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Election Hardly A "Historic Day" For Iraq
by Chris Toensing
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INDEX
to coverage of Iraq election
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Yet
another "historic day" will dawn in war-weary Iraq on January 30. As
interim prime minister Iyad Allawi told Iraqi television viewers, "For
almost the first time since the creation of Iraq, Iraqis will participate in
choosing their representatives in complete freedom." Not to be outdone,
President George W. Bush used the first news conference of his second term
to herald the "grand moment in Iraqi history" that the world will witness
when Iraqis go to the polls.
The U.S.-sponsored state-building process in Iraq has seen a succession of
days pronounced historic by the Bush administration and its favored Iraqi
politicians. The capture of Saddam Hussein on December 16, 2003 was to have
scotched the snake of the Iraqi insurgency. The promulgation of the
Transitional Administrative Law on March 8, 2004 was to have supplied Iraq
with a "draft constitution" respected as such by the population. The
"handover of sovereignty" on June 28, 2004 was to have reassured Iraqis
about the long-term intentions of the occupying superpower, and, again,
diminished the ferocity of the insurgency. In all cases, the expectations
attached to these "historic days" had more to do with managing Iraqi and
American public opinion than with political realities.
The national elections scheduled for January 30 are indeed a watershed
moment for Iraq, and the palpable enthusiasm of prospective Iraqi voters in
the face of equally palpable physical danger is not to be dismissed. Yet
ambient assumptions about the significance of the contests are facile and
faith-based. For the rhetorical purposes of the White House, the elections
are an end in themselves, another "firmly planted flag of liberty" left on a
"forward march of freedom" routed through Kabul, Ramallah and -- perhaps --
parts unknown. On the ground in Iraq, the elections will influence but not
decide the crucial debates swirling around the country's political future,
chiefly the shape of the permanent constitution and the duration of the
U.S.-led occupation.
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NO PEACE, NO PROBLEM
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Confident
of their eventual success, U.S. officials and outside supporters of
the U.S. project in Iraq stick to the narrative of "historic days." They
remind critics and skeptics that while no landmark in the state-building
process has ushered in the promised peace and stability, neither has the
process been derailed. The January 30 elections will proceed, despite
multiple calls for postponement, as stipulated by the Transitional
Administrative Law and UN Security Council Resolution 1546. Several
prominent Iraqi politicians who had called for delaying the polls, notably
former foreign minister Adnan Pachachi, backed by the leaders of the two
main Kurdish parties, threw their hats into the ring once they realized that
Bush and Allawi were determined to hold the elections on schedule. The
interim president, Ghazi al-Yawir, Allawi's defense minister, Hazem Shaalan,
and the Iraqi ambassador to the UN all suggested delays, only to be
overruled.
U.S. confidence about Iraq reflects the Bush foreign policy team's belief in
the self-evident moral force of U.S. "leadership" and their colder calculation
that where the U.S. leads, most weaker parties will follow. At a Brookings
Institution forum on January 25, neo-conservative pundit William Kristol
expressed this mindset best when he noted, a bit smugly, that in
Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq elections are happening because those
territories are occupied.
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THE DISENFRANCHISED
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The
U.S.-sponsored process has indeed continued apace, but the end of the
process is not necessarily a secure and stable Iraq. In their zeal to remake
the Iraqi political order, particularly with the blanket de-Baathification
policy, the U.S. and its Iraqi proxies effectively disenfranchised swathes of
the urban, mostly secular professional and managerial classes who worked in
the old Iraqi state. Charges of nepotism and sectarian, ethnic or tribal
hiring bias have dogged the rebuilding of the ministries since the handover
of "sovereignty." The U.S. set the stage for these suspicions by agreeing with
its Iraqi proxies to allocate seats in the Iraqi Governing Council and
cabinet in the interim government according to a strict sectarian-ethnic
calculus.
Meanwhile, with their ham-fisted counter-insurgency tactics, the U.S. and its
allies added fuel to the flames by severely alienating a large percentage of
the Sunni Arab population. Beginning with the coinage of the term "Sunni
triangle" to describe the initial stronghold of the insurgency, the U.S. has
steadily convinced Sunni Arabs who have no relation to the rebellion that
they are the enemy. "They've equated Sunnis with terrorists," one Sunni Arab
in Baghdad told the Washington Times. "Under Saddam, one of out 1,000 Iraqis
was a salafi. Now it's 100 out of 1,000, all because of the Americans." The
Bush administration has never grasped the import of the indiscriminate
detentions of thousands of Iraqis -- many of them picked up in sweeps
through the "Sunni triangle" -- that exploded into global consciousness with
the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal. The International Red Cross estimated
that 70-90 percent of the detainees were innocent of any involvement in the
insurgency. As January 30 approaches, Abu Ghraib is reportedly full once
more, again as a result of sweeps in predominantly Sunni Arab areas.
