The Iraq Election:
A Travesty
Of Democracy
By James Cogan
28 January 2005
World
Socialist Website
The
January 30 elections in Iraq have nothing to do with democracy. To claim
a free election can take place in Iraq is no different to
asserting that the French, Yugoslav or Greek people could have elected
a representative government in 1942 while living under the jackboot
of Nazi rule.
Over the past two
years, Iraq has been subjected to invasion and a military occupation
that has plunged the country into a social and political catastrophe.
The Bush administration has brought the Iraqi people 50 to 70 percent
unemployment, food and fuel shortages, a breakdown in essential services
such as electricity, a collapse in basic law-and-order and dictatorial
forms of rule little changed from those of the Baathist regime.
The US invasion
of 2003 was launched not to bring liberation, but to establish
US dominance over the countrys oil resources and transform it
into an American client state and military base in the Middle East.
Legitimate resistance to the countrys takeover is the main factor
behind the guerilla war that has been fought against US forces for close
to two years. Due to both Iraqs experience with colonialism in
the twentieth century and the reality of the occupation, millions of
Iraqis bitterly oppose the US presence in the country.
The US military
and its local collaborators are using the most brutal and indiscriminate
methods to crush the Iraqi resistance. Millions of Iraqis daily confront
the ordeal of vehicle or personal searches, restrictions on their movement
and, in many cities and towns, what amount to dusk-to-dawn curfews.
A large percentage of the Iraqi population have had family members or
close friends killed, wounded, detained or abused. Thousands have had
their homes and property destroyed or damaged.
The high point of
the US reign of terror, thus far, was the destruction of the city of
Fallujah in November, at the cost of an estimated 6,000 Iraqi lives.
Over 250,000 Fallujah residents have been turned into refugees. While
the exact number is unknown, over 100,000 Iraqis are estimated to have
died since the March 2003 invasion, as well as some 1,500 US and allied
occupation troops.
A Human Rights Watch
report issued this week provides a timely refutation of claims that
a democratic state is in the process of formation in Iraq. The report
explains that abuse of detainees by the [US-recruited] Iraqi police
and intelligence forces has become routine and commonplace. It
documents cases of arbitrary arrest and torture, and accuses the US
and British governments and the US-installed interim government of Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi of actively taking part, or being at
least complicit.
Over 160,000 US
and allied troops, along with thousands of locally recruited security
forces and more than 20,000 mercenariesdescribed as private
security contractorshave maintained martial law. The past
two weeks have been marked by an intensification of the repression,
aimed at ensuring the election takes place under conditions of intimidation
and fear. Curfews have been imposed across the country, the borders
will be closed for three days before the ballot and all vehicles banned
from the vicinity of polling booths. Last weekend, large-scale round-ups
of alleged resistance fighters took place in Mosul.
The American terror
has only served to heighten the determination of Iraqis to fight the
occupation. While the resistance is made up of disparate forces, including
reactionary Islamic extremist elements, those calling for armed struggle
to expel the invaders can justifiably claim to represent the views of
a clear majority of Iraqis. The predominantly Sunni Muslim regions of
western and central Iraq are effectively war zones. The relative calm
in the predominantly Shiite south has only prevailed since September,
when a truce ended the popular Shia uprising led by the Mahdi Army of
cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Given the sentiments
of the Iraqi population and the actual state of affairs in the country,
it is uncertain how many people will vote. The low turnout among émigré
Iraqis living in North America, Europe and other Middle Eastern countrieswho
were able to cast ballots over the past weektestifies to the broad
hostility, distrust and contempt toward the election. Just 237,000 émigrés
registered to vote in 14 countries, out of an estimated one million
eligible voters.
The Bush administration
claims that any abstention on Sunday will be due, not to political opposition,
but to fear of insurgent attacks on polling stations. This clearly did
not apply outside Iraq. The fact that before 2003 many émigrés
were under the illusion that a US invasion would bring democratic change
to Iraq makes their repudiation of the ballot all the more significant.
Pro-occupation candidates
A major factor in
the rejection of the election is the nature of the parties and candidates
who are contesting seats in the 275-member Transitional Assembly. Most
Iraqis know little about them and what they represent, except that they
have the following characteristic in common: they either directly supported
the US invasion or have accommodated themselves to the illegal occupation.
These tendencies have set themselves in direct opposition to the aspirations
of the Iraqi people and collaborated in their repression.
