Iraq Elections
Loom As Debacle
For US Occupation
By James Cogan
11 January 2005
World
Socialist Website
The
elections in occupied Iraq, scheduled to take place on January 30, are
looming as a political debacle for the Bush administration. The US objectives
are being thwarted by the mass opposition to the American presence in
the country and the entrenched insurgency against the occupation.
Under the stipulations
of the interim constitution imposed on Iraq by the US in March 2004,
the purpose of the coming ballot is the election of a Transitional National
Assembly, which will be responsible for drafting a new permanent Iraqi
constitution. The constitution is to be voted on by referendum no later
than October, followed by another election for the National Assembly
no later than December 2005.
Washingtons
ambition is to produce a puppet government with enough domestic and
international legitimacy to be able to sign off on the real aims of
the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. These include the establishment of
long-term military bases in the Iraq, from which the US can exert strategic
hegemony over the Middle East, and the sale to American corporate interests
of Iraqs state-owned oil industrywhich controls the worlds
second-largest oil reserves.
Far from winning
over the Iraqi people, however, each stage of the US occupation has
served to only heighten the resistance to the colonial agenda. Claims
that the invasion of Iraq is bringing democracy and liberation to the
Iraqi people are largely for propaganda purposes in the US itself. They
have little resonance in Iraq, where the US actions have produced a
nightmare of death and destruction.
As many as 100,000
Iraqis have been killed since the invasion. Iraqis have witnessed cities
like Karbala, Najaf and Fallujah being pounded into rubble. Two years
after the fall of Baghdad, the average household in the capital still
only gets three hours electricity per day, while fuel shortages are
continuous. Unemployment remains over 50 percent and infant mortality
has reached the level of poverty-stricken countries like Haiti. Tens
of thousands of Iraqis have been detained at various times and, in many
cases, subjected to abuse by American troops.
The real face of
the occupation is nowhere more clearly seen than in the city of Fallujah.
In November it was largely destroyed in order to crush the resistance
groups using the city as a base for armed struggle against the US forces
and the interim government. The US estimate of the Iraqi death toll
is over 1,600, though the Red Cross has estimated 6,000. More than 250,000
Fallujah citizens have been turned into refugees inside their own country.
Fallujans who have
returned to rebuild are being forced to live in a virtual prison camp
of checkpoints and curfews. Last weekend, as many as 30,000 Fallujans
demonstrated on the outskirts of the city on January 1. Children carried
placards reading Where is my father?, and Where is
my house, liberators? The impression of a New York Times correspondent
visiting Fallujah was that it would be years before the
largely deserted city returned to anything approaching normalcy.
The mass opposition
to the occupation guarantees there will be widespread abstention from
the January 30 ballot, denying the result any legitimacy. Millions of
Iraqis are expected to heed the call by 68 political parties and organisations
for a boycott, mainly on the grounds that no genuine election can be
held under the barrel of foreign guns and under conditions of a guerilla
war. The most prominent advocates of the boycott are the main Sunni
Muslim religious body, the Association of Muslim Scholars, and the largest
Sunni political party, the Iraq Islamic Party. Other organisations include
womens groups, ethnic Turkomen and Christian associations, and
the Workers Communist Party of Iraq.
A US State Department
survey conducted in Iraqi cities in December found that only 32 percent
of Sunnis considered it very likely that they would vote,
and only 12 percent stated that they viewed the election as legitimate.
Among Iraqs
Shiite majoritywho comprise close to 60 percent of the population87
percent told the survey that they felt it very likely they
would vote. The reason, however, was not sympathy with the US or the
occupation, but the stance of Ali al-Sistani, the leading Shiite cleric.
Sistani has endorsed a Shiite electoral bloc with the aim of winning
a majority and establishing the domination of the Shia religious establishment
over the transitional assembly. The weakness of the US position is underscored
by the fact 75 percent of surveyed Shiites stated they would not vote
if Sistani joined the call for a boycott.
The Shiite supporters
of cleric Moqtada al-Sadrwho led an armed uprising against the
US forces last April and Augustare also expected to vote in large
numbers, especially in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City. Sadr is believed
to be tacitly supporting a large slate of candidates in order to get
a number of his loyalists elected into the assembly.