Because their community has borne the brunt of the war after the "major
combat," Sunni Arab figures have been most visible in their denunciation of
the January 30 exercise as illegitimate. The Iraqi Islamic Party, whose
leader served in the Iraqi Governing Council when Paul Bremer was U.S.
proconsul, has called for a boycott. Another important Islamist grouping,
the Muslim Scholars' Board, has done the same, along with some small
independent nationalist parties. The boycotters have resisted pressure to
reverse their stance, with Harith al-Dhari, head of the Muslim Scholars'
Board, rebuffing the personal overtures of U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte.
The boycott calls appear to be effective. Only 32 percent of Sunni Arab
respondents in a survey run by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence
and Research (INR) in mid-December 2004 said they were "very likely" to
vote. A slightly more recent poll conducted by the Washington-based
International Republican Institute put the number at "nearly 50 percent,"
but no one expects the Sunni Arab turnout to be close to the 80 percent rate
predicted, perhaps optimistically, in predominantly Shiite Arab and Kurdish
areas. The threat of election-day violence is a major reason for the
difference, but not the only one: the INR poll found that just 12 percent of
Sunni Arab respondents believe the elections will be "completely free and
fair," as opposed to 52 percent of the Arab Shia.
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RISKY BET
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Dhari
and other Muslim Scholars' Board leaders are always quick to point to
their loose coalition with Shiite clerics and secular nationalist groupings
to bolster their nationalist credentials. The election results may shed some
light on the strength of these claims, though it will likely be impossible
to know if it was fear, an anti-occupation boycott, doubts about the
fairness of the election or all of the above that kept voters away.
Showing up to vote could be fatal for inhabitants of Mosul and other towns
where guerrillas control entire neighborhoods. The stock line of Bush and
Allawi that the specter of election-day violence threatens to depress
turnout in "only 14 of 18 provinces" is misleading, however. As intelligence
data analyzed for the New York Times shows, it is Baghdad -- Iraq's
sprawling, populous capital -- where the most "insurgent attacks" occurred
in the 30 days ending January 22. The heavily Sunni Arab province of Salah
al-Din north of Baghdad has seen the second highest number of attacks, but
the incidents have been spread throughout the country. Two thirds of Iraqis
live in a district that has witnessed an attack over the past month. These
numbers illustrate why the persistent description of the "Sunni triangle" as
"the heart of the insurgency" has alienated many Sunni Arabs.
The boycotters' strategy hinges on their bet that the U.S.-backed political
transition will founder on the rocks of Iraqi hostility to occupation and
frustrated Iraqi yearning for normalcy. A poll commissioned by the outgoing
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in mid-May 2004 found 1 percent of
respondents who felt that "coalition forces" were the factor that
"contributed most to their security." Fifty-five percent said they would
feel safer if the U.S.-led forces left. Those numbers help to explain why the
election boycotters -- despite the potential costs to their political
fortunes -- chose to dissociate themselves from an election process partly
designed by the occupying power. Any Iraqi government brought to power
through such a process, they feel, cannot escape the taint of association
with the occupier. The new government will also inherit the nagging
shortages of jobs, electricity, fuel and pure water, and the overabundance
of violent crime, that have afflicted Iraqi cities since the fall of Saddam
Hussein's regime. These factors also appear to have pushed Shiite cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr, who commands a following among the poor and working-class
Shia of East Baghdad, to issue this statement: "I personally will stay away
[from the elections] until the occupiers stay away from them, and until our
beloved Sunnis participate in them. Otherwise they will lack legitimacy and
democracy."
Given the enormous toll in Iraqi lives exacted by insurgent attacks,
however, the boycotters' and abstainers' bet is risky. The May 2004 CPA poll
finding 55 percent of Iraqis effectively blaming the U.S. occupation for the
country's lack of security did not find a majority calling for an immediate
withdrawal of U.S. troops. Attitudes toward the occupation retain this seeming
schizophrenia, in part because of deep popular distrust of the motivations
of ancien regime and salafi elements in the insurgency, not to mention
revulsion at some of the guerrillas' tactics. Many Iraqis also fear that the
new Iraqi security forces cannot protect them, and that party militias might
fill the vacuum if U.S. and other foreign troops left the country.
Time will tell if the boycotters calculated correctly that the new Iraqi
government will soon lose the confidence of the people and that, in the long
run, their non-participation will win them the reputation they seek as the
genuine nationalist opposition. The boycotters' behavior bespeaks their own
uncertainty. The Iraqi Islamist Party called for a boycott after ballots
were printed listing its slate of candidates, and Sadrist candidates remain
on the ballot even as allied clerics in East Baghdad tell Sadr's followers
they "should instead seek God's help in meeting their demands." It is clear,
however, that the differential degrees of trust in the elections reflect a
sectarian rift in the country. The U.S.-backed state-building process has
already widened this divide. The elections could widen the gap further,
particularly if the boycotters were wrong about the new government's popular
support.
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INFLATED ISLAMIST STRENGTH?
