Alan Bock Sr. editorial writer The Orange County Register abock@ocregister.com

The Iraqi constitutional commission bought itself another week to come up with a draft constitution it hopes to deliver tomorrow. Whether it will be able to do so, or whether the document will resolve some of the "huge questions," as Hoover Institution scholar Larry Diamond put it to me, that prevented agreement by the original deadline of August 15, are tough to figure.

Even if a document is produced and ratified, we may not know for months or even years whether it provides a governing system capable of avoiding civil war or providing a semblance of security and stability.

Diamond, whose research specialty is transition to democracy, was a senior adviser in Iraq last year for the Coalition Provisional Authority. Since returning, he has written a book, "Squandered Victory," a scathing examination of occupation mistakes. "I still think they [the Iraqis]can get it done," he told me, "but the divisions are serious. Just in the past week we have had two new demands with the potential to break the process asunder."

First is a request from Kurdish leaders in the north for a constitutional provision that would allow them effectively to secede at some point in the future, a provision Mr. Diamond says almost all other Iraqis oppose. Second is the demand from Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most influential Shiite politicians, that the southern part of the country, Shiite-dominated (and with 80 percent of the country's oil) become an autonomous region (though the degree of autonomy was not specified).

Iraq's governance problems stem largely from the fact that the country was cobbled together by the British after World War I, out of the rubble of the defeated Ottoman Empire. Shiites, with almost 65 percent of the population, are dominant in the southern part of the country and have long-standing ties to Iranian Shiites, though not all sympathize with theocracy on the Iranian model. The Sunnis in the central region around Baghdad ruled with an iron hand under Saddam and make up about 20 percent. The Kurds in the north, about 15 percent of the population, are ethnically distinct from Arabs but are generally Sunni Muslims, though relatively secularized.

Saddam Hussein ruled largely through fear (and spreading oil revenues strategically), inflicting cruel repression on both Shiites and Kurds at various times. The question is whether such an ethnically divided entity can survive as a relatively free country.

Diamond says Iraq has been in existence long enough that most Iraqis think of themselves as Iraqis and prefer that the country stay together. But the ethnic divisions have persisted. The constitution-drafting process has, if anything, intensified the devisions, as leaders of the factions realize that the governing document could determine their relative freedom and power for generations to come.

In theory the solution is some kind of federalism, with a central government of limited powers and a fair amount of self-governance at the local level. But federalism in principle leaves numerous concrete arrangements to be negotiated, and to some Iraqis it sounds like a Western, even a distinctly American concept, and therefore foreign or even alien (although it's close to the way the Ottomans ruled and many Middle Eastern countries operate in practice).

Closely linked to federalism is the question of oil revenues. About 80 percent of the country's productive oil fields are in the south. In the north, Kirkuk is in the center of an oil-producing region, but Saddam purposely de-Kurded it by relocating Arabs and driving out Kurds. The Kurds want control of Kirkuk and its oil, but the Sunnis, who could find themselves without any oil in a decentralized Iraq, resist the idea.

The question of oil underlines the fact that Iraq is by and large a single-resource economy. Often single-resource economies (see Saudi Arabia) are controlled by a strong central power that distributes benefits on the basis of ethnic or kinship lines, which works for a while but actually deters the emergence of other economic activities and is ultimately unstable.

The second major sticking point is the role of Islam in Iraq in the future. Many (though not all) Shiites see theocracy, a la Iran's Islamic Republic, with Islamic law or Sharia as the basis, as desirable. Sunnis and Kurds would find such a regime uncomfortable to intolerable. A compromise, recognizing Islamic law as the basis for secular law but not enacting Sharia directly into law - and giving civil rather than religious authorities the major role in determining just how far parliament can go in enacting laws that might be different from pure Sharia - has proven elusive.

Such disagreements are played out in differences that might seem minor to an outsider, such as whether Iraq will be called an Arab or an Islamic republic, and what its official name will be.

Will the marja'iyya, the Shiite religious authority consisting of the four major Shiite ayatollahs, receive official recognition in the constitution, and if so how much real authority will it have? Will religious or secular authorities - or tribal leaders - have authority over matters like marriage, inheritance and the rights of women?

Williamson Evers, another Hoover political scientist who spent time in Iraq as an educational consultant in 2003, sees the diversity in Iraqi society as a potential strength rather than an insuperable problem. "Pluralism in Iraq means they have to compromise, to find ways to get along," he told me last week. "Dealing with compromise, with the fact that other factions get their way sometimes, is one of the habits that underlies a civil society."

Evers, who notes that "in Middle Eastern politics there's always a certain amount of drama and rhetorical extravagance," has been reading successive drafts of the proposed constitution and says each one shows a little more willingness to compromise. He is cautiously optimistic about the outcome.

Nathan Brown of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has also been studying and commenting on successive constitutional drafts, would agree, but has more doubts. "If there were a stronger level of trust among Iraqi groupings it would matter less what provisions make it into the constitution," he told me. "They would find ways of working together. But that level of trust just isn't there, so even a technically perfect constitution might not prove to be a satisfactory governing document."

Insofar as steps that can be viewed as strengthening political processes and more success by Iraqi forces in neutralizing insurgents seem like bare minimum requirements before the administration will consider withdrawing some American troops, I hope whatever constitution emerges is viewed as credible in Iraq. While they might pull it off, however, the obstacles are formidable.