaucracy for five of the eight leadership posts he was said to have filled.
Before that, Brahimi had openly opposed the council's participation in the new government. While traveling around Iraq talking to Iraqis about what the new government should be and supposedly interviewing potential candidates, Brahimi had posited a temporary rule by apolitical technocrats until election occurred.
On Sunday, the alliance that had seemed to develop between Brahimi and the IGC shifted when Mr. Brahimi agreed with American officials in trying to choose an Iraqi president. Some members of the Governing Council accused Mr. Brahimi and L. Paul Bremer III of trying to dictate to the only representative body in Iraq.
Dan Senor (who might otherwise be referred to as just another "lying liar'), the spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, told reporters on Sunday that the American government did not have "a preferred candidate" for the presidency. But earlier in the day, according to Iraqis, Mr. Bremer told the Governing Council it had to get behind Mr. Pachachi.
Not only was the CPA promoting Pachachi as president, who could fittingly be described as "our other Iraqi" now that Chalabi seems out of the picture, but it was also looking to promote its choice for prime minister. They (the CPA) say that Dr. Alawi was Mr. Brahimi's choice. But people close to Mr. Brahimi say he reluctantly endorsed him only after American officials aggressively (I sure wish I knew what that meant in this context) recommended him. One person conversant with the negotiations said Mr. Brahimi was presented with "a fait accompli" after President Bush's envoy to Iraq, Robert D. Blackwill, "railroaded" the Governing Council into coalescing around him.
The Times story has muddled the issues on this with its sloppily organized (in my opinion) story. They presented the Sunday events (as noted above) as a seeming shift in the erstwhile alliance between Brahimi and the IGC. The last bit makes it clear that that although Brahimi and the IGC ended up on opposite sides of the prime minister choice that it is really the US somehow forcing Alawi on Brahimi and the Iraqis. The Times calls it a "fait accompli" but fails to mention exactly why it was a done deal and not undoable by Brahimi. That is one crucial detail missing so far from the description of events.
There are forces seemingly beyond Brahimi's control. On the one hand he openly opposed the IGC's participation in the transition government, knowing that they are not really popular with the Iraqi people. On the other hand, he was unable to find acceptable alternatives because everyone wanted the jobs for themselves. Now he has seemingly chosen five of the eight leadership posts from the IGC itself while having two more (evidently the two most important posts) thrust upon him by the US and the CPA.
It was that kind of heavy-handedness by the US, some Iraqis say, that was supposed to be missing from the new government -- and which many had expected Mr. Brahimi to cure. After the decisions, Mr. Brahimi declined to comment in detail but suggested, for the first time, that his role here was far more limited than originally thought. "You know, sometimes people think I am a free agent out here, that I have a free hand to do whatever I want," he said in an interview last week.
Mahmood Othman summed it up well. "The Americans are trying to impose these decisions on us, and we are trying to reject them," said Mahmood Othman, a council member who has been critical of both Mr. Bremer and Mr. Brahimi. "And they talk about sovereignty." "It doesn't fit what Bush says," said Mr. Othman, the council member. "He said Iraqis are free."