Jill Carroll – Correspondent

Baghdad has been a violent place for over two years now, but when I got back this time I noticed people were more afraid of sectarian violence than they were before. Now people have to dance around these Sunni-Shiite divides in order to work.

In the street in Shiite areas, my driver, my interpreter, and I call one another by Shiite names, in case we are overheard. In Sunni areas we use Sunni names. These days, the ethnic and religious background of our drivers and interpreters matters much more to the people we are interviewing. It comes up almost every time we talk to someone.

Luckily my interpreter is a Christian, and to all but the most extreme people here, he is viewed as a more or less neutral party and, thus, above suspicion.

One time we were picking up a Sunni man my interpreter knows who was going to take us to meet his family. After arriving at the house, he pulled my interpreter aside, gestured toward our driver and whispered, "Who is this guy? You know, Sunni or Shiite?" He was reassured to know our driver is Sunni.

Several times my interpreter and I have had to take taxis when our car breaks down. When we get in, my interpreter quickly assesses the ethnicity of the taxi driver on the basis of religious pictures and trinkets displayed on the dashboard and adjusts the answers to the inevitable questions about our identities accordingly. One time he slipped up, at first saying I was his Sunni wife and then later saying he was a Christian. The driver remarked at such a highly unusual match in Iraq.

Jill Carroll - Correspondent

Last spring we reported on the plight of Jabbar Kathem Hassan’s 27-member family who was left homeless by a car bomb in October 2003.

Their youngest, Zeinab, was paralyzed from the waist down in the blast that destroyed their home. Their only choice was to move into a small compound of municipal buildings down the street from the destroyed house. It’s shelter, but little else. No heat, no electricity, no bathroom. An outdoor spigot provides the only running water.

I visited the Hassans recently to see what – if any – changes had occurred in their life.

They are still living in the municipal buildings but when asked about their lives, 80-year-old Jabbar, affectionately known as Abu Ali, says “We have no problems. The only problem is the house problem. If they kick us out where will we go?”

At first they thought someone would help them find a new home. But by their second spring in the compound they painted, “Here lives Abu Ali” in white on the blue metal door leading to the cluster of buildings. It’s a sign their living situation has become permanent.

But the generosity of some Monitor readers has given them some hope.

After reading about their plight last spring, several people sent money to the family. It was gratefully received. The money went toward medical bills and food. Abu Ali told me that he prays for those people and, even more than the financial help, he takes great comfort in knowing people halfway around the world care about them.

Now there are just the smallest signs of improvement. Zeinab is sitting up. She was even interacting with the people around her, laughing as her sister Nisreen fed her chips. She still can’t talk and hasn’t regained the use of her legs, but she has begun to rejoin the world in small ways.

Hamid Hussein, her uncle, pointed out that when they ask her, “Where is mama?” or “Where is baba?” she points to her mother or father.

But for Hamid, who was a school teacher and the only breadwinner for the family, life here still remains a daily struggle. He was working a second job in a friend’s barber shop last spring when a gunman entered and shot and killed his friend and wounded Hamid. Barbers have been targeted by some insurgent groups who feel cutting beards violates Islam.

This large family typifies the randomness of violence here and the impotency of the government that can’t stop the bombers, much less set up a support network for its victims. But like many Iraqi families, they soldier on in the face of daunting obstacles with an “it’s in the hands of God” attitude.

As I was reading through the latest draft of the Iraqi constitution, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the document being created won’t have much immediate relevance to the current situation in Iraq and its enormous social and security problems.

What really matters is the development of a political culture that carefully safeguards the interpretation and use of a constitution as a nation goes forward.

The world, after all, is filled with examples of countries with wonderful constitutions – the last Iraqi constitution under Saddam wasn’t too bad – that are simply ignored by their despotic leaders. There are other countries that seem to get along pretty well without one – England comes to mind.

The Iraqi draft, as it stands now, is littered with ambiguity.

Take these three assertions in Article 2:

(A) No law can be passed that contradicts the fixed principles of Islam;
(b) No law can be passed that contradicts the principles of democracy;
(c) No law can be passed that contradicts the rights and basic freedoms outlined in this constitution.

The constitution goes on to say that “Iraqis are equal before the law without discrimination because of sex, ethnicity, color, religion, sect, belief, opinion, or social or economic status.”

Now, this sounds good. But I know of many interpretations of “the fixed principles of Islam” that would immediately come into conflict with both points B and C. A few Muslims think democracy is un-Islamic; the vast majority of Islamic scholars believe that Islam demands fairly sharp limits on “basic freedoms,” particularly those of women. In the end, it will come down to how these three rules are interpreted by future Iraqi lawmakers.

The political culture could end up favoring individual rights, say, over an Islamic scholar’s demand that women be forced to cover their hair. Or it could favor the scholar. There’s nothing in this document to indicate which way it’s going to go. But with the growing political clout of Islamist political parties here, it won’t be a surprise if a fairly restrictive religious climate is fostered under the new rules.

And as things stand now, there are a number of facts on the ground that violate the provisions of the draft. It bans private armies, yet there are at least six militias loyal to Iraq’s political parties currently at work, not to mention the thousands of mercenaries employed to guard contractors and public officials.

The draft also says that all Iraqis have the right to freedom and cannot be deprived of that right without “a ruling by the appropriate judicial body.” Perhaps reflecting the long, terrifying rule of Saddam Hussein, when one's own home was not sacrosanct, the draft promises that “homes cannot be entered or searched except by judicial decision.”

Yet as things stand now, dozens of Iraqis are detained by both local and US forces every day without any judicial review, and many endure up to six months of captivity without a hearing. Hundreds of Iraqi homes are entered every day, by both Iraqi and US forces, without any specific judicial authorization. Most US military field operations in places like Anbar Province involve kicking Iraqis out of their homes and commandeering them as sleeping quarters and observation points for as long as the operation lasts. I’ve been with US Marines who’ve done this – they feel bad about it, but say it’s operationally unavoidable if they’re to fight a war in an urban environment.

But that’s just the point. There’s a war going on here, and that means any real progress toward realizing the ideals in the constitution will have to wait.