| Saddam's longtime enemy became President of Iraq Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq overthrown by the Americans, yesterday could personally observe how the new president of this Persian Gulf country was chosen. True, Saddam watched this from his prison cell and on TV. A television was placed there specifically for this purpose at the request of the Iraqi Minister of Human Rights Bakhtiar Amin. So Saddam also learned yesterday that for the first time in the history of Iraq, a Kurd became president.
The Vremya Novostey newspaper wrote two weeks ago that 61-year-old Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), would become the President of Iraq. So yesterday’s vote in the National Assembly (the transitional parliament of Iraq, before the advent of a constitution in the country) was rather symbolic, since since the election of this parliament on January 30, all the parties represented in it have been coordinating candidates for government bodies. And already two weeks ago they agreed that in order to avoid aggravation of the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites from among the Arabs, not an Arab, but a Kurd would become president. So yesterday, 228 of the 275 deputies of the National Assembly voted without any problems for Jalal Talabani to become president. The remaining ballots were not completed and were therefore declared invalid. At the same time, two vice-presidents were approved - 62-year-old Shiite Adil Abdel-Mahdi and 46-year-old Sunni Ghazi al-Yawar.
There are about six million Kurds in Iraq, a population of 25 million. Under Saddam Hussein (he is a Sunni Arab), they were treated as third-class citizens. Saddam, in Stalin's style, believed that the national Kurdish minority must be kept in a fist. Hence the brutal suppression of Kurdish uprisings. Since 1991, after the Gulf War, the Americans, under the pretext of protecting the Kurdish and Shiite populations, managed to establish special zones in the north and south of Iraq. The northern zone, where about 4.5 million Kurds lived compactly (the rest were scattered throughout the country), was completely beyond the control of Saddam. Jalal Talabani and other Kurdish oppositionists fought Hussein from there. In doing so, they relied on their Peshmarga military formations. And now Talabani is the president.
The powers of Talabani and his deputies, who together form the presidential council, are by no means nominal. This body is due to elect a prime minister in a few days. In all likelihood, he will be 57-year-old Ibrahim al-Jaafari, head of the oldest Shiite party, Ad-Daawa (Islamic Call), which is part of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA). The alliance received 140 parliamentary seats in the elections.
The Presidential Council in its current composition will exist at least until December, when new elections are scheduled. However, Talabani, Mahdi and al-Yawar will be able to retain their posts if the new constitution allows them to do so. The National Assembly must complete its development by the end of this year.
In his inaugural speech, Talabani thanked the deputies for his election, saying that it was “an important step towards the creation of a free and democratic Iraq after many years of dictatorship.” He noted the “unacceptability of outside interference in the internal affairs of Iraq” and expressed his determination to continue the fight against “black terrorism.”
Jalal Talabani is a Sunni Muslim. There are also Shiite Muslims among the Kurds, but a minority. There are many Yezidis among them, representatives of a special syncretic religion that unites different beliefs. Talabani was born in the city of Kelkan in Kurdistan, and he has been in politics since the age of 14. By the way, Moscow has maintained contacts with Kurdish politicians since Soviet times. In the summer of 2003, after the overthrow of Saddam, Jalal Talabani came to Moscow, where he met with the leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“Talabani is a charismatic politician who has the ability to win people over to the highest degree,” Professor Georgy Mirsky, chief researcher at IMEMO RAS, noted in an interview with Vremya Novostey. “In the PUK control zone, people are distinguished by religious and political tolerance. In In terms of everyday life, the population, especially Peshmarga veterans, lives noticeably better than in the Arab regions." The new president is always elegantly dressed and speaks excellent English, but the common people, according to Mr. Mirsky, perceive him as “their guy” who shies away from exaltation: “The Kurds simply call him Mom Jalal (Uncle Jalal in Kurdish. - Ed . . )".
As for the deputy president, Adil Abdel-Mahdi is from the influential Shiite organization “The Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.” An economist by training, he was finance minister in the interim government of Ayad Allawi. Ghazi al-Yawar (a civil petroleum engineer) was the interim president of Iraq until yesterday. He comes from the Shammar tribe, an influential tribe in the region. By the way, this tribe has Sunnis and Shiites.
Washington is satisfied with the new appointments, although the United States was worried about the delay in the formation of new power structures in Iraq. Just yesterday, the most experienced diplomat, an Afghan by birth, Zalmay Khalilzad, was confirmed as the US Ambassador to this country. Before that, he headed the US Embassy in Kabul, where he helped President Hamid Karzai a lot in stabilizing the situation in Afghanistan. Alexander SAMOKHOTKIN, Stanislav LYUBIMOV |
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