Iraq’s New Governing Council: A Profile

Iraq’s new Governing Council is something of a curious interim creation. It is not an elected government, yet it is not exactly, at least officially, a creature of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) led by Paul Bremer. Bremer and his people certainly hammered the Council together after long consultations between various factions, and created something which brought most, but not all, of the key factions together. Yet the Council essentially announced itself, so as not to appear a mere creature of the Coalition. While there were some parallels to the Bonn process which created an interim government for Afghanistan, much was also sui generis. The Council was originally expected sooner, but it was also expected at one point to be essentially an advisory council, while it now is described as a “Governing Council” with policy powers which, while its actions can be vetoed by Bremer and the CPA, will reportedly be left relatively free to carry out its own policies. It will have the power to appoint and dismiss ministers to head the ministries during the reconstruction period. Next year it will have budgetary powers.

For the first time in modern Iraqi history the Council comes close to representing the ethnic and confessional mosaic of Iraq: 13 of its 26 members are Shi‘ite. (Whether they are the most representative Shi‘ites is already a subject of debate in that community.) It includes many exile leaders who worked against Saddam Hussein from abroad, including Ahmad Chalabi, once seen as the designated future leader at least by the Department of Defense. But it also includes the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

But the Council is likely to face problems as well. It was not elected. While the exile leaders have certainly worked closely with the coalition forces and may well have earned a right to participate for their years of opposition, some are little known inside modern Iraq (though others, such as Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, whose exile was in Iran, have demonstrated their popularity since their return). And no matter how independent the Council seeks to be, many Iraqis may be dubious so long as coalition forces remain in charge of security and the CPA remains in place.

This Dossier looks at the powers and membership of the Council.

The Governing Council has been talked about, in some form or other, since before the war, but it has undergone a number of changes in concept; at first something like the present council seemed to be envisioned; a transitional governing body that would appoint ministers. But as quarrels erupted among varying factions after the fall of Baghdad, there were reports suggesting that the council would be purely advisory. The Council which has emerged does indeed have powers to appoint and dismiss, and will have power to adopt the 2004 budget. It can still be overriden by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the occupation administration headed by L. Paul Bremer, but its decisions, Bremer has said, will be vetoed only in extreme situations.

It will, however, have little authority over security issues. Although in theory it will appoint the ministers heading the military and police ministries, operational security issues will apparently stay with the CPA.

Until almost the moment the Governing Council was announced on July 13, its composition was still being debated. Bremer and his aides and the membership apparently spent most of July 12 finalizing the details. Although no official reasons for the 11th-hour talks have been offered, the role of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the conditions under which SCIRI was willing to join seem to have been sticking points. By some accounts a number of names of members were withdrawn at the very last minute in order to conform to SCIRI’s demands.

The announcement of the Council was made by the members themselves, with the only foreign official speaking being the United Nations’ Special Representative to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. The Council is clearly interested in persuading the United Nations of its legitimacy, and instead of immediately electing a new leadership, it decided to send three of its members — opposition figures Ahmad Chalabi and ‘Adnan al-Pachachi and diplomat ‘Aqila al-Hashimi — to New York to seek to persuade the Security Council to recognize it as the legitimate representative of Iraq.

The membership of the Council represents most of the major non-Ba‘athist elements in the country. There is no monarchist (though the main pretender to the throne, Sharif Hussein bin ‘Ali, has returned to Baghdad), and no representative of the radical Shi‘ite Sadr Movement. But the pro-Iranian SCIRI is represented, along with the Da‘wa Islamic Movement and a prominent independent Shi‘ite cleric, Muhammad Bahr al-‘Ulum.

The Shi‘ites, by most reckonings, have 13 of the 25 seats, though they may have 14 if one figure identified by some sources as Shi‘ite and by others as Sunni is Shi‘ite. But the 13 include the Shi‘ite head of the Iraqi Communist Party, who is, needless to say, not religious, and figures such as Chalabi, who is clearly a secularist.

By most counts there are five Sunni Arabs, including some tribal leaders.

The five Kurds (who are also Sunni) include representatives of the two major groups and several smaller ones. There is one Christian and one Turkmen. Three of the members are women (two Shi‘ites and the Turkmen).

