Volume 52, Number 15 · October 6, 2005
Last Chance for Iraq
By Peter W. Galbraith
Hours before the second deadline for Iraq's new constitution on August 22, Shiite and Sunni Arab leaders met in a conference room at the Baghdad headquarters of Kurdistan's President Massoud Barzani. The Shiites wanted the constitution's preamble to mention Saddam Hussein's atrocities and the Sunni negotiators were objecting. Guests sipping tea in the adjacent reception room heard voices rise in anger, and then Nabeel Musawi, a Shiite parliamentarian with a long record as a human rights campaigner, came out of the meeting. 'The Sunnis,' he said, claim that 'Saddam only killed five farmers in the south and some Kurds.' Nabeel's father disappeared after being arrested by Saddam's security services in 1981, one of 300,000 Shiites murdered by the Baath regime during its thirty-five years in power. Another deadline was missed.
Feature, 4806 words
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