BAGHDAD–Last night’s drama at least left us with a draft of Iraq’s new con­sti­tu­tion sit­ting on someone’s desk. And despite some protests that the Iraqis again broke the law of the TAL, I don’t think they did. The amended TAL said the draft had to be sub­mit­ted by Aug. 22 for approval. There’s noth­ing in the TAL, at least as near as I can tell, that requires an approval vote on that date. Which is why I was mys­ti­fied that so many news reports head­lined their sto­ries with “Assem­bly fails to vote on con­sti­tu­tion!” Well, duh. They weren’t required to. As long as they’re able to hold a ref­er­en­dum on Oct. 15, there seems to be noth­ing legally improper with wait­ing until Oct. 14 for par­lia­men­tary approval. That would be impolitic, yes, but some­times the law is an ass.

I wouldn’t be sur­prised if this three-day consensus-building period gets extended some more, as there’s noth­ing pre­vent­ing it. Also, there’s noth­ing in the TAL for­bid­ding amend­ing the draft after it’s turned in. Since it’s not for­bid­den, the National Assembly–again, theoretically–could amend the damn thing willy-nilly. And this is not just my judg­ment but the opin­ion of lawyers here on the ground spe­cial­iz­ing in inter­na­tional and con­sti­tu­tional laws.

How­ever… the AP pub­lished a thor­oughly incom­plete draft, which the New York Times has now also pub­lished. For instance, there’s no men­tion of a judi­cial branch, thanks to large chunks just being left out. For instance, Arti­cles 6, 8 – 34, 38, 40 – 65, 67 – 74, 76 – 103, 105 – 106, 108, 111 – 113, 115 – 116, 119, 121 – 127, 130 – 134, 136 – 143, 146 – 150, 152 and pos­si­bly any­thing after 153 are sim­ply not in the Eng­lish drafts yet. The draft in al-Sabah, a gov­ern­ment news­pa­per, is much more com­plete and–shockingly—“good” accord­ing to A., my extremely gruff and cyn­i­cal office man­ager. Shock­ing because he hates every­thing. To hear him say it’s “good” has to be a good sign, although he imme­di­ately began com­plain­ing about the offi­cial lan­guage. “I hate this shit,” he said. Yes, yes, A. I know.

Any­way, we’re piec­ing together a trans­la­tion, but so far it’s not bad. There seems to be no role for the Shi’ite hawza, women are men­tioned in almost every clause that guar­an­tees rights, the court sys­tem is inde­pen­dent and lib­eral. Islam is the offi­cial reli­gion and “a main source of leg­is­la­tion,” but reli­gious minori­ties are guar­an­teed free­dom of wor­ship. How­ever, no law may con­tra­dict the prin­ci­ples of Islam, democ­racy or the rights and free­doms men­tioned in the con­sti­tu­tion, which sets up an imme­di­ate con­tra­dic­tion when you get to the rights of women. Under some schools of Islamic jurispru­dence, women’s tes­ti­mony are worth only half as much as a man, and they get half the share of inher­i­tance that men get. Their cus­tody of chil­dren can be eas­ily abridged and mar­riage and divorce can be a night­mare for them. Under a human-rights focused democ­racy, all peo­ple are equal before the law. So what takes prece­dence in a dis­pute? The Qur’an or the Constitution?

Fed­er­al­ism is a big part of the con­sti­tu­tion, which will upset the Sun­nis. At least they’re still in the game by threat­en­ing to vote it down instead of blow­ing stuff up. That’s an improve­ment even if they man­age to scut­tle it in Octo­ber. (I don’t think they have the num­bers to do that, though.)

I’m sure there are more legal land mines a-plenty, but I’ve not been able to reach any lawyers who’ve seen a com­plete draft for analy­sis. Maybe later today.

[UPDATE 8÷23÷05 17:35 +0300: I’ve got a piece on Time​.com on some of the issues here.]

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