www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=7263
ZNet | Iraq An election that sharpened Iraq's fault lines by Dilip Hiro; TomDispatch; February 17, 2005 An apt headline, summarizing the results of the elections to Iraq's 275-representative-strong National Assembly on January 30, would be: "No surprises, no upsets." Given a large voter turnout in the Shiite majority areas and an even larger one in the Kurdistan region, it was widely predicted that the Shiite- and Kurdish-dominated alliances would top the polls. They did. As expected, due to the widespread boycott of the election, the only Sunni-dominated list that managed to win any seats garnered just five -- one-eleventh of the seats that the Sunnis should have won. Overall, the poll has exposed and sharpened the sectarian and ethnic fault lines in Iraqi society. At the same time, bolstered by a popular mandate, the new government seems set on a collision course with the American occupiers regarding the presence of foreign troops in Iraq. Each of the three major communities has come to nurture a different scenario for the post-Saddam era. Shorn of their long-held power, yet not reconciled to powerlessness, Sunni leaders are still in disarray, focusing merely on expelling the Americans from their country. For minority Kurds, ethnically and linguistically set apart from Arabs, post-Saddam Iraq holds the promise of a sovereign state of Kurdistan with the oil-rich city of Kirkuk as its capital. Driven by ethnic nationalism, the Kurds outdid the Shiites in enthusiasm for balloting. The 90%-plus voter turnout in the three Kurdish-dominated provinces as well as in the ethnically-mixed provinces of Nineveh (capital, Mosul) and Tamim (capital, Kirkuk) has, not surprisingly, strengthened the bargaining power of the Kurdish leaders. Their Kurdistan Alliance gained 25 extra seats at the expense of Sunni Arabs. This has raised tensions between the two communities, especially in Kirkuk and Mosul, the second largest Iraqi city. For the long-suppressed Shiite majority, the fall of Saddam's regime opened up for the first time the prospect of a popularly-elected, Shiite-led government in Iraq. Little wonder that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani declared that voting was a religious duty for believers. Accepting Sistani's fatwa (religious decree) unquestioningly, Shiite Muslims streamed to the polling centers on January 30. By backing the Sistani-inspired United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), they underscored the UIA's 22-point manifesto, where the demand for "a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq" is almost at the top. As it happens, this Shiite demand is also popular among Sunnis, from moderates to insurgents. It is up to the leaders of the better-organized Shiite community to find ways to end the alienation most Sunnis are feeling. Once the National Assembly has elected a Presidency Council --a President and two deputies -- it will elect an executive Prime Minister and a cabinet. A Shiite-majority government is mandated to demand immediate negotiations with the Bush administration on the modalities of withdrawal of the American and other foreign troops from Iraq. But it won't get far. "We will not set an artificial time table for leaving Iraq, because that would embolden the terrorists and make them believe they can wait us out," said President George W. Bush in his State of the Union speech on February 2. "We are in Iraq to achieve a result: a country that is democratic, representative of all its people, at peace with its neighbors, and able to defend itself." No prizes for guessing how long it will take to realize this over-ambitious set of Bush objectives. So there is a strong prospect of a crisis in Baghdad soon after the inauguration of an elected government. Besides administering Iraq, the new government will supervise the drafting of the permanent constitution by the National Assembly. Those charged with this task will face two major problems: defining the relationship between state and mosque and the degree of autonomy the Kurds are to receive (not to mention the boundaries of the region where it is to be exercised). The Role of Islam A year ago, when the interim constitution was being drafted by the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) under the supervision of Paul Bremer, the chief administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the issue of Islam and the state proved contentious. When IGC President Muhsin Abdul Hamid proposed making the Sharia "the primary basis" of law in the interim constitution, Bremer threatened to veto the document. (The Sharia is a compendium of the Koran and the Hadith, Sayings and Doings of Prophet Muhammad.) In the end, IGC members compromised by describing the Sharia as "a main source" of Iraqi legislation. Following the recent poll, Shiite religious leaders staked out a demand. On February 6, a spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Ishaq al Fayad, said, "All of the ulema [clergy] and marja [religious leaders], and the majority of the Iraqi people want the National Assembly to make Islam the [sole] source of legislation in the permanent constitution and to reject any law that is contrary to Islam." Sistani backed the statement. A week later, Hussein Shahristani, a leader of the UIA, the winner of 51% of the National Assembly seats, repeated the demand. While Shiites overwhelmingly favor specifying the Sharia as the sole source of legislation, the Kurdish leaders are not so keen. And the Americans are decidedly against it. But such a provision in the constitution could be an effective way to conciliate the Sunni militants who want "the flag of Islam to fly in Iraq." The second intractable problem concerns the Kurdish demand that the present boundaries of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region (KAR) consisting of three provinces -- formed during the Baathist rule in 1974 -- be expanded to include the oil-rich Tamim province. The fact that the Kurdistan Alliance secured 48% of