Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://snipurl.com/cj57 Sunday, January 30, 2005 A Mixed Story By Juan Cole I'm just appalled by the cheerleading tone of US news coverage of the so-called elections in Iraq on Sunday. I said on television last week that this event is a "political earthquake" and "a historical first step" for Iraq. It is an event of the utmost importance, for Iraq, the Middle East, and the world. All the boosterism has a kernel of truth to it, of course. Iraqis hadn't been able to choose their leaders at all in recent decades, even by some strange process where they chose unknown leaders. But this process is not a model for anything, and would not willingly be imitated by anyone else in the region. The 1997 elections in Iran were much more democratic, as were the 2002 elections in Bahrain and Pakistan. Moreover, as Swopa rightly reminds us all, the Bush administration opposed one-person, one-vote elections of this sort. First they were going to turn Iraq over to Chalabi within six months. Then Bremer was going to be MacArthur in Baghdad for years. Then on November 15, 2003, Bremer announced a plan to have council-based elections in May of 2004. The US and the UK had somehow massaged into being provincial and municipal governing councils, the members of which were pro-American. Bremer was going to restrict the electorate to this small, elite group. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani immediately gave a fatwa denouncing this plan and demanding free elections mandated by a UN Security Council resolution. Bush was reportedly "extremely offended" at these two demands and opposed Sistani. Bremer got his appointed Interim Governing Council to go along in fighting Sistani. Sistani then brought thousands of protesters into the streets in January of 2004, demanding free elections. Soon thereafter, Bush caved and gave the ayatollah everything he demanded. Except that he was apparently afraid that open, non-manipulated elections in Iraq might become a factor in the US presidential campaign, so he got the elections postponed to January 2005. This enormous delay allowed the country to fall into much worse chaos, and Sistani is still bitter that the Americans didn't hold the elections last May. The US objected that they couldn't use UN food ration cards for registration, as Sistani suggested. But in the end that is exactly what they did. So if it had been up to Bush, Iraq would have been a soft dictatorship under Chalabi, or would have had stage-managed elections with an electorate consisting of a handful of pro-American notables. It was Sistani and the major Shiite parties that demanded free and open elections and a UNSC resolution. They did their job and got what they wanted. But the Americans have been unable to provide them the requisite security for truly aboveboard democratic elections. With all the hoopla, it is easy to forget that this was an extremely troubling and flawed "election." Iraq is an armed camp. There were troops and security checkpoints everywhere. Vehicle traffic was banned. The measures were successful in cutting down on car bombings that could have done massive damage. But even these Draconian steps did not prevent widespread attacks, which is not actually good news. There is every reason to think that when the vehicle traffic starts up again, so will the guerrilla insurgency. The Iraqis did not know the names of the candidates for whom they were supposedly voting. What kind of an election is anonymous! There were even some angry politicians late last week who found out they had been included on lists without their permission. Al-Zaman compared the election process to buying fruit wholesale and sight unseen. (This is the part of the process that I called a "joke," and I stand by that.) This thing was more like a referendum than an election. It was a referendum on which major party list associated with which major leader would lead parliament. Many of the voters came out to cast their ballots in the belief that it was the only way to regain enough sovereignty to get American troops back out of their country. The new parliament is unlikely to make such a demand immediately, because its members will be afraid of being killed by the Baath military. One fears a certain amount of resentment among the electorate when this reticence becomes clear. Iraq now faces many key issues that could tear the country apart, from the issues of Kirkuk and Mosul to that of religious law. James Zogby on Wolf Blitzer wisely warned the US public against another "Mission Accomplished" moment. Things may gradually get better, but this flawed "election" isn't a Mardi Gras for Americans and they'll regret it if that is the way they treat it. ------------- http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/020105F.shtml 1 February 2005 The Shiite Earthquake: With non-Sunni Muslims poised to take power for the first time, a new Iraq is being born. Will it survive its infancy? By Juan Cole The elections held on Jan. 30 in Iraq were deeply flawed as a democratic process, but they represent a political earthquake in Iraq and in the Middle East. The old Shiite seminary city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, appears poised to emerge as Iraq's second capital. For the first time in the Arab Middle East, a Shiite majority has come to power. A Shiite-dominated Parliament in Iraq challenges the implicit Sunni biases of Arab nationalism as it was formulated in Cairo and Algiers. And it will force Iraqis to deal straightforwardly with the multicultural character of their national society, something the pan-Arab Baath Party either papered over or actively attempted to erase. The road ahead is extremely dangerous: Overreaching or miscalculation by any of the involved parties could lead to a crisis, even to civil war. And America's role in the new Iraq is uncertain. Despite the loftiness of the political rhetoric and the courage and idealism of ordinary voters, the process was so marred by irregularities as sometimes to border on the absurd. The party lists were announced, but the actual candidates running on these lists had to remain anonymous because of security concerns. Known