Iyad Allawi and
his US-funded Iraqi National Accord (INA) head an electoral alliance
known as the Iraqi List. The List has drawn together émigré
and local businessmen, tribal leaders and other sections of the Iraqi
elite who see collaboration with US imperialism as the means of securing
wealth, power and privilege. It appeals to those who believe that the
occupation cannot be defeated, by claiming Allawi is a strongman
who can work with the US military to crush the resistance and bring
stability.
The INA has received
tens of millions of dollars in financing and assistance from US National
Endowment for Democracy affiliates, the National Democratic Institute
for International Affairs and the International Republican Institute,
which have also been involved in financing pro-US candidates in Haiti,
the Ukraine and Venezuela.
The most prominent
electoral bloc is the Unified Iraqi Alliance (UIA). While it includes
Kurdish, Turkomen and Sunni groups, it is popularly known as the Shia
List. Its main components are the sectarian Shiite fundamentalist partiesthe
pro-Iranian Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)
and the Dawa Partywhich supported the US invasion. It also
includes the Iraqi National Congress of one-time US favourite, Ahmed
Chalabi, who played a key role in fabricating the claims that Iraq possessed
weapons of mass destruction.
Under the Baathist
regime, which rested primarily on the Sunni-based elite, the Shiite
religious hierarchy was largely sidelined from political power and economic
privilege. The UIA aims to harness its influence among the majority
Shiite population to dominate the Transitional Assembly and assert the
interests of the Shiite establishment within a US-dominated Iraq. It
has been tacitly endorsed by Ali al-Sistani, the most senior Shiite
cleric in Iraq, who has issued a religious edict ordering Shiites to
vote.
As many as 60 percent
of Iraqis adhere, to some degree, to the Shiite branch of Islam. Even
among deeply religious Iraqi Shiites, however, support for Sistani and
the UIA is far from solid. Many Shiites regard Sistani and the parties
in the Shia List as traitors and American collaborators. None of these
parties, for example, supported the uprising led by Sadr last year,
even as the US military was bombarding the holy Shiite cities of Karbala
and Najaf. Moreover, millions of Shia Iraqis, particularly in the urban
working and middle class, have long secular traditions. They are hostile
to any suggestion of the clergy having a political role and deeply suspicious
of SCIRIs links to the Iranian theocracy.
Having endorsed
the US invasion, the parties of the UIA are cynically attempting to
adapt themselves to the anti-occupation sentiment. Its election platform
declares that a date should be set for the withdrawal of US troopsbut
only when Iraqi forces can replace them. While its platform declares
it wants Islamic law to be at centre of Iraqs legal code, UIA
spokesmen have been forced to issue repeated reassurances that it opposes
an Iranian-style state. Nevertheless, the popular distrust is such that
the UIAs claim to overwhelming Shiite support is not credible.
A representative of Moqtada al-Sadrs movement in Basra told the
New York Times: The other Shiite parties are taking positions
that are good for their interests but not for the people. Their actual
popularity with the people is almost zero.
In the three predominantly
Kurdish provinces of northern Iraq, the Kurdish bourgeois nationalist
parties, which have effectively ruled the region under US protection
since 1991, have formed a joint electoral bloc called the Kurdistan
Alliance. While not explicitly stated, its perspective is the separatist
agenda of gaining American backing for a de facto Kurdish state that
controls Iraqs lucrative northern oilfields. The Alliance is campaigning
for votes almost exclusively among Kurds. Its main platform is to incorporate
the region around the city of Kirkuk into the Kurdish sphere and limit
the influence of a central Iraqi government in the north.
Kurdish separatism
has the potential to trigger ethnic fighting throughout northern Iraq.
Clashes have erupted already over accusations that Kurdish militias
are attempting to ethnically cleanse Kirkuk of the Arab and Turkomen
communities. The International Crisis Group this week warned that tensions
between Kurdish armed groups and the non-Kurdish population in Kirkuk
have reached the point where it may take only a minor provocation
for open conflict to break out.
The electoral bloc
standing the largest slate of candidates is the Peoples Unionan
alliance headed by the Stalinist Iraqi Communist Party (ICP). Far from
being socialist or communist, the history of the ICP is one of political
subservience to various bourgeois regimes, including the Baathists.
The consequences for the Iraqi working class have invariably been disastrous.
The ICP and the
Peoples Union are cynically appealing to voters with calls for the removal
of US troops from Iraq and demands to assist Iraqs workers and
poor. But like the Shiite parties, the ICP slavishly supported and justified
the 2003 invasion. At the same time, it is using its lingering influence
among sections of the Iraqi working class to promote collaboration with
the occupation, denouncing all resistance as the work of Islamic
fascists.