Even with Sistanis
and Sadrs blessings, the turnout among Shiites is unlikely to
reach anywhere near the level suggested in the December survey. Millions
of Iraqis across the country will not vote due to likelihood of widespread
attacks on US troops and pro-US Iraqi security forces stationed at the
expected 9,000 polling stations. A number of shadowy resistance groups
have issued warnings that every polling booth will be considered a target.
The head of the
interim governments intelligence agency, General Mohammed Abdullah
Shahwani, this week estimated that the insurgency involved at least
40,000 fulltime fighters and as many as 200,000 active sympathisers,
informants and part-time guerillas. The resistance effectively controls
large areas of territory, including suburbs of Baghdad, Tikrit and the
northern city of Mosul, and the province of Anbar, which includes Fallujah.
One out of every four US convoys in the Anbar area is ambushed.
Explaining the reasons
for the resistances pervasive support, Shahwani stated: People
are fed up with no improvement. People are fed up with no security,
no electricity. People feel they have to do something.
The number of US
troops in Iraq has been increased from 138,000 to 150,000 for the elections.
As many as 35,000 are positioned in Baghdad alone, working with thousands
of US-recruited and trained Iraqi army personnel and police. Despite
this, suicide bombings, roadside bombings, mortar strikes, ambushes
and assassinations have sharply increased over the past several months.
According to figures compiled by the Brookings Institute, 779 US-recruited
Iraqi security personnel were killed in October alone, compared with
721 in the entire preceding nine months. In the first week of January
over 100 police, interim government soldiers, foreign security contractors,
officials and representatives of pro-occupation political parties were
killed, with hundreds more wounded.
In one of the most
graphic examples of the occupations vulnerability, guerillas ambushed
the governor of Baghdad province in the capitals outer suburbs
this week, killing him and a number of his bodyguards. It appears that
the resistance fighters knew what roads the governor would be traveling
onfurther evidence that the insurgency has infiltrated the US-installed
state apparatus to the highest levels.
On Thursday, seven
American troops in a Bradley armoured fighting vehicle were killed by
a massive roadside bomb in Baghdads northwestern suburbs, taking
the US death toll for January thus far to 17. US casualties are now
consistently at least two dead and more than 20 wounded per day.
Amid the escalating
violence, a 52-year-old government employee told a correspondent for
Iraq Occupation Watch this month: I have four children and I fear
for their safety, so I will not go to vote. [T]he members of the parties
[participating in the election] are hidden in their headquarters surrounded
by concrete blocks... They are conducting their electoral campaign with
posters, placards and television advertisements only, but none of them
dares to appear among the people in the streets. They are afraid about
their own security.
A 31-year-old carpenter
declared: I am not crazy to go and vote. In addition to the bad
security situation that will prevent us going to vote, I dont
know the views of any of the candidates. A 64-year-old taxi driver
stated: Neither I nor anyone else in my family will go to vote.
It is better to stay at home that day because I think many explosions
will happen.
Reuters reported
yesterday that there are indications many Iraqis will leave the country
due to the lack of security, and many police may not show up for work
on election day. One officer stated: The elections will be the
worse days in this country, even with all the security preparations.
We will be the first targets and I will leave the country next week
for Syria. I dont want my children to live without a father and
that is what could happen if I stay and do my job.
Sabah Kadham, Iraqs
deputy interior minister, complained to the news service: If people
leave the country before the elections and policemen do the same, who
is going to vote in the coming polls?
A number of political
figures in Iraq, including the president Ghazi al-Yawar and defence
minister Hazem al-Shaalan, have publicly stated a delay in the elections
is necessary due to the likely low turnout in many parts of the country.
Shaalan told Agence France Presse the boycott calls would mean as much
as one half of (Iraqi) society would be absent from this election
and the citizens of Ramadi, Mosul, Tikrit and Diala would not take part.
Following a phone
discussion with Bush, however, Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has
ruled out any delay. Highlighting the fact that the elections have no
democratic content, Allawi this week extended until the end of February
the state of emergency he declared last November, under which his government
has imposed curfews and other martial law-style conditions in many areas
of the country.