Another "Historic Day" Looms in Iraq
Chris Toensing
January 28, 2005

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 US-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 US-led occupation.

NO PEACE, NO PROBLEM

Confident of their eventual success, US officials and outside supporters of the US 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.

US confidence about Iraq reflects the Bush foreign policy team's belief in the self-evident moral force of US "leadership" and their colder calculation that where the US 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.

THE DISENFRANCHISED

The US-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 US 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 US 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 US 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 US 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 US 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 US 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.

RISKY BET

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 US-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 US-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 US occupation for the country's lack of security did not find a majority calling for an immediate withdrawal of US 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 US 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 US-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.

INFLATED ISLAMIST STRENGTH?

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 US 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.

STRATEGIC DILEMMAS

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 US 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 US has built in Iraq a fragile state whose stewards are afraid they cannot survive in power without an American praetorian guard. The US 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 US 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 US 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 US 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 US 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 US-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 US 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.

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For background, see Raad Alkadiri and Chris Toensing, "The Iraqi Governing Council's Sectarian Hue," Middle East Report Online, August 20, 2003.
www.merip.org/mero/mero082003.html

Additional background and context can be found in the fall 2004 issue of Middle East Report, "The Iraq Impasse." Order back issues of Middle East Report, or subscribe, via a secure server at MERIP's home page:
www.merip.org

Middle East Report Online is a free service of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP).

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IF YOU CAN’T VOTE OCCUPATION TROOPS OUT OF YOUR COUNTRY
THEN THE VOTE’S FOR THE OCCUPIER, NOT THE OCCUPIED

DEAR FELLOW ANTIWAR ACTIVISTS ACROSS THE COUNTRY:

Join a nationwide response to the “elections” in Iraq next
Sunday.

January 30 is a diversion - the real date is March 19 when
the world says “TROOPS OUT NOW”

The Troops Out Now Coalition encourages you to hold
protests and press conferences in your localities on
either Sunday Jan. 30, the day of the “elections” in Iraq,
or Monday, Jan. 31. The purpose for doing this is to keep
the antiwar movement and the rest of society focused on
the real need: the immediate and
unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. occupation troops
from Iraq.

The January 30 “elections” in Iraq is a project of the
Pentagon, and its purpose is to divert attention away from
the ongoing criminal occupation, as well as to
legitimatize the war, the occupation, the destruction of
cities like Falluja, and the deaths of upwards of one
hundred thousand Iraqis, as well
as fourteen hundred U.S. troops since the beginning of the
war.

The very notion that a country can hold a “democratic”
election while it is occupied by a hostile power bent on
imposing its designs on that country is profoundly
cynical, and an insult to the people everywhere.

And to this insult, Bush wants to add still another injury
by asking Congress to approve $80 billion more for his
war.

At the same time that Bush, Rumsfeld and Rice are putting
their spin on the “elections” this weekend, we need to be
calling attention to the need to strengthen the movement
to bring the troops home. Wherever we are, let’s tell the
world this weekend that the important date is not January 20, but March 19,
the second anniversary of the start of the war, when
people all across the U.S. and the world will take to the
streets once again to demand “Troops Out Now”.

--------------
Fear Shrouds Iraq's Elections in Secrecy, Confusion
By Lin Noueihed
Reuters

Monday 24 January 2005

Baghdad - Election centers have been bombed, candidates and electoral officials threatened and even killed. With only a week to go, intimidation is turning Iraq's landmark polls into a new kind of secret ballot.

Some Iraqis don't know who to vote for as most candidates keep their identities hidden, fearing for their lives.

Those who've made up their minds don't know where to cast their ballots, since the location of polling stations is being hushed up until the last minute to thwart election day attacks.

"We don't know these candidates, not their names, not their programs, not where they've come from. I will not vote for people I don't know," said Hussein Ali, a handyman in Baghdad.

"Until now, we don't know how to vote. I know there is an election center nearby, but I'm not sure exactly where it is."

Iraq's first national election since Saddam Hussein's fall will select a 275-seat National Assembly and 18 provincial assemblies.

But even Iraqis willing to brave bombs and bullets to vote may have little clue who they are electing until after the event, prompting veteran Iraqi politician Naseer Chaderji to label the Jan. 30 polls the first "secret elections" in history.

Voters will not be choosing individual politicians, but a list of candidates representing a party or coalition.

However threats mean most of the 7,500 candidates shy away from rallies. Only leading politicians dare appear on television.

In Iraq's third city of Mosul, the entire election staff resigned amid intimidation. Election officials in other cities have stepped down too. Seven have been killed, some dragged from their car in Baghdad in broad daylight and shot.

Salama al-Khafaji, openly running on the United Iraqi Alliance list, has survived three attempts on her life, the latest last week.

In the mixed Sunni and Shi'ite eastern province of Diyala, seven candidates have been killed in the past two months, said Governor Abdallah al-Jibouri, who is running in local polls and has himself survived 14 assassination attempts since mid-2003.

Of the 15 lists in Diyala's local election, only three blocs were campaigning openly and had released candidates' names.

"The other 12, we don't know who they are," Jibouri said. "The insurgents' aim is to use as much violence as they can to scare people into not going to the election."

Four candidates were invited to join a televised election debate on Diyala TV this month. Two people showed up - the governor and a Communist Party official who was not running.

Clandestine Campaigning

The secrecy shrouding Iraq's poll adds to confusion among a population that has almost no experience of choice in politics.

Under Saddam Hussein, Iraqis had two options - yes or no.

But the national ballot will offer a mind-boggling 111 lists, each comprising anywhere between 12 and 275 candidates.

A Dec. 26-Jan. 7 survey by the U.S.-funded International Republican Institute found that while 64.5 percent of Iraqis were very likely to vote, 38.4 percent thought they were electing a president not a national assembly.