Early criticisms of the Council were relatively few, though Arab League Secretary-General ‘Amre Moussa insisted it would have been better if it had been elected, and many Council members have also spoken out in favor of early elections.

There is a natural suspicion among many Iraqis of the Council’s makeup. Although it represents the major groups, and gives the Shi‘ites a slight majority, some of the Shi‘ites have few roots in the community. The inclusion of SCIRI, however, seems to have been a major accomplishment in trying to give some credibility to the Shi‘ite members, despite some concerns about SCIRI’s links with Iran. The exclusion if the Sadr Movement may prove problematical, but their radicalism probably made any inclusion impossible.

The fact that a majority of the Council had been living in exile is somewhat ameliorated by the broad spectrum of ideologies and the fact that several had spent that exile in Iran or the Arab world, not in the West. The presence of some figures from the opposition abroad was after all inevitable, and the Council is certainly not what some had feared, an attempt to impose Chalabi or other figures without a role for those who had remained inside Iraq.

The presence of ‘Adnan al-Pachachi, the 80-year-old former Foreign Minister (Profile, Page Nine) may be significant. Though he too was an opponent in exile, he is of a different sort. Some US officials have promoted him as a possible unifying figure. Though a survivor of the pre-Ba‘ath era, he might prove, by this argument, someone around whom everyone could rally. But he is not likely to be a figurehead like former King Zahir Shah in Afghanistan: Pachachi is an outspoken Arab nationalist of the old school, and a critic of the US occupation. He had in fact declined to serve on an earlier, purely advisory body.

After taking its first action — abolishing the July Ba‘athist holidays to discourage their celebration — the Council was expected to choose a leadership. But instead, as already noted, it voted to send three of its members, including both Chalabi and Pachachi, to the United Nations to plead its case.

The members of the Council are described on the following pages. In a few cases, little is really known, and in one or two cases, conflicting information has been provided in the initial days.

 The Members
The following list is based on various reports and categorizations. Where sources have been in conflict The Estimate has relied on the newspaper Al-Zaman, the London-based Iraqi exile newspaper.

Ahmad Chalabi (Shi‘ite Arab) is a 58-year-old banker who has been the primary public face of the exiled Iraqi National Congress (INC), who was the subject of a fuller Profile in The Estimate of May 3, 2002. Chalabi lived in Jordan and the UK for much of his adult life, and Jordan has accused him of embezzlement during his period as head fo the Petra Bank there; Chalabi insists he is innocent. He is a Shi‘ite but a secularist without links to the various Shi‘ite clerical factions. Chalabi has been a favorite of the US Defense Department.

Sayyid ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Hakim (Shi‘ite Arab) is Deputy Leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and brother of Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim (Profile in The Estimate of May 16, 2003). He spent decades in Iranian exile with his brother and has been SCIRI’s main voice in the West. He is also the official commander of SCIRI’s Badr Brigade.

Jalal Talabani (Sunni Kurd), 67 or 69 depending on the source, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the two veteran leaders of the autonomous Kurdish region, his PUK controls the southeastern portion of the zone. He is the traditional rival and occasional ally of Mas‘ud Barzani (see next entry).

Mas‘ud Barzani (Sunni Kurd), 56, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and son of the late Mulla Mustafa Barzani, heads the other major Kurdish group,which controls the northern and western regions of the Kurdish zone.

Ibrahim al-Ja‘fari (Shi‘ite Arab), a 56-year-old physician from Karbala’ who is the spokesman for the Islamic Da‘wa Party, once a major opposition force that was decimated inside Iraq by Saddam’s attacks in the 1980s. Ja‘fari lived in Iran and then London.

Nasir Kamil al-Chadirchi (Sunni Arab), head of the National Democratic Party, is a 70-year-old lawyer from a prominent Baghdad family; his father, Kamil al-Chadirchi, was a prominent figure in pre-Ba‘ath days. Chadirchi never left Iraq.

‘ Iyad ‘Allawi (Shi‘ite Arab), a 57-year-old surgeon and Secretary-General of the Iraqi National Accord; a grandfather was a minister under the monarchy. ‘Allawi was a member of the Ba‘ath, and his INA includes many other former Ba‘athists and military men. Though Shi‘ite, his background is secularist, unaffiliated with the various Shi‘ite clerical movements.

