28 April 2008


Bombing by warplanes, helicopter gun ships and rockets is going on unabated in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq while our politicians mull revising the 'constitution’.

Ferocious fighting from street to street currently takes place in several parts of the country which makes ludicrous any talk about the constitution and its revision.

Iraqis now sarcastically remember the referendum on a constitution whose creators and sponsors themselves have not taken with a grain of salt.

That constitution, of which U.S. and British occupiers bragged about, is the product of a dirty and vicious sectarian war that is being fed from several quarters whether domestic or foreign.

Our constitution has turned into a bargaining chip and there are so many of them in circulation in Iraq. This constitution has failed to preserve Iraq’s unity and halt its bloodshed.

Since the U.S. invasion and the acrobatic move to write a democratic institution, Iraqis’ blood has been flowing like the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. This is not an exaggeration given the mass killing that has taken place since then.

We now read of at least one million Iraqis killed in the years since the U.S. invasion.

The constitution should be the umbrella that brings the nation together. And where is the Iraqi nation?

The factions battling each other in Iraq get refuge in the shade of their sectarian umbrellas and do not give a damn to a national reconciliation program to put the country back on the right path.

The Americans are now so insecure and unstable to the extent they are being used as proxies to wage battles at the behest of certain groups against others. In other words they have become partners in the civil war.

The country’s best minds – the cream of its academia and professionals – have fled abroad. It is estimated that there are four million of them now in foreign countries.

Under these circumstances the government has the stamina to call for a revision of the constitution.

These revisions, even if they take place, will do no good because the constitution itself will remain in a valley and the actors with power in Iraq in another valley.



Whatever constitution we have, there will forces beyond its legislations among them the militias, the Americans, the foreigners and the so-called security guards or mercenaries.