The ICP sat on both
the interim government and its predecessor, the Governing Council. It
has endorsed policies that have produced mass unemployment and the US
agenda for the wholesale privatisation of the countrys major resourcesthe
oil industry in particular. The utter perfidy of the ICP is underscored
by the fact that it is most likely, in the elections aftermath,
to volunteer again to operate as a coalition partner for Allawis
INA.
Numerous other electoral
blocs are standing, ranging from advocates of bringing back the monarchy
to pro-occupation Sunni groups. In all, as many as 7,200 candidates,
organised into 83 electoral blocs, have placed themselves on the ballot.
In many areas of
the country, however, particularly where resistance is strongest, little
campaigning has been carried out. In four provinces in central and western
Iraq with a high proportion of Sunni Muslims, voter turnout may be as
low as 20 percent. The provinces include about half Iraqs population
and some of the countrys major citiesBaghdad province, with
the capital; Anbar province, with Ramadi and Fallujah; Ninevah; which
includes Mosul, the countrys third largest city; and Salahidin,
which is centred on Tikrit. In the predominantly Sunni suburbs of Baghdad,
just 24 percent of people interviewed in a recent poll said they intended
to vote.
Reflecting the mass
sentiment against the occupation, dozens of leading Sunni organisations,
Shiite leaders such as Sheik Jawad Khalissi, secular associations and
groups representing ethnic minorities called last year for a boycott
of the ballot.
The Association
of Muslim Scholars (AMS), consisting of some 3,000 Sunni clerics, as
well the largest Sunni-based party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, are advocating
a boycott on the principled grounds that no expression of the will of
the Iraqi people can take place under occupation. Both organisations
are insisting that the prerequisite for a genuinely democratic vote
is the withdrawal of all US and foreign troops.
Iraqi Islamic Party
secretary-general Tariq al-Hashimi spoke this month in support of his
partys boycott call. He stated: A situation marked by chaos
and violence does not favour holding elections that will create a national
assembly and even draw up a constitution. This assembly will not be
representative of all categories of Iraqi society.
A leading Sunni
cleric, Mahmud al-Sumaydi, told his congregation in Baghdad in mid-January:
Everyone looks forward to the day when all Iraqis come out to
vote, for elections are an Iraqi matter. But the elections cannot be
held on the basis of the marginalisation of one community.
Sadrs movement,
while not formally associating with the boycott coalition, is linking
itself with the anti-election sentiment with the slogan no boycott,
no participation. Sadr stated this month: I personally will
stay away from the election until the occupiers stay away from them
and until our beloved Sunnis participate in them. Otherwise they will
lack legitimacy and democracy.
Renewed conflict
is inevitable between the occupation and the Shiite working class and
urban poor who form the social base of the Sadr movement. In the past
two weeks, the Sadrists have sought to keep their influence among the
increasingly restive urban poor by organising demonstrations in Baghdad,
Karbala, Amarra and other southern Shiite cities. Avoiding any direct
opposition to the election, the Sadrists insisted that action against
deteriorating social conditions was the main political issue, not the
January 30 ballot. The US response was a raid this week on a Sadr-aligned
Baghdad mosque and the arrest of dozens of his supporters.
Regardless of the
voter turnout, the Bush administration has made clear it will declare
the election result an endorsement by the Iraqi people of the US invasion
and occupation. Bush stated Thursday the vote would be a grand
moment in Iraqi history.
The reality is that
millions of Iraqis will refuse to vote on Sunday, not because of fear,
but because they understand the election to be a sham designed to give
a democratic gloss to an illegal neo-colonial occupation.
While paying lip-service to the Iraqi people electing their own government
and formulating a new constitution, the actual decisions about the countrys
future have already been made in Washington. At the top of the list
is the dismantling of state control of the oil industry and the establishment
of permanent US military bases.
This week, the Bush
administration has gone to Congress for a further $80 billion to fund
the occupation, while the Pentagon has declared that 120,000 US troops
will remain in Iraq for at least the next two years. The announcements,
made before Iraqis even vote, only underscore the fact that the election
will produce nothing more than a puppet regime and that the real decisions
about Iraqs future are being made in Washington.
The transitional
government that takes office in Baghdad in the aftermath of the ballot
should be rejected as illegitimate both in Iraq and throughout the world.