{"id":3024,"date":"2008-03-26T14:37:28","date_gmt":"2008-03-26T20:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=3024"},"modified":"2008-03-26T14:42:25","modified_gmt":"2008-03-26T20:42:25","slug":"reidar-visser-debating-devolution-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=3024","title":{"rendered":"Reidar Visser: Debating Devolution in Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reidar Visser, Middle East Report Online, 10 March 2008<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

(Reidar Visser is a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and editor of the Iraq website www.historiae.org<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n
For additional background, see www.historiae.org<\/a> and Reidar Visser, \u201cBasra: Reluctant Seat of \u2018Shiastan<\/a>,\u2019\u201d in Middle East Report<\/em> 242 (Spring 2007). Order<\/a> the issue here<\/a>.<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

In early August 2007, Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a Shi\u2018i preacher affiliated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, made headlines with striking comments to a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor<\/em>. The cleric revealed in an interview with Sam Dagher that \u201ca massive operation\u201d was underway to secure the establishment of a Shi\u2018i super-province in Iraq, to be named the \u201cSouth of Baghdad Region,\u201d and projected to encompass all nine majority-Shi\u2018i governorates south of the Iraqi capital. Saghir claimed that his party had already drafted detailed plans for how such a super-province would be governed — plans of such importance to Iraq and the region that there was \u201cno room for misadventures.\u201d[1]<\/a> While Saghir did not mention a timeline for this remarkable undertaking, other Supreme Council supporters of the idea were less reticent: \u201cThe Shiite federal region will be announced in April 2008,\u201d wrote one enthusiastic proponent.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

The date was not chosen at random. April 2008 is the month when the law for implementing federalism — adopted by the Iraqi parliament in October 2006 — comes into effect. For the first time in Iraqi history, areas of the country that desire a special federal status similar to that already enjoyed by Kurdistan may initiate a procedure for transforming themselves from ordinary governorates into \u201cfederal regions,\u201d potentially acquiring such privileges as the right to establish local paramilitary forces and the right to negotiate local deals with foreign oil companies. In order to obtain the rank of federal region, a governorate must hold a referendum in which no less than 50 percent of the electorate votes and a simple majority votes yes. If multiple governorates wish to band together in one federal region, the proposition must pass such a referendum in each province tagged for inclusion. (Only the Baghdad province is prohibited from forming part of a greater federal region.) If one targeted governorate says no, the federal project founders.<\/p>\n

[Read the report<\/a>] <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reidar Visser, Middle East Report Online, 10 March 2008 (Reidar Visser is a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and editor of the Iraq website www.historiae.org.) For additional background, see www.historiae.org and Reidar Visser, \u201cBasra: Reluctant Seat … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-MM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}