US-British
Diktat Makes Mockery Of “Democracy” In Iraq
By Peter Symonds
04 April 2006
World
Socialist Web
The
unannounced trip by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to Iraq over the past two days has again
underscored who is calling the shots in Iraq. For all of the Bush administration’s
empty rhetoric about “democracy” in Iraq, it is the White
House rather than the votes of Iraqis that will decide the shape of
the next government in Baghdad.
Rice and Straw flew into
Baghdad amid mounting frustration in the Bush administration that its
demands for “a national unity government” had gone unheeded.
More than three months after national elections in December, the various
political factions, all of which are beholden to Washington, have failed
to agree on a division of the spoils of office—in particular,
who will hold the key post of prime minister.
Much has been written in
the US and international press about the “political deadlock”
in Baghdad. However, the main responsibility rests with the Bush administration
and its man on the spot, US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, who
has been actively working to re-engineer the Iraqi regime to meet Washington’s
interests and changing needs.
The previous government headed
by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari rested on a bloc of Shiite fundamentalist
parties—the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA)—and Kurdish nationalists
or Kurdish Alliance (KA), which together had the necessary two-thirds
parliamentary vote to confirm a government. Having adopted an increasingly
menacing stance toward neighbouring Iran, the Bush administration is
determined not to have a regime in Baghdad dominated by the UIA, which
has religious and political links to Tehran.
The call for a “government
of national unity” is simply a convenient phrase for undercutting
the UIA, which has nearly half of the National Assembly seats, by insisting
that it share power with the KA, several Sunni-based parties and the
so-called secular grouping headed by former prime minister and longtime
US asset Iyad Allawi. By including Sunni parties with links to the anti-occupation
insurgency, Washington also hopes to split the armed resistance.
The Bush administration has
taken particular exception to Prime Minister Jaafari because his base
of support includes the movement headed by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr,
which fought bitter battles with the US military in 2004. Washington
is concerned not so much with Sadr, who has increasingly adapted himself
to the US occupation, but with his restive supporters among urban Shiite
poor in Baghdad and other cities. The Sadrists have also bitterly opposed
the formation of any government that includes Allawi, who gave the green
light for the US attacks on their militia in 2004.
Under the Iraqi constitution
drawn up with US assistance and approval, Jaafari has the strongest
claim to be the next prime minister. As the largest faction, the UIA
has the right to hold the post and, in February, voted narrowly to make
Jaafari its candidate. The decision was never accepted in Washington,
however, and Khalilzad has been working behind the scenes ever since
to block it.
Khalilzad’s plan was
straightforward: split the KA from the UIA by playing on Kurdish fears
that a Shiite-dominated government would prevent their ambitions to
include the oil-rich Kirkuk region in an autonomous Kurdish region in
northern Iraq. By achieving this first step, Khalilzad created a standoff—neither
the UIA nor their Kurdish and Sunni rivals has the necessary two thirds
of the assembly vote to confirm the next government.
The second step—to
force the UIA to ditch Jaafari as its candidate—proved more difficult.
Up to last week, the Shiite parties, fearful of a debilitating split
in their alliance, stood their ground. Now with the direct intervention
first of President Bush, and then of Rice and Straw, their opposition
appears to be crumbling.
At a press conference last
Wednesday, Bush, in his vulgar and ignorant fashion, bluntly told the
Iraqi factions that no more delays would be tolerated. “It’s
about time you get a unity government going. In other words, Americans
understand newcomers to the political arena, but pretty soon it’s
time to shut her down and get governing,” he declared.
Behind closed doors, the
message to “get governing” was even cruder. Reuters reported
last Tuesday that Bush had instructed Khalilzad to tell UIA leader Abdul
Aziz al-Hakim that Jaafari had to go. Senior Shiite politicians said
Hakim had been informed that the US president “doesn’t want,
doesn’t support, doesn’t accept” the retention of
Jaafari as prime minister.