candidates received death threats and some assassination attempts were reported. So the voters selected lists by vague criteria such as their top leaders, who were known to the public, or general political orientation. Late in the election season, several politicians discovered that they had been listed without their permission and angrily demanded that the lists withdraw their names. So not only were the candidates mostly anonymous, but some persons were running without knowing it. These irregularities made the process less like an election (where there is lively campaigning by known candidates and issues can be debated in public) and more like a referendum among shadowy party lists. Nevertheless, enough was known about the major party and coalition lists to allow most Iraqis to make a decision. The United Iraqi Alliance was one of six major coalitions, grouping the most important of the Shiite religious parties. Shiites, although they constitute a majority of Iraqis, had never before had the prospect of real political power. Formed under the auspices of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who appointed a six-man negotiating committee in an attempt to unite the Shiite vote, the UIA used the ayatollah's image relentlessly in its campaign advertising. Religious Shiites got the word to vote for "No. 169," the number given the UIA on the ballot, and were carefully informed that it was represented by the symbol for a candle. Its constituent parties, such as the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Dawa Party, had in the past struggled to create an Islamic republic under Saddam's harsh repression. Most of them were more used to the technique of the clandestine cell and the paramilitary strike than to the hurly-burly of public campaigning. Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, an old asset of the American Central Intelligence Agency, led a list of ex-Baathists and secularists, both Shiite and Sunni. For those Iraqis who yearned for a strongman and valued law and order, Allawi's list had a certain appeal. In the north, the Kurdish parties formed a coalition that would attract virtually all of the Kurdish votes (they form about 15 percent of the Iraqi population). The Sunni Arab interim president, Ghazi al-Yawir, also formed a list, the "Iraqis," which had a decidedly secular cast. The turnout for the elections was higher than had been predicted by the Iraqi Electoral Commission, which had suggested that about half of the eligible voters, or 6 to 7 million, would come out. By the Monday after the Jan. 30 elections, the commission was estimating that about 8 million, or 57 percent of the eligible voters, had cast ballots. This estimate was not founded on any exact statistics, which had to await the counting of the ballots, but appears to have been little more than a guess. The commission's earliest guess was 72 percent, a clear error. In any case, it seems clear that Kurds and Shiites came out in great numbers, and both will do well in Parliament. As expected, voting was extremely light in the Sunni Arab areas. In Babil province, the trouble spots of Latifiyah and Mahmudiyah avoided violence, but few voters ventured out. The Arabs of Kirkuk, angry about a ruling allowing Kurds who used to reside in the city to vote in local elections, for the most part boycotted the process. In Mosul, the Arab quarters in the west saw firefights, though Kurds and Turkmens came out to vote in the eastern parts of the city. The four polling stations in Baghdad's Sunni Adhamiyah district did not even bother to open. Polling stations in Fallujah, Ramadi, Tikrit and Beiji were reported to be largely empty all day. In the sizable city of Ramadi, only 300 ballots were cast. The Sunni Arabs of Samarra, a city of some 200,000, cast only 1,400 ballots. The U.S. military had conducted operations in Samarra in October as a prelude for its November campaign against Fallujah, insisting that these military actions would prepare the way for successful elections in these cities. Most of Fallujah was in refugee camps by the time of the elections, and a sullen and angry Sunni Arab population largely rejected the polls as illegitimate because they were conducted under foreign military occupation. The threats brandished by the remnants of the Baath military, which is waging a guerrilla war against the United States and the new order, also took their toll. The guerrilla war being waged by some Sunni Arabs will not end with the elections. Their leadership is committed to destabilizing the country, pushing the Americans back out, and mounting yet another coup. The resistance consists largely of ex-Baath military along with some religious radicals (very few of whom are foreigners). They have enough munitions, money and know-how to fight for years, though in the end they will lose. The Sunni Arab populace continues largely to support the guerrillas. Over half in a recent poll said that attacks on the U.S. military in Iraq are legitimate. One disturbing trend in this election was the reinforcement of ethnic political identity. Iraq is a diverse society, but has most often sought forms of politics that deemphasize ethnicity. The price of such an approach, however, has often been authoritarian rule, as under the pan-Arab Baath Party that ruled from 1968 to 2003. In the north of Iraq, Kurds predominate. They do not speak Arabic as their mother tongue but rather an Indo-European language related to Persian (and distantly to English). Their Islam is mystical, traditional and somewhat rural, and most of them are not very interested in the minutiae of religious law. In recent years they have urbanized, as at Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah, but have developed a relatively liberal approach to Islam and politics. Kurds had long had separatist tendencies and faced severe repression from Baghdad. Under the American no-fly zone of the 1990s, they developed a Kurdistan Regional Assembly, virtually a semiautonomous government, and now fear being reintegrated into Arab Iraq as second-class citizens. The center-north of Iraq is dominated by Sunni Arabs. Arabs are simply populations that speak Arabic as their native