The Iraqi provincial elections were held on Jan. 31; final results will be known in a few weeks. What seems to be clear so far is that Prime Minister al-Maliki is one wiley sumbitch; Iran, despite press spin to the contrary, did fine; and most significantly for Americans who would like to leave Iraq in 16 months, Sunnis handed "radical Sunni militant fundamentalist Islam" its ass.
Preliminary results have been coming in over the week. Some press folks are lamenting the 51% turnout, calling it "apathetic" or a "record low turnout." I'd like to remind them that these elections were the equivalent of elections in the United States in which no U.S. House or Senate seats, let alone the Presidency, were on the ballot. (Parliamentary elections will be later this year.) Purely state and local, plus you might get shot at the polls. 51% seems pretty good to me.
Juan Cole writes:
There is nothing here to give comfort to those Americans who fear Iranian influence in Iraq. The Islamic Mission Party or Da'wa [Prime Minister al-Maliki's party] is just as committed to warm relations with Tehran as is the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. The Da'wa leaders were in exile in Tehran for years just like ISCI. Da'wa is more "lay" and less clerical than ISCI, but being "lay" means non-clerical, not secular. Da'wa wants an Islamic State.
These election results raise severe questions about the viability of the Biden plan, which foresaw three decentralized super-provinces overseen by a weak central government. Most of the victors in this election are strong believers in a centralized civil bureaucracy.
On the whole, I think these results are encouraging for Obama. The Sunni Arab ex-Baathist secular elites have reentered polities in the Sunni Arab areas. These election results put paid to the fantasies of Dick Cheney and John McCain that Sunni Arab Iraqis are pro-"al-Qaeda." Most of them would not even vote for a religious party, much less for a radical fundamentalist terrorist group. Cheney said that if the US left, al-Qaeda would take over Sunni Arab Iraq. That is highly unlikely given these election results.
Many U.S. newspapers, including Leila Fadel at McClatchy, who is no slouch, write, as against Cole, that the defeat of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (think Badr Brigade) indicates a significant loss for Iranian influence in Iraq. I don't know if I agree with either Cole or Fadel on this; I happen to doubt that anyone went to the provincial election polls to vote on how much "Iranian influence" they wanted. Are we supposed to believe that they voted for "more U.S. influence" because they voted more-or-less in affirmation of Maliki? Most likely the question of how much U.S. or Iranian influence people wanted just didn't come up that much. But Cole is correct if anyone is, seems to me: al-Maliki has not been shy about the kissy-kissy with President Ahmadinejad and the down with Israel talk.
Sam Parker, Iraq Program Officer, United States Institute of Peace, explained to the NYT the immediate practical effects of the provincial elections, from the point of view of the Iraqis:
Well, first of all, these elections are very important in the sense that they signal what the political trends in Iraq are. The main power that these provincial councils have is to allocate the province's capital investment budget. It gets allocations from the ministry of finance to do what it pleases. So in 2009, you're looking at a total of $2.4 billion of direct allocation to the provinces, which is a lot of money in Iraq. The councils spend that money on infrastructure and for the provision of central services. They use it to build roads, hospitals, water treatment plants, and schools. Now when it comes to actually paying for operating and maintaining those facilities, that falls under the jurisdiction of the central government ministries. So a provincial council might decide to build a hospital, but when it comes to putting doctors in there and keeping a staff to maintain it, that falls to the ministry of health, which has representatives in the provinces.
The desire to attribute the remarkably uneventful elections in Iraq to "the success of the surge" is probably overpowering for pundits in Washington. However, only the height of -- dare I say -- imperial arrogance would lead to the suggestion that the Iraqis' decision to forgo violent means in their efforts to gain influence over the future of their nation is somehow a tribute to us. The Iraqis themselves are to be congratulated. This would be the case even if the move to non-violence had been because of, rather than in spite of, "the surge," and there is no reason aside from spin to think that it was.
So, in sum, there was not much violence, al Qaeda is sooo 15 minutes ago, the Iraqis are making decisions about sums of money ($2.4 billion) that wouldn't light the cigar of bailed-out Wall Street executive, and why are we in Iraq, again?
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For a contrary view -- that the Iraqi provincial elections had disquieting aspects and that the results are not all sweetness and light -- I recommend work by Marcion, here at Daily Kos, over the past week. Marcion wrote a series of three rescued but little-read diaries on the provincial elections that deserve, as a series, props for depth of research.
Jan. 29 dopper0189 rescued the diary Iraqi provincial elections and the growing power of Prime Minister Maliki.
Feb. 3rd, noddem rescued: Preliminary results from Iraqi provincial elections are disturbing, ignored.
Feb. 6, jlms qkw rescued: What should the future US role be in Iraq? (With updated provincial election results).
(h/t srkp23 for pointing this out to me.)
Finally, Juan cole has an easy-to-follow rundown of the prelimary results here.