IRAQ - Focusing On The Non-Oil Sector - Part 6-N - Towards Civil War.

Six months after Iraq's historic Jan. 30 election, the country is on the verge of another political breakthrough, the successful writing of a new constitution. Yet there are growing worries that the political momentum is doing nothing to calm a bloody Salafi insurgency which appears closer than ever to tipping Iraq into a real civil war.

Many Iraqis are profoundly gloomy in this summer of relentless car bombs, scorching heat and sporadic electricity. The issue is of keen interest to Americans, whose president has pledged that the US military will stay in Iraq at its current level until the country can defend itself.

The Associated Press on July 24 quoted Phebe Marr, author of "Modern History of Iraq" who just returned to the US from a visit to Iraq, as saying: "I see this as a long, slow struggle". Marr said she came away thrilled by the "very genuine and very lively political progress" in Baghdad but discouraged by the insurgents' stubborn hold. Her words were echoed by one Western diplomat. Asked if fighting will abate if Iraqis successfully drafted a constitution by the Aug. 15 deadline, the diplomat was quoted by AP as saying: "We've always understood it's going to be a long process".

New American Advice: In brief remarks at his residence inside the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, new US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad on July 25 spoke twice of the need to avert civil war. He urged the leaders of each of Iraq's main ethnic and sectarian communities to "accept less than its maximum aspirations", saying: "You don't want to do things that build the infrastructure for a future civil war or warlordism".

Khalilzad, who recently completed a term as the US envoy to Afghanistan, a country still torn by fighting, added: "The lesson is that, if good-faith efforts are made with a spirit of realism, flexibility and compromise, even fundamental divides can be bridged". The role of women and the powers of the central government are among the most contentious issues debated by a committee trying to draft a permanent constitution. The committee is supposed to finish its work by Aug. 15, after which the constitution will be submitted to a nationwide referendum, the latter to take place by Oct. 15.

While pushing the Iraqis to finish the document, US officials are concerned this could sow the seeds of conflict, rather than reconciling Iraq's various factions. The public remarks by Khalilzad signalled a departure from Bush policy which, after the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty in June 2004, has been to relegate the US ambassador to a low profile. That policy was exemplified by Khalilzad's predecessor, John Negroponte, who in his time in Baghdad rarely showed his face in public.

Khalilzad said he expected Iraq's new constitution to enshrine the principle of "equality before the law for men and women". In saying that, he was inserting himself into a dispute embroiling the constitutional committee. He said: "A society cannot achieve all its potential if it does things that prevents, weakens prospects of half of its population to make the fullest contribution that it can".

Khalilzad, an Afghan turned American, signalled that the US would try to limit demands for broad autonomy from some of Iraq's main ethnic and sectarian groups. Without singling out any, he suggested that excessive demands for autonomy could leave the central government in a weakened state and that it would then be unable to hold this fractious country together. That was also a message to the Shiite Arab majority, whose leaders are pushing for powers of self-rule to mirror those enjoyed by the Kurdish minority in the north. As an example to follow, he held up the South African constitution drafted in the 1990s after the collapse of apartheid. In South Africa, he said, the country agreed on "a weak form of federalism" which reserved a good deal of power for the central government, noting: "This formulation has resulted in stable government since 1996".