How Much Power Will the New Iraqi Government Really Have?

Stephen Zunes, “How Much Power Will the New Iraqi Government Really Have?” (Silver City, NM & Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, January 31, 2005).

To declare simply that American forces in Iraq are no longer an occupation army but are there at the request of a sovereign Iraqi government has not been enough to assuage most Iraqis. The majority of Afghans in the 1980s and South Vietnamese in the 1960s never saw the regimes in Kabul and Saigon as legitimate. These unpopular dictatorships came to power and maintained their control only as result of superpower intervention.... [D]espite continued infusions of large-scale military assistance to these regimes, both were overthrown within just a few years of their patrons’ departures.

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The transitional Iraqi government has not had the power to overturn many of the edicts of the former American viceroy Paul Bremer and his Iraqi appointees in the IGC, and was therefore unable to chart an independent course. Even in cases where the transitional government technically could have overturned U.S.-imposed laws, it required a consensus of the president, prime minister, vice premiers and other government officials, so—not surprisingly—virtually all these laws have remained in effect.

These include such important decisions as the privatization of public enterprises, the allowance for 100% repatriation of profits by foreign corporations, a flat tax of 15%, the right of foreigners to own up to 100% of Iraqi companies, and other neoliberal economic measures...

Nor has the transitional government had the power to prosecute any Americans for crimes committed while in Iraq, no matter how serious...

The transitional government has also been unable to exercise much authority when it comes to security, since U.S. forces have been able to operate throughout the country at will, and the “sovereign” Iraqi government has had no right to limit their activities...

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How much power the national assembly will be able to wield is in question. The Transitional Administrative Law, which was imposed by U.S. occupation authorities, remains the law of the land in Iraq. Amendments can only be passed with a three-quarters majority of the National Assembly as well as the unanimous support of the Presidential Council. Due to their advantages in organization and funding, parties dominated by pro-American exiles could easily get at least 25% of the vote and/or at least one member of the Presidential Council, thereby leaving these unpopular laws in place. Members of the “control commissions”—including those overseeing the media and public finances—are dominated by American appointees and are scheduled to serve until at least 2009. American appointees also dominate the judiciary, which can challenge government rulings.