Birth pains.(Iraqi negotiations for constitution)

As we go to press, Iraqi negotiators are still working on arriving at a constitutional compromise acceptable to all parties. The current draft tips toward the creation of a federal state and gives Islamic law a greater say than previously in family matters, possibly curtailing women's rights; but the language about Islam being "a main source for legislation" mirrors a similar provision in the Afghan constitution, which didn't usher in a new version of the Taliban. The Iraqi document also contains numerous guarantees of individual rights, making it the most liberal constitution in the Middle East.

That's on paper. What it actually means, given contradictory passages and deliberately vague provisions, will have to be worked out in practice. How much power, for instance, experts in Sharia law who sit on the supreme court actually have will be a key determinant of the nature of the new Iraqi state. The immediate imperative is to attempt to get the Sunnis on board the draft, although they weren't part of recent negotiations. They prefer a more centralized government, since if the Kurds and Shia go their own ways, they will be left with a dusty little rump state. Given the murderous Sunni insurgency, it is tempting to tell them to pound sand, but a Sunni rejection of the charter could tip the country further toward all-out civil war.

There has been much consternation in the U.S. over women's rights and the role of Islam in the constitution. How could President Bush, the critics ask, promise democracy and then countenance such an illiberal constitution? But he always said it would be democracy with Iraqi characteristics, and not all of those characteristics are going to be palatable to Western liberals. Iraq is in many ways still a traditional Islamic society. Saddam maintained a nominally secular state only on the basis of violence. And even Saddam, as the appeal of Baathism waned after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, had given more authority to the traditional supports of Iraqi society, the tribes and the clerics. The trick for the U.S. is to nudge Iraqi governance in a more representative and pluralistic direction without so offending the sensibilities of religious Iraqis as to prompt a backlash that undoes everything. It is a tightrope the administration has walked as well as can be expected.

As with so much else in Iraq, it is ...