by Wakeley Paul; published March 12, 2004
IRAQ AND SRI LANKA: COMPARED, CONTRASTED AND ANALOGIZED
Bernard Lewis, the scholar of Islam, wraps his political opinions on Iraq in a historical blanket. They have never had a democratic tradition, he argues, therefore democracy will be an ill advised imposition of a political system upon a people who know nothing about it. It could equally well be noted, however, that neither the people of Ceylon or India or any of the British colonies, knew anything about democracy, till long after the British had infused the concept into their psyche. However, while most former Asian Colonies of Britain do have an ostensible democratic tradition which was foisted upon them, most African nations have descended from democracies to barbarous dictatorships. So where does Iraq stand today? Can it absorb democracy or not, and what again does democracy mean to them?
The fundamental problem that Iraq is faced with is not whether it prefers the autocratic rule of the mullahs and ayatollahs over democracy. The problem they face is what type of democracy will fit their situation. There are three distinct groups whose aspirations have to be satisfied. The biggest conflict, however, is between the Kurds and the majority Shiites, like it is between the Tamils and the majority Sinhalese in Sri Lanka. The Kurds, like the Tamils, are a regional majority and a national minority. The same is true of the Sunnis as well.
The recently failed agreement [now to be signed without amendment], failed not because of the commitment to democratic rule, which all groups hailed, but as one Kurd leader put it, “The fear that the majority Shihites intended to curb the Kurds of their autonomy,” an autonomy they have enjoyed for the past 13 years. Ambassador Bremer, the American coalition Administrator of Iraq, expressed this important concern from a broader perspective when he said, “Democracy is not only about majority rule, it is also for the protection of the minorities.”
The second half of the definition of democracy is an aspect of democracy that the Shihites preferred to disregard. This is also an aspect of Democracy that eludes the mindset of the average Sinhala Buddhist in Sri Lanka. They are oblivious to the fact that democracy, which honors majority rule, also opposes the tyranny of the majority over the minority. To them, Democracy is just one without the other. As an astute friend of mine pointed out, there lies a significant difference between our situation and that of Iraq.
Iraq has a superpower to twist the arms of the recalcitrant majority, who insist on majority rule without obligations to the minorities. They have a superpower at their elbow to compel the majority to accept what may be unpalatable to them, namely the obligation to honor minority interests. In Sri Lanka, luckily, we lack that force. We have a situation where the only superpower is totally in favor of our reaching a peace agreement; but does so from afar. We have foreign intermediaries monitoring peace negotiations who lack the clout that the coalition has in Iraq.
Viewing the problem from this perspective, the question we must ask is, “What was the objection to the Agreement being signed in Iraq?” It was not over the role of Islam in the Constitution; it was not over the increased influence of women under the Constitution; it was the objection of 5 Shiite leaders to the veto clause reserved to the Kurds to void the Agreement if it did not satisfy Kurdish aspirations. The clause that was objected to by the Shiite leaders was the one which said that, even if the Agreement was approved by a majority of all the Iraqis, it could be voided if 2/3 in 3 of the 18 provinces rejected it. The central issue then, just like in Sri Lanka, is granting unto the Kurdish minority a satisfactory degree of autonomy, free of majority Shiite domination. The 5 Shiites, who have now withdrawn their objection, wanted majority rule to prevail without any concession to minority concerns. This is the underlying problem in Sri Lanka as well.
A glaring contrast between their situation and ours is that the majority of each of the rival groups in Iraq are Muslims, resulting in their jointly demanding an Islamic Constitution. The Americans have peppered the interim constitution with civil rights and obligations. We, on the other hand, seek a secular Constitution because the religious differences between the two main ethnic groups have been the basis for racial discrimination. They are bonded by a common god; we are divided by separate faiths. They have civil rights drilled into their Constitution by a superpower, while we have no superpower to pepper the them into our Constitution for us.
Credit must be given to the coalition for recognizing the problems faced by minorities who are regional majorities in a democracy, which the British failed to acknowledge or recognize when granting Ceylon independence. The problem was not because the Tamil leaders were all Colombo residents. The problem was with the British, who prided themselves with the delusion that they had united a previously divided set of separate and distinct nations and turned them into into a single, coherent, well managed and manageable whole. It was the Tamil leaders resident in Colombo who first demanded, through Mr G.G. Ponnambalam, 50/50 representation if the island was to remain unified; it was a Tamil resident in Colombo, Mr S J V Chevanayakam, who spearheaded the demand for a Federal Constitution; it was Tamils in Colombo who propagated the concept of separation. They were first Mr C.Sunderalingam and much later Mr Chelvanayakam. They led and engineered each and every growing Tamil demand of the Tamil people from Colombo, where they lived at that time.
It was the British, conversely, who were obsessed with what they perceived as their great accomplishment of uniting 3 separate and distinct entities into one, a unification that has triggered the nation’s ethnic crisis. While being guilty of this monumental error , the British did not, however, ignore the communal and religious tensions and antagonisms that existed in the country. They therefore included Section 29[2] in the Constitution granting the country independence, which made it a condition to the grant of independence that the ruling majority in the Parliament was obligated to recognize and honor the equal rights of all communities and religions in the island. It forbade forever any legislation that violated this fundamental human right, by making any such legislation not only void; but legislation that Parliament had no power or authority to make. They added that this was an entrenched provision of the Constitution that could never be revoked. Bribery Commissioner v Ranasinghe [1964] 2 All England Reports 78
Despite these very salutary precautions to prevent the national minorities from being discriminated against, it did not take long for the Sinhalese majority governments to discriminate openly and brazenly, without any concern or fear of the consequences. By a succession of illegal maneuvers, they created a constitution which honored and legalized discrimination and got away with it Did the British intervene? Of course not.
This is where Mr Lewis’s being haunted by a ghost from the Islamic past comes into being. Will the majority Shiite elements tolerate the minority Kurdish quest for sovereignty for all time? Will the majority resist the temptation to override the Agreements reached today [March 8 2004] and exercise their majority rule with the same dictatorial vigor as they have in Sri Lanka, sometime in the future?
Once the superpower and its allies are satisfied that they have concluded their obligations to the Iraqi people; once they have gone and are forgotten as an invading force; is there any reason for the Shiites to fear superpower intervention if they violate the terms of the Agreement of March 8, 2004? Is there anything to prevent that majority from vitiating the Agreement to enable them to dominate the Kurds on Shiite terms? By then, the U.S could well have washed its hands off Iraq. By then, the American mood could have shifted from intervention to non intervention. The mood could shift gears and wish to treat this whole episode as a forgotten, far off memory. What will probably result is an armed conflict twixt Kurds and Shiites with the Sunnis watching and waiting with glee; and the turmoil of the region will raise clouds of dust once again. They will wind up being in the same position as we are in now, if not in an even more acute situation than we are in at present. In the end, the superpower presence may amount to nought. In the end, we may have been better off without it. In the end, we may be advancing towards a more secure future dominated by a quest for rehabilitation rather than war; while they are enveloped by the clouds of an armed conflict. In the end, we could wind up having the same gloomy future that they are destined to endure, with or without superpower intervention now, or in the future.