‘ Adnan Pachachi (Sunni Arab), at 80 one of the two oldest members of the Council, was a respected Foreign Minister in 1965-67 under the presidencies of ‘Abd al-Salam and ‘Abd al-Rahman ‘Arif. He founded the Independent Democratic Movement earlier this year. Pachachi spent years in exile in the UAE and London. He is considered a unifying figure from the pre-Ba‘ath era. (See the Profile in this issue.)

Muhammad Bahr al-‘Ulum (Shi‘ite Arab), the group’s other octogenarian at 80, is a respected cleric from Najaf who headed the Ahl al-Bayt Islamic Centre in London after fleeing Iraq in 1991. Bahr al-‘Ulum issued the initial announcement of the Council, cancelling Ba‘athist holidays and making April 9, the fall of the Saddam statue, a new holiday.

Ahmad al-Barak Albu Sultan (Shi‘ite Arab), head of the Lawyers’ Syndicate and of the Human Rights Association in Babylon.

‘ Aqila al-Hashimi (Shi‘ite Arab), one of the three women on the Council, she has been a senior Iraqi diplomat and a member of a committee running the Foreign Ministry since the fall of the regime.

Raja’ Habib al-Khuza‘i (Shi‘ite Arab), another of the three women, she is British-educated and has been running a maternity hospital in Iraq.

Hamid Majid Musa (Shi‘ite Arab), the 62-year-old General Secretary of the Iraqi Communist Party. Musa is a Shi‘ite by background, but needless to say, as a Communist he is secularist. An economist, he has been living in the Kurdish zone since it gained autonomy in 1991.

Sheikh Ghazi Mash‘al ‘Ajil al-Yawir (or Yawer) (Sunni Arab), a civil engineer from Mosul, 45, grandson of a chief of the powerful Shammar tribe, and in recent years working for a technology company in Saudi Arabia. He only returned to Iraq in June after many years in Saudi Arabia, but his links to the Shammar (which includes both Sunni and Shi‘i clans) provide him a base.

Muhsin ‘Abd al-Hamid (Sunni Arab), General Secretary of the Islamic Party, an Iraqi wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, long since banned in Iraq.

Samir Shakir Mahmud (Shi‘ite Arab according to the usually reliable Az-Zaman, but BBC, CNN and most others have listed him as a Sunni), a tribal leader from the Sumaidi tribe area around Baghdad.

Mahmud ‘Ali ‘Uthman, a Kurd from Suleimaniyya and a member of the KDP until founding the Kuridsh Socialist Party in London in the 1970s. More recently he has been a political independent based in Irbil.

Salah al-Din Muhammad Baha’ al-Din (Sunni Kurd), is the 53-year-old Secretary-General of the Kurdistan Islamic Union, a Kurdish Islamic movement close to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Muwaffaq al-Rabi ‘ (Shi‘ite Arab) a former member of the Da‘wa Party, but now described as a moderate writer.

Dara Nur al-Din (also Alzin) (Sunni Kurd), a judge who served prison time for overruling actions of the Saddam government; he was freed in the general amnesty late last year.

Wa’il ‘Abd al-Latif, (Shi‘ite Arab), currently the Acting Governor of Basra, was a prominent judge who had been Deputy Chief Judge of the Basra Court. He spent some time in prison in 1994.

‘ Abd al-Karim Mahmud al-Muhammadawi (Shi‘ite Arab) known as Abu Hatim, is a tribal leader in his 40s whom the British have called the “Lord of the Marshes”, led the resistance against Saddam by Marsh Arab tribes for many years. He is now based in the area of the town of ‘Amara.

‘ Izz al-Din Salim (Shi‘ite Arab), head of the Da‘wa Party in Basra.

Younadem Yusuf Kana (Assyrian Christian), head of the Democratic Assyrian Movement and a former minister in the autonomous Kurdish region; he is the only Christian.

Sondul Chapouk (Turkmen), one of the three women on the Council and the only Turkmen member. Her name appears in Arabic lists as Shankul Habib ‘Umar. She is variously said to be an engineer and an artist.

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