The Iraqi elections took place Saturday. Have you heard anything about them? The media and blogs gave a collective yawn, but the reports that did get out are the standard nonsense about success in Iraq, democracy taking hold among the barbarians.
Unfortunately, contrary to the limited media coverage they have received, the elctions did not go well. Very distubing trends are emerging - a confrontation between the Kurds and the rest of Iraq, the growing power of Prime Minister Maliki, warnings of another rising among the Sunni tribes whom we armed as part of the Awakening movement. But talking about it might slow down the planned withdrawal by Obama, or make Bush look bad, so neither side wants to get into it. Isn't it great when you only have two sides to every issue, and then they are in agreement? That way you know all is well. But I want to talk about it. Do you?
The preliminary results of the Iraqi provincial elections for 2009 are in, though the official numbers may take weeks. These elections were for provincial councils which will then appoint governors of provinces, so they do not directly impact the national legislature or elect the national executive positions. However, because they set the stage for various parties to gain control of regions in advance of the crucial national elections, they act as both a useful indicator of national trends, and give us a preview of the balance of power in Iraq in 2009 and beyond. And the consensus in the media, and on Daily Kos, is the same – this is barely news, but to the extent it is, it’s good news, because it lets Obama withdraw the troops in victory!
I discussed the parties competing, the risks and the dynamics involved at length in a previous unread diary, so I refer both of my current readers to that previously wasted effort for background. To summarize, the major issues are:
- In several mixed population provinces, Kurds enjoy disproportionate power because Arabs largely boycotted the previous elections. The non-Kurdish population is worried that the Kurds want to annex these provinces to the Kurdish autonomous zone, making them minorities in the power of the Kurds, whom they distrust. While the most hotly contested area around Kirkuk didn't vote this time, Nineveh and Diyala provinces did. It now appears based on preliminary results that the Kurds suffered a major loss at least in Nineveh, to the Al Hadba Party, a strongly anti-Kurdish coalition of ethnic and political groups, which is now set to become the dominant power in the province, with enough seats to govern completely to the exclusion of Kurdish interests. This will likely mean a reversal of the de-Arabization soft ethnic cleansing policies practiced by the Kurdish government in an attempt to gain a more secure hold on the disputed regions around Kurdistan, and the restoration of Saddam era de-Kurdizaztion policies. Al Hadba is also aligned with Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, and their victory strengthens his hand in the region. Somehow, this is being presented as a very positive development by the Western press, allegedly because it will bring the governmental representation more in line with actual demographics, thus making the democracy better, even though it represents a predictable anti-Kurdish reaction from the rest of the population, and makes a civil war between Kurds and Arabs even more likely.
- Maliki’s party won huge across the board, scoring gains in all regions of the country, most importantly in the key cities of Baghdad and Basra. In some places it’s going from having no representation to outright majority control. According to most analysts, Maliki's success stemmed from his reputation as a strong leader who brought order to Basra and Baghdad, and from the successful rebranding of the sectarian Shiite religious al Dawa party as a secular law and order list, the State of Law Coalition, which the voters preferred over more sectarian parties. The biggest loser from this is most notably the previously dominant Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) which is currently the senior partner in its coalition government with Maliki’s Dawa. For example, in the traditionally most important provinces of Iraq, Baghdad and its surroundings, the preliminary results looked like this:
In the first 11 stations, Maliki's State of Law electoral list led the votes by as much as 60 percent, Sadr's allies came in second and ISCI third. Allawi's party picked up a handful of votes, along with other smaller parties, including Sunni ones.
If hundreds of other Baghdad stations report similar results, Maliki and his Dawa party could take control of perhaps the most powerful provincial council in Iraq.
Since 2005, ISCI has controlled 28 seats on the 57-member council. Dawa has had four. Sadr's loyalists held three and a smattering of other Shiites and independents held the rest. The sole Sunni is a communist.
Khadumi, an ISCI politician, said he now expects his party to get only eight seats on the council and is already considering an alliance with Maliki.
"Maliki used his title as prime minister to support his candidates and promise the people many things," Khadumi lamented.
Senior Dawa officials predicted they will now control as much as 55 percent of the seats on the Baghdad council. "The results of the election show that Iraqis support a strong central government and good local governments," said Muhsin al-Rubae, a Dawa senior official. "These results reflect the confidence of people in Maliki."
It appears to me that the reason why people are lining up behind Maliki is because he has the power. He crushed the Mahdi Army in Basra, he chased the Kurds out of Diyala, he controls the army and the money. Iraqis know how this game is played – you join the ruling party, you get ahead. They did all this before with Baath and Saddam. My theory is supported by the fact that the explanation being offered – that Maliki benefitted from the trend toward secular parties, even though his party is actually and has always been a Shiite sectarian movement, is nonsensical, both because Dawa is sectarian and because the actual secular block, in opposition to Maliki and led by the former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a Sunni, failed to gain any majorities, although it did well. With the losses by the Kurds and the ISCI, Allawi is emerging as the top opponent to Maliki, and will likely be contest with Maliki for the post of Prime Minister in upcoming national elections. Clearly the actual secularists do not see Maliki as one of them.
- ISCI appears to have lost seats to both Maliki's list and to the rebranded Sadrist Tendency, the movement led by Muqtada al Sadr which had previously waged an armed struggle against the American occupation but is now mostly a social services provider for the Shiite poor. The Sadrists supported nationalist secular independents, who are aligned with Maliki's new nationalist secularist image, and it appears that these lists also did well across the country. This appears to mean that the Sadrist Tendency is far from defeated, and will continue to be a major force in Iraqi politics despite all American bloody efforts to the contrary.
