Shifting Power

Lakhdar Brahimi is a diplomat by trade and a political conjurer by necessity. An 11-year veteran of the U.N., Brahimi, 70, has the unenviable job of trying to make normal governments suddenly appear in places where in the past normal was defined at the barrel of a gun. In 2001 U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan dispatched Brahimi to cobble together a new government in Afghanistan after the U.S. military had run the Taliban out. Today that government controls the capital city of Kabul and not much else, but make no mistake: success in the places where he works is a relative term. That's why when George W. Bush needed to prove, in the midst of mounting U.S. casualties and spiraling Iraqi impatience, that the U.S. really does have a plan for returning sovereignty to Iraq by June 30, he unmasked a man most Americans had never heard of but in whose diplomatic skills the Administration is staking Iraq's political future--and to a significant degree, its own. "We're working closely with the U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and with Iraqis to determine the exact form of the government that will receive sovereignty," Bush said in his news conference last Tuesday. Creating a government that can win the support of the Iraqi public and run Iraq until elections, tentatively planned for next year--a balancing act that has bedeviled the U.S. for months--was going to be, in effect, the Great Brahimi's next trick.

Having given Brahimi its public blessing, the Administration had little choice but to stand aside and let him call the shots. After 11 days in Iraq, Brahimi announced in Baghdad last week that he essentially intended to take a year of political planning by the U.S, crumple it into a ball and toss it into the waste can. He had his own ideas about how Iraq should be governed and who should govern it. Early this month Secretary of State Colin Powell said expanding the 25-member, U.S.-appointed Governing Council was the most practical approach for transferring power after the Coalition Provisional Authority disbands on June 30. But Brahimi's plan, which he will present for Annan's approval this week, takes as its starting point the demise of the council. In its place would be a caretaker government comprising technocrats selected through a process the U.S. will participate in but not run. In the not too distant past, Brahimi's plan B would have infuriated some U.S. policymakers, especially civilian officials at the Pentagon, who had dismissed the idea of ceding any control over Iraq to the U.N. But last week the White House could hardly wait to throw its support behind Brahimi's proposals. On Friday Bush stood with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and told reporters who asked about their political plans for Iraq to seek out his new point man. "That's going to be decided by Mr. Brahimi," Bush said. "You are watching a process unfold, and you won't have to ask that question on July 1."