From Truthout:
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.
Go to Original
Iraqi President Says Most Iraqis Won't Vote
Reuters
Saturday 29 January 2005
BAGHDAD - Iraq's president said on Saturday he expected
violence to deter the majority of Iraqis from voting in Sunday's
landmark election.
"What we hope is that most Iraqis will take part in the
election, but we know that the majority will not because of the
security situation," President Ghazi al-Yawar told reporters.
"The majority will decide not to take part, not because they
are boycotting the election, but because of the security situation,"
said Yawar, a Sunni Muslim Arab.
There has been a sharp increase in violence, including car
bomb blasts, mortar attacks and shootings, this week as polling day
approaches. The U.S. military said attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops
had trebled in the past seven days.
Yawar's remarks contrasted with an appeal by interim Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi for all Iraqis to defy violence and vote.
"I ask them to participate in the elections whether they are
inside or outside Iraq: Sunnis, Shi'ites, Kurds, Christians," Allawi
told Sky television in Baghdad. An estimated 14 million Iraqis are
eligible to vote on Sunday in Iraq's first multi-party election since
the 1950s.
Insurgent groups, particularly the organization headed by
Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have vowed to disrupt voting
and stop people from going to polling centers.
Around 6,000 polling centers have been set up around Iraq,
but the location of many is being kept secret until the last minute
to minimize the risk that they will be bombed.
Turnout is expected to be low in Sunni Arab areas, where the
insurgency gripping Iraq for nearly two years is focused. The
government has said it hopes for a national turnout of around 50
percent.
Yawar, whose position is mainly ceremonial, also said any
political process that did not include Sunnis, Kurds and Shi'ites,
Iraq's three main religious and ethnic groups, would be invalid.
Shi'ites, who make up about 60 percent of Iraq's population
and were oppressed during Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s rule,
are widely expected to dominate the polls.
Go to Original
Survey Finds Deep Divisions in Iraq
Zogby International | Press Release
Friday 28 January 2005
Sunni Arabs overwhelmingly reject Sunday elections; majority
of Sunnis, Shiites favor U.S. Withdrawal, New Abu Dhabi TV / Zogby
poll reveals.
Iraq's Sunday elections will be held against a backdrop of
deep division between the country's ethnic groups, with an
overwhelming majority of Sunni Arabs refusing to vote in the January
30 elections, a new Abu Dhabi TV/Zogby International poll finds. The
poll also finds majorities of both Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis calling
for a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces from their soil. Zogby
International polled 805 Iraqi adults from January 19 to 23, 2005 on
behalf of television broadcaster Abu Dhabi TV. The margin of error is
+/- 3.6 percentage points.
The survey, to be released at 5 p.m. ET on Abu Dhabi
Television, found three-quarters (76%) of Sunni Arabs say they
definitely will not vote in the January 30 elections, while just 9%
say they are likely to vote. A majority of Shiites (80%) say they are
likely to vote or definitely will vote, as are a smaller majority of
Kurds (57%).
Majorities of both Sunni Arabs (82%) and Shiites (69%) also
favor U.S. forces withdrawing either immediately or after an elected
government is in place.
The poll also found that of Iraq's ethnic and religious
groups, only the Kurds believe the U.S. will help Iraq over the next
five years, while half (49%) of Shiites and a majority (64%) of Sunni
Arabs believe the U.S. will hurt Iraq.
There are deep divisions that exist, "divisions that are so
deep and pronounced that this election, instead of bringing people
together, may very well tear them apart," said Dr. James Zogby, an
analyst for Zogby International and host of Abu Dhabi TV's
"Viewpoint". The closest thing to this in America isn't red and blue
states. It's probably the election of 1860.
The poll also finds that, while a majority of Shiites (84%)
and Kurds (64%) wish to hold the elections Sunday as planned, Sunni
Arabs overwhelmingly favor delaying the vote (62%).
What's truly alarming isn't the number of Sunni Arabs who
want to delay Sunday's vote, Zogby said. What's alarming is that more
than half, 53% in this survey, believe that ongoing attacks in Iraq
are a legitimate form of resistance. With this group already
boycotting the election, this makes for a very violent combination.
Only the Kurds seem to favor a continued U.S. presence, and
are likely to outright reject violent resistance, Zogby added.
The survey also asked Iraqis which nations they believed it
was possible to foster improved relations with. While a majority of
Iraqis believe relations can be improved between Iraq and neighbors
Kuwait, Turkey, and Iran, all ethnic and religious groups
overwhelmingly rejected improving relations with the State of Israel.
Iraqis do not desire to remake their country in the image of
neighboring Iran, however. Three-in-five (59%) favor a system where
citizens are allowed to practice their own religion, while
one-in-three (34%) would prefer an Islamic government.
The survey was conducted throughout Iraq, including the
cities of Baghdad, Hilla, Karbala and Kirkuk, as well as the
Mohafazat (provinces) of Diala and Anbar.
Abu Dhabi TV/Zogby International conducted interviews of 805
Iraqis. Field work dates were from 1/19/05 thru 1/23/05. The margin
of error is +/- 3.6 percentage points. Slight weights were added to
education, ethnicity, religion, gender to more accurately reflect the
population. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups.
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