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Sectarian
politics, or more accurately perceptions thereof, are perhaps the
biggest reason why the election results are in fact crucial for Iraq's
political future. For the majority Shiite Arab population, the elections are
an opportunity to dominate the assembly that will fill the ministries and
appoint a committee to draft the permanent constitution. Most Western
commentary assumes that the 228-member list of the United Iraqi Alliance
(UIA), put together by a committee linked to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani,
will emerge with a majority of seats. While Sistani has not explicitly
endorsed the list, some of his top lieutenants are prominent UIA candidates
and he has issued a fatwa (religious injunction) instructing all Iraqis that
voting is a religious duty. Those who assume that Shiites will vote solely
along sectarian lines put two and two together. A corollary assumption is
that a UIA victory will empower the Shiite religious parties, the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Da'wa, whose delegates would
then seek to enshrine Islam as the sole source of legislation under the
permanent constitution or bow to the wishes of Tehran about Iraqi foreign
policy. None of these assumptions are necessarily warranted.
Rampant insecurity, together with the Sunni Arab and nationalist boycott,
certainly favors the chances of the UIA to win big. But the Arab Shia may
surprise observers with their electoral preferences. Local candidates
unaffiliated with the UIA may capitalize on long-standing ambivalence toward
the formerly exiled religious parties in towns like Basra, Dhi Qar, Kut and
even Najaf. In particular, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq (SCIRI) and its Badr Brigades are regarded by many Shia as too close to
Iran. In Basra, as Anthony Shadid reported in the January 25 Washington
Post, residents are disaffected after over a year of SCIRI government. The
Islamists have been no better at restoring basic services on the municipal
level than the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bechtel at the national level.
The religious parties' true strength has been inflated in the eyes of
observers by dint of their proximity to power. Local politicians and the
secular lists of Allawi, Iraqi Communist Party head Hamid Majid Musa and
others could mount a strong challenge to the UIA, in majority-Shiite and
mixed areas alike, on election day. Commentators will be tempted to portray
a good showing for Allawi's list as evidence that Iraqis prefer a strongman,
but it would just as credibly be evidence that secular-minded urbanites, of
all religions, dislike the Islamists. Even though Allawi's slate is
exile-dominated, many urban dwellers who suffered through the sanctions
decade only to be "de-Baathified" after the invasion may consider the
interim prime minister the least of the evils on offer.
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STRATEGIC DILEMMAS
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Adding
the probable 15-20 percent vote for the Kurdish parties' list to the
split Shiite vote produces a diverse National Assembly and cabinet -- one
whose strategic dilemmas will be quite similar to those Allawi has faced.
Should the UIA get its hoped-for sweep, whether due to low urban turnout or
because secular Shiite voters are persuaded by its pledge not to appoint
clerics to ministerial posts, it will probably gravitate toward pragmatism
in power.
Already one salient difference between Allawi and the UIA leadership has
evaporated. The interim prime minister is portrayed as Negroponte's puppet
when he issues statements to the effect that a U.S. troop withdrawal would be
"both reckless and dangerous." But in the week before the elections, the UIA
quietly changed the second plank in its platform from "setting a timetable
for the withdrawal of multinational forces from Iraq" to "the Iraq we want
is capable of protecting its borders and security without depending on
foreign forces." To date, the U.S. has built in Iraq a fragile state whose
stewards are afraid they cannot survive in power without an American
praetorian guard. The U.S. military, which recently announced operational
plans to maintain well over 100,000 soldiers in Iraq through the end of
2006, shares their trepidation.
Indeed, the Bush administration has dimmed the sunny predictions of 2004
that the elections will dampen the ongoing guerrilla war. Though true
believers inside and outside the administration continue to insist that the
U.S. faces an "anti-Iraqi insurgency, not an anti-American one," the reality
is more complex. Ancien regime and salafi elements swim in a sea of
nationalism, anger at maltreatment by U.S. forces and profound alienation from
the post-Saddam political order, as well as joblessness and the breakdown of
basic law and order. In themselves, the January 30 elections offer no
solution to this political crisis.
Nor do they bridge the sectarian divide exacerbated by the guerrillas'
execution-style killings of mostly Shiite police recruits and the
corresponding Shiite quiet during the devastating U.S. assault on Falluja in
November 2004. To the extent that "successful" elections are presented as a
victory for the Arab Shia at the expense of Sunni Arab, Islamist and
nationalist abstainers, the contests could inflame rather than heal
sectarian tensions, with a resented U.S. occupying force right in the middle.
In any event, the multiple fault lines in the Iraqi polity heading into
elections will be highlighted anew during the next and more important phase
in the U.S.-sponsored state-building process: the drafting of a permanent
constitution. One modestly hopeful sign is that the Iraqi Islamist Party and
the Muslim Scholars' Board, along with secular nationalist abstainers from
the elections, have signaled their desire to participate in constitutional
deliberations. The U.S. and their Iraqi proxies have thus far treated politics
as a zero-sum game for competing communal interests -- a source of confusion
and anxiety for the many Iraqis seeking a politics of national unity. Should
constitutional talks collapse into similar infighting, January 30 will go
the way of the previous "historic days" in the post-Saddam calendar. Iraqis,
at long last, deserve much better.
Reprinted by special permission of the
Middle East Reasearch and Information Project (MERIP)
Chris Toensing is editor of Middle East Report
Comments? Send a letter to the editor.Albion Monitor
January 27, 2005 (http://www.albionmonitor.com)All Rights Reserved. Contact rights@monitor.net for permission to use in any format. |
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