the vote (due to the poll boycott by most Sunni Arabs and many Sunni Turkmen) in the simultaneously held elections to the region's Provincial Council has emboldened the Kurdish leaders. Any enlargement of the KAR will be opposed bitterly not only by local Arabs and Turkmen but also by neighboring Turkey. It fears that the oil revenue from Tamim will make the KAR economically vibrant and pave the way for the declaration of an independent Kurdistan. That in turn will inspire Turkish Kurds in southeastern Turkey to revive their armed struggle for independence. But, intoxicated by their electoral success, Iraqi Kurdish leaders are likely to turn a deaf ear to the concerns of Turkey or the fears of their ethnic Arab and Turkmen neighbors. So there is trouble brewing ahead within Iraq on ethnic lines -- Kurds versus Arabs and Turkmen -- that threatens to spill over into adjoining Turkey. In other words, Bush's much trumpeted electoral turning point is likely to bring in its train even more severe problems than existed before. Dilip Hiro is the author of Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After (Nation Books) and The Essential Middle East: A Comprehensive Guide (Carrol & Graf). *** CounterPunch - February 16, 2005 http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk02162005.html A Battlefield for the Wars of Others The Blame for Harari Hit Falls on Syria By ROBERT FISK The Independent They will bury Rafik Hariri today beside the city he rebuilt and next to the ruins of the Roman columns that made ancient Beirut famous. But his violent death on Monday has repercussions that go far further east than Lebanon or the Roman empire; for his killing is intimately linked to the insurgency in Iraq--and President Bush's belief that Syria is encouraging the guerrilla war against US troops in the country. American pressure on Syria to withdraw its military forces from Lebanon-- a cause that Mr Hariri, for quite different reasons, supported--is part of Washington's attempt to smother Syria's supposed sympathy for the bloody and increasingly efficient insurgency in Iraq. Last night, Washington announced the withdrawal of its ambassador to Damascus. It was the clearest sign so far that the US is going to accuse Syria of Mr Hariri's murder. Israel, predictably, chose the same moment to add new pre-conditions for any peace talks with Syria: expulsions of "terrorist headquarters" from Damascus, "allow the Lebanese Army to deploy its forces along the border with Israel", and "end the Syrian occupation of Lebanon". Israel, which occupied part of Lebanon for 24 years, then demanded the "expulsion" of Iranian Revolutionary Guards--who in reality left Lebanon more than 15 years ago. In harness with the Americans, the Israeli threat--especially the specious references to Iranians no longer in Lebanon--represents a grave deepening of the crisis. Hariri's burnt body--he died with six of his bodyguards, a paramedic who always accompanied him and at least seven civilians in a car bomb on Monday--will be laid to rest beside the monster--some say monstrous-- Sunni Muslim mosque he built in central Beirut, a building that dwarfs the surrounding Crusader churches and restored French mandate buildings. The tomb will be concreted into place within direct sight of the post-civil war Garden of Forgiveness and the restored but still bullet-riddled monument to the Lebanese martyrs of 1915 and 1916 who were hanged by the Ottoman Turks for demanding Lebanese independence. The Arab Muslim hero Saladin, who defeated the Crusaders, was buried in the Omayad mosque in Damascus. The billionaire tycoon Rafik Hariri will lie just outside the almost equally large--if much less beautiful--Mohamed Amin Mosque in Beirut. He who defeated the Middle Ages European empire in the Middle East gave inspiration to the family of the Arab whose business empire swamped Lebanon. But it is the American empire in the region which provided the setting for his death. Iyad Allawi, the former CIA and MI5 agent, appointed interim Prime Minister of Iraq by the United States, is himself half Lebanese, his mother coming from the esteemed Shia Muslim Osseiran family; Hariri knew him well. The former Lebanese prime minister also privately acknowledged that the United States was threatening sanctions against Syria--and attacking its military presence in Lebanon--because of its contention that Syria was helping the Iraqi insurgents. As usual, Lebanon had become a battlefield for other people's wars. And Hariri was a giant on that battlefield. He had many good friends in Syria but enemies too. And he understood all too well that the Bush administration wanted--in more than one country--to combine its "war on terror" with its campaign for "democracy" in the Middle East. If Iraq could be invaded for democracy while forming a front line in the "war on terror"--however delusionary this was--then Syria's presence in Lebanon seemed to mirror the same set of circumstances. Syria supported "terrorism", or at least, sponsored militants that were opposed to Israel, while occupying a neighbouring country, Lebanon, against international law. Once George Bush and President Jacques Chirac--Hariri's close personal friend--pushed through UN Security Council resolution 1559, calling for Syrian military withdrawal from Lebanon, Damascus found itself facing a miniature version of Saddam Hussein's predicament in 2003: submit to UN resolutions or else. Lebanon's forthcoming elections, in which anti-Syrian candidates fear that the pro- Syrian Lebanese government will gerrymander electoral boundaries to deprive them of parliamentary seats, dovetailed neatly with the US neoconservative demand for so-called democracy in the Arab world. That this also served Israel's interests--a substantially demilitarised Lebanon, the disarmament of the Hizbollah guerrilla movement and the humiliation of Syria--was never allowed to become part of the narrative. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Help save the life of a child. 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