language; they are not a racial category. Sunnis constitute some 90 percent of the Muslims in the world, but are a minority of 20 percent in Iraq. They honor four early "rightly guided" caliphs, or vicars, of the prophet Mohammed and lack a strict clerical hierarchy. Sunni reformists often resemble Protestants in rejecting saint-worship and mediation between God and human beings. East Baghdad and the south are Shiite Arab territory. Shiites honor the prophet's son-in-law and cousin, Ali, as the rightful successor of Mohammed, and invest the descendants of the prophet with special honor. The Iraqi Shiites do have a clerical hierarchy, at the pinnacle of which is the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the chief source of religious authority. In Iraq, the Sunni Arabs have traditionally predominated, and they have held political power until Jan. 30. During the past three centuries, a conversion movement among tribes in the south has produced a Shiite majority in Iraq. But the Shiites were most often poor, rural and relatively powerless. In the past half-century, many have moved to the cities, gained modern educations, and thrown up religious parties that aim to establish an Islamic republic with a Shiite cast. These parties joined together to form the United Iraqi Alliance. The UIA appears to have done extremely well in many Iraqi provinces and may well dominate the new Parliament. Because the Sunni Arabs did not come out in force to vote, the Shiite religious vote was magnified. That is, the electoral system is such that parties are seated in Parliament in accordance with their proportion of the national vote. If a party gets 10 percent, it will get about 27 seats. Because of the proportional nature of the election, if one group boycotts, the other groups do even better. The Shiite leadership will try to reach out to the Sunni Arab politicians, including them in the new government and in the constitution-drafting process. But since the Sunnis will have relatively few seats in Parliament, they may be even more sullen than before. Moreover, the politics of the UIA may not be to their liking. If the United Iraqi Alliance can form a government, probably in coalition with smaller parties, it will almost certainly move in two controversial directions. First, it will seek to implement religious law in the place of civil law for matters of personal status, and possibly in other realms, such as commerce. Islamic law has provisions for matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, alimony and so forth. Muslim fundamentalists throughout the world have adopted as one of their main political goals the repeal of civil laws that were most often adopted during or just after the age of European colonialism (roughly from the mid-1700s until the 1960s), and to replace them with a rigid and often medieval interpretation of Islamic law. This form of Islamic law (which in other hands can be dynamic and innovative) would typically deny divorced women any inheritance, give girls half the inheritance received by their brothers, restrict women's right to initiate divorce, restrict women's appearance in public, and make the testimony of women in court worth half that of a man. Middle-class Sunni Arabs and educated women, along with most Kurds, would likely strongly resist this initiative. The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, among the main Shiite parties, and Grand Ayatollah Sistani have already telegraphed their desire for this change. The other big political fight likely to ensue in the new, Shiite-dominated Parliament is over a centralized government versus a loose federation. The Kurds want what they call a "Canada" model, or perhaps one modeled on the Swiss cantons, in which the central government cedes many rights to the provinces. In American terms, the Kurds want "states' rights." Their maximal demands are the creation of a Kurdish super-province, Kurdistan, on an ethnic basis; the joining to Kurdistan of the oil-rich Kirkuk area; no federal troops on Kurdistan soil; and the retention of petroleum profits inside the Kurdistan province. In contrast, the Shiite political traditions in Iraq have all favored a strong central government, and Baghdad and Najaf are unlikely to want to give away so much to "Kurdistan." Since the Kurds will be well represented in Parliament, have a big, well-trained paramilitary, and have a veto over any new constitution, this particular struggle is one they will not concede without a fight. Although the vast majority of Iraqis want U.S. troops out of their country immediately or soon after Parliament is seated, according to a recent Zogby poll, it seems unlikely that the new political class will call for a precipitate U.S. withdrawal. They are still afraid of being assassinated by the guerrillas. Over time a split may develop between the rank and file, impatient for an American departure, and politicians who still depend on U.S. forces for their own protection. When Iraqi leaders feel strong enough to deal with the guerrillas by themselves, they will have a strong impetus to ask the United States to leave altogether. All Iraqis remember Abu Ghraib and other missteps of the U.S. military in their country. The new Iraq is forming, but its formation will involve struggle as well as compromise, strong stands as well as bargaining. How successful post-Saddam Iraq is depends very much on whether all groups are mature enough to make the necessary compromises and strike a balance between the religious and secular, and between the center and the provinces. Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and the author of "Sacred Space and Holy War" (IB Tauris, 2002). _____________________________ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject "subscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. E-mail accounts that become full, inactive or out of order for more than a few days will be deleted from this list. FAIR USE NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the information in this e-mail is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. I am making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for in the US Copyright Law.