- In the Sunni center, which was devastated under the American occupation, matters are even more disturbing. Defying all optimistic predictions of greater voter turnout driven by people finally exercising their right to vote, al Anbar, the giant desert province which takes up one third of Iraq's land area and which was such a graveyard for US troops, saw voter turnout of only around 40 percent. This is despite the fact that many American analysts blamed much of the anti American insurgent violence in that region on a population angry with its lack of representation resulting from its previous boycott of the 2005 elections. In the present elections, the major conflict was between the corrupt, unrepresentative and Sunni sectarian Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), which was the only Sunni party not to boycott the 2005 elections and so got all the seats by default, and a bunch of newcomers led by the resurgent Sunni tribes and Awakening militias who played such a critical role in the pacification of al Anbar. It appears now that the elections there were marred by wide scale voter suppression and fraud by the IIP, that the IIP will keep control of the region, and now the restive tribesmen, who have proven their potential for deadly resistance, are pissed off. Curfews have been imposed throughout the area in order to keep the situation from exploding.
The Fallujah area of Anbar Province had one of the lowest turnouts in the country, with some estimates that only 25 percent of eligible voters went to the polls. Over all, the province had extremely low turnout and the new tribal parties that believed they would do well were furious that their main competitor, the religious Iraqi Islamic Party, appeared to have once again won a large number of seats.
Ahmed Abu Risha, a powerful tribesman in Anbar Province and the brother of one of the founders of the Awakening councils, which joined the Americans to fight Islamic insurgents, said he believed that the turnout was lower than the 40 percent announced by the election commission and that the numbers were being manipulated by the Iraqi Islamic Party. "If the Islamic Party wins, it will be another Darfur," he said.
Hamid al-Hais, head of the Anbar Tribes list in the election, clarified what was meant by "another Darfur."
"We will set the streets of Ramadi ablaze if the Islamic Party is declared the winners of the election," he told Reuters, referring to Anbar's provincial capital. "We will make Anbar a grave for the Islamic Party and its agents. We will start a tribal war against them and those who cooperate with them."
Really sounds like a triumph of democracy and a great step toward a peaceful, democratic, self sustaining and functioning Iraq, doesn’t it? So, what's the big picture? The Kurds are being pushed into a corner in the North, threatened on all sides by the other ethnic groups united in opposition to perceived Kurdish ambitions. The tribes in al Anbar are ready to rise again, because they got screwed again, despite being promised a redress of the debacle of the 2005 elections. And across the country, the Prime Minister's party has successfully used its position of national power to gain local power as well. Dawa is following the blueprint created by Saddan's Baath Party, which switched ideologies moment to moment, from socialism to Islamic fundamentalism, but attracted loyalists with the promise and fear of power. If you want to get ahead in Iraq, you join the Leader, it's a lesson that Iraqis had learned before.
But somehow the Western press, even the Nation, is presenting these elections as a big success, instead of a big advance down the road to tyranny and civil war which is what it appears to be. You can be sure that if these elections had taken place under Bush, the Nation at least would be all over it, pointing out the potential risks. And the Daily Kos, well, it would be roiling with denouncements of neocon stupidity, Pollyanna thinking, and with grim forecasts of doom. But now that this is one of Obama's wars, we are all filled with a general hopefulness and good cheer, as the Nation's Robert Dreyfuss opines,
...it's the first step toward a major recalibration of Iraqi politics -- and for the good... The election can also be seen as a setback for Iran, whose chief allies in Iraq -- especially ISCI, but also Jalal Talabani's Kurds -- lost.
Oh, yeah, forgot we were still at war with Iran there. Glad we gave those bastards a black eye, and at the small, tiny, insignificant cost of putting the Kurds and Arabs at each other's throats, making a Kurdish uprising a near inevitablity! Meanwhile, Juan Williams, once of NPR, goes much, much further on Fox News:
... this, to me, is really a breakthrough moment in terms of all the effort that Americans have put in. And I have been highly critical. I thought it was a sad situation that we found ourselves in, and I think the surge, people might want to justify the surge and all. But now we've come to a genuinely pleasant, progressive moment in Iraq.
Naturally the neocons concur. Charles Krauthammer gushed,
It is the beginning of a civil society in Iraq and the strengthening of a democracy. And, in a way, it vindicates the surge and the entire idea of Iraq as capable of having a real democracy.
Remember the surge? That’s totally vindicated now, but it’s so 2008. We are well on the way to a democracy in Iraq and also a victory over Iran. Even though both Krauthammer's and Williams' positive assessments were premised on the Sunnis taking part in the election and finally getting representation, which does not appear to have happened now that the Sunnis are ready to go to war again, the enthusiasm is not abating, nor are any warnings beginning to come out. No, the picture coming from every sector of the oh so diverse American political spectrum (now with one and a half colors!) is that this a minor news story, but that everything is going super. And I'm not the only one confused, as particularly in al Anbar, these elections clearly appear to be making the situation worse. But across America, small town newspapers, major media outlets, Fox News and the Nation, Daily Kos and Restate are in agreement - this is good news though not front page news. Is this the promised age of Obama, when the lions lie down the lambs to ignore the problems the snails are having?
So this begs the question: Is everybody just tired of Iraq and looking to be able to leave it as soon as possible, which might not be possible if we admit that Iraq is developing in some very ominous directions? Are we too scared to face reality because it might derail our plans? Are we that invested in the concept of coming home with honor and in victory? Did we only care about Iraq when it was a political Democrat vs. Republican issue? Do Americans really not have the cranial capacity to understand anything besides a two party, one doctrine system? You tell me, why don't you care?