Iraqi elections solve little (21 January 2006)

Glen Rangwala looks at how the elections in Iraq are unlikely to bring national reconciliation, and how the US is deepening the hostility with every bomb dropped.

Published in Labour Left Briefing (February 2006)

All the talk in Iraq’s official political circles since the national parliamentary elections on 15th December has been about forming a government of national unity. This, we are told, would bring in the main political groups from all three major ethnic and sectarian groupings – the Kurds, the Sunni Arabs and the Shi‘a Arabs.

 The new parliament, elected for a four-year term, will have to make some crucial decisions, particularly given how many of the provisions of the constitution adopted in October 2005 were left entirely vague. There are four main hinges upon which Iraq’s future will turn. They are the formula by which oil revenues will be shared between the regions of the country, the role of Islam in the legal system, the de-Ba’thification process that has been commandeered by special interests and has excluded many Sunni Arabs from government jobs, and the presence of foreign troops. They are all, in a phrase repeated over 60 times in the constitution, left to be “stipulated by law” – that is, to be decided upon by the new parliament. The need for a legitimate Iraqi government, whose decisions are respected throughout the country, is more pressing now than ever.

How likely is it that such a government could emerge? The debate over the election results, finally released on 20th January, is not encouraging. Unlike the election almost a year ago, which the Sunni Arabs boycotted, the main parties from that community all took the tactical decision to participate this time. Immediately after election day, however, allegations of vote-rigging started to come in, resulting in demonstrations in which tens of thousands of people marched in late December against the alleged fraud. A international mission of experts was tasked with looking into the allegations and concluded on 19th January that “fraud and other violations did take place”.

The response of the election authorities to the corruption allegations was simply to cancel all the results from a total of 227 polling stations, most of which were in Baghdad: voters in those regions just lost their votes. The election authorities chose not to hold the elections again in those regions, a decision referred to by the international mission as “particularly regrettable”. Critics have claimed that those cancelled stations were disproportionately located in the areas of Baghdad in which Sunni Arabs are the majority, and therefore calls for a boycott by Sunni Arab representatives of the new parliament are gathering.

The election results themselves have been discouraging. Parties claiming to speak for one ethnic or sectarian community dominated the results. The only non-sectarian parties that won seats were the lists headed by the former CIA asset and first US-appointed prime minister Iyad Allawi, which won only 9% of the seats despite extensive backing from the US and UK governments, and by anti-occupation activist Salih al-Mutlak, which won 4%. Both groups are largely made up of members of the old guard who broke from Saddam just before the fall, and have taken opposing routes since then. The Shi‘a coalition, closely linked to Iran, won just short of half the seats in the new parliament. Together with the Kurdish coalition and smaller allied parties, they will make up 188 members of parliament, four more than the two-thirds threshold needed to appoint a president and declare a state of emergency. The consent of Sunni Arab and secular parties would not be necessary for either, deepening their sense of disenfranchisement.

The participation of Sunni Arab parties in the new government is even less likely given the new US strategy in the country. The Bush administration has made it clear that it wants to remove the bulk of its troops from the country by early next year, and seeks instead to replace its boots on the ground with bombs from its planes. Through most of 2004 and 2005, US planes were launching around 25 air strikes a month. From November, that figure jumped to 120, and to 150 in December alone. Just as Britain tried to crush the Kurdish and tribal revolts of 1920s Iraq through intensive RAF bombing raids, US military officials are arguing that their role now is to provide the airpower to complement Iraqi ground assaults on rebellious Sunni Arab areas.

The consequences of that strategy became all too apparent when a US fighter plane dropped a bomb on a residential house in the town of Baiji on 2nd January, incinerating the whole family of six. The US military released a statement admitting that they had hit the “wrong house”, but that this nonetheless had “successful effects against the insurgents”. Increasingly it is justifying its actions by claiming that it is acting with the permission of the Iraqi government. If anything is likely to drive the Sunni Arabs of Iraq away from accepting the new government, dispelling thoughts of national unity and perpetuating the brutal war, it is going to be this combination of wrong houses and American ‘successes’.

Author: Glen Rangwala

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