Bush’s intervention
triggered a rupture in the UIA ranks. At Friday prayers, leading Shiite
cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Yacoubi issued a bitter denunciation of Khalilzad,
accusing him of offering support to the “political front of the
terrorists”—that is, the Sunni parties. Appealing to Washington,
he declared: “It should replace its ambassador to Iraq, if it
wants to protect itself from further failures.”
On Saturday, UIA figures
revealed that the alliance was deeply divided between Jaafari’s
backers and Hakim’s Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution
in Iraq (SCIRI). UIA parliamentarian Qassim Daoud publicly called on
Jaafari to go. On Sunday, as Rice and Straw arrived in Baghdad, senior
SCIRI parliamentarian Jalal al-Deen al-Saghir repeated the appeal: “I
call on Jaafari to step down. The candidate [for prime minister] ought
to secure a national consensus from other lists and also international
acceptance.”
While Rice and Straw are
slick operators, no amount of verbal sophistry could disguise the purpose
of their visit: to finish off Jaafari and lay down the law to the Iraqi
factions. While publicly denying that any preference for Iraqi prime
minister, Rice gave Jaafari what the media described as a “frosty”
reception and pointedly noted that he had failed to form government.
By contrast, Rice and Straw
gave a gushing welcome to Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi and were full
of praise for leading Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, regarded
as the UIA’s spiritual guide. Mahdi was SCIRI’s candidate
for prime minister in the UIA ballot in February, losing by one vote
to Jaafari. He is a trained economist, who is known for championing
pro-market reforms and privatisation.
At the concluding press conference
yesterday, Rice insisted that the “political vacuum” had
to be ended. “International partners, particularly the United
States and Great Britain... have a right to expect that this process
will keep moving forward,” she declared. She also insisted on
the reining in militias, saying “you have to have the state with
a monopoly on power”.
What was said in private
to the Iraqi leaders is perhaps best indicated by an editorial in the
New York Times on Sunday which gave its full support to the Bush administration’s
strong-arm tactics. Entitled “The Endgame in Iraq”, the
editorial sanctimoniously declared:
“Iraq is becoming a
country that America should be ashamed to support, let alone occupy.
The nation as a whole is sliding closer to open civil war. In its capital,
thugs kidnap and torture civilians with impunity, then murder them for
their religious beliefs. The rights of women are evaporating. The head
of the government is the ally of a radical anti-American cleric who
leads a powerful private militia that is behind much of the sectarian
terror.
“The Bush administration
will not acknowledge the desperate situation. But it is, at least, pushing
in the right direction, trying to mobilise all possible leverage in
a frantic effort to persuade the leading Shiite parties to embrace more
inclusive policies and support a broad based government. One vital goal
is to persuade the Shiites to abort their disastrous nomination of Prime
Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.”
Of course, while bewailing
the disaster in Iraq, the New York Times is covering up the crimes of
the real gangsters—the Bush administration. If the country is
sliding into civil war, Washington is directly responsible for creating
the situation by supporting communal and sectarian parties and organisations—each
of which has its own private militia and no compunction about using
them against their opponents. Some of the most notorious death squads
operate out of the Interior Ministry, were trained by US personnel and
answer to SCIRI—the party to which Washington appears to be now
leaning.
Far from ending the unfolding
civil war, the Bush administration’s efforts to impose a “government
of national unity” will simply recast the conflict. The US turn
against Jaafari and Sadr, taken together with Rice’s call for
the disarming of militia, could signal the beginning of a military offensive
directed against the Sadrist Mahdi Army in particular. The clearest
warning came just over a week ago.
On March 26, US and Iraqi
troops attacked a mosque in northeast Baghdad, a stronghold of the Mahdi
Army, and massacred up to 40 worshippers. Members of Jaafari’s
Dawa party were apparently among the dead. Neither he nor his interior
minister was informed of the raid. The attack could prove to be the
opening shot of a campaign by the US to move against Jaafari, Sadr and
his Madhi Army, not simply with verbal threats but with military means.
Whatever government emerges
out of the trip by Rice and Straw to Baghdad, one thing is certain:
it will have nothing whatsoever to do with the democratic aspirations
of the Iraqi people.