"I know nothing about the people we are meant to elect. They don't tell us who they are or what their programs are," said Iman Jawdat, 41, a teacher from Basra in the south.

"Since I don't know how to vote or what will be on the ballot sheet, why should I risk the bombings?"

Racing to raise awareness, Iraq's Electoral Commission has taken out full-page ads in newspapers. Illustrated with cartoons, they show each step of the process from registration to voting to having their hands marked with indelible ink to prevent anyone voting twice.

"Iraqis haven't had real elections for over 30 years. Do you imagine we can raise full awareness in just six months?" said Commission official Farid Ayar.

Most campaigning takes the form of posters and banners bearing logos, slogans and list numbers, but no names.

Many urge Iraqis to vote for the United Iraqi Alliance, a 228-candidate Shi'ite list likely to dominate. Fewer than a fifth of its candidates have been named.

Slick commercials on satellite television urge Iraqis worried about security to vote for Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's list. Of its 260 candidates, 20 have publicized their names.

"They intentionally complicated the election so we don't understand and they can bring in pre-picked faces loyal to the Americans," said Jamal Ibrahim, 50, a shopkeeper from Falluja.

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This Election Will Change the World. But Not in the Way the Americans Imagined
By Robert Fisk
The Independent U.K.

Saturday 29 January 2005

Shias are about to inherit Iraq, but the election tomorrow that will bring them to power is creating deep fears among the Arab kings and dictators of the Middle East that their Sunni leadership is under threat.

America has insisted on these elections - which will produce a largely Shia parliament representing Iraq's largest religious community - because they are supposed to provide an exit strategy for embattled US forces, but they seem set to change the geopolitical map of the Arab world in ways the Americans could never have imagined. For George Bush and Tony Blair this is the law of unintended consequences writ large.

Amid curfews, frontier closures and country-wide travel restrictions, voting in Iraq will begin tomorrow under the threat of Osama bin Laden's ruling that the poll represents an "apostasy". Voting started among expatriate Iraqis yesterday in Britain, the US, Sweden, Syria and other countries, but the turnout was much smaller than expected.

The Americans have talked up the possibility of massive bloodshed tomorrow and US intelligence authorities have warned embassy staff in Baghdad that insurgents may have been "saving up" suicide bombers for mass attacks on polling stations.

But outside Iraq, Arab leaders are talking of a Shia "Crescent" that will run from Iran through Iraq to Lebanon via Syria, whose Alawite leadership forms a branch of Shia Islam. The underdogs of the Middle East, repressed under the Ottomans, the British and then the pro-Western dictators of the region, will be a new and potent political force.

While Shia political parties in Iraq have promised that they will not demand an Islamic republic - their speeches suggest that they have no desire to recreate the Iranian revolution in their country - their inevitable victory in an election that Iraq's Sunnis will largely boycott mean that this country will become the first Arab nation to be led by Shias.

On the surface, this may not be apparent; Iyad Allawi, the former CIA agent and current Shia "interim" Prime Minister, is widely tipped as the only viable choice for the next prime minister - but the kings and emirs of the Gulf are facing the prospect with trepidation.

In Bahrain, a Sunni monarchy rules over a Shia majority that staged a mini-insurrection in the 1990s. Saudi Arabia has long treated its Shia minority with suspicion and repression.

In the Arab world, they say that God favoured the Shia with oil. Shias live above the richest oil reserves in Saudi Arabia and upon some of the Kuwaiti oil fields. Apart from Mosul, Iraqi Shias live almost exclusively amid their own country's massive oil fields. Iran's oil wealth is controlled by the country's overwhelming Shia majority.

What does all this presage for the Sunni potentates of the Arabian peninsula? Iraq's new national assembly and the next interim government it selects will empower Shias throughout the region, inviting them to question why they too cannot be given a fair share of their country's decision-making.

The Americans originally feared that parliamentary elections in Iraq would create a Shia Islamic republic and made inevitable - and unnecessary - warnings to Iran not to interfere in Iraq. But now they are far more frightened that without elections the 60 per cent Shia community would join the Sunni insurgency.

Tomorrow's poll is thus, for the Americans, a means to an end, a way of claiming that - while Iraq may not have become the stable, liberal democracy they claimed they would create - it has started its journey on the way to Western-style freedom and that American forces can leave.

Few in Iraq believe that these elections will end the insurgency, let alone bring peace and stability. By holding the poll now - when the Shias, who are not fighting the Americans, are voting while the Sunnis, who are fighting the Americans, are not - the elections can only sharpen the divisions between the country's two largest communities.

While Washington had clearly not envisaged the results of its invasion in this way, its demand for "democracy" is now moving the tectonic plates of the Middle East in a new and uncertain direction. The Arab states outside the Shia "Crescent" fear Shia political power even more than they are frightened by genuine democracy.

No wonder, then, King Abdullah of Jordan is warning that this could destabilise the Gulf and pose a "challenge" to the United States. This may also account for the tolerant attitude of Jordan towards the insurgency, many of whose leaders freely cross the border with Iraq.

The American claim that they move secretly from Syria into Iraq appears largely false; the men who run the rebellion against US rule in Iraq are not likely to smuggle themselves across the Syrian-Iraqi desert when they can travel "legally" across the Jordanian border.

Tomorrow's election may be bloody. It may well produce a parliament so top-heavy with Shia candidates that the Americans will be tempted to "top up" the Sunni assembly members by choosing some of their own, who will inevitably be accused of collaboration. But it will establish Shia power in Iraq - and in the wider Arab world - for the first time since the great split between Sunnis and Shias that followed the death of the Prophet Muhammad.