Even before the polls closed in Iraq, the Bush administration declared not only victory, but credited themselves with having orchestrated a historic event.
To be sure, an election in which Iraqis could vote for multiple candidates was unprecedented, and its significance was not lost upon neighboring regimes where small elite holds power.
Still, Bush’s index for success – that Iraqis could vote at all – is as empty as it is self-serving. As the occupying power the USA could hold an election whenever they chose, just as Saddam organized plebiscites to ratify his rule. Whether history remembers this election a turning point will depend on resolving Iraq’s fundamental problems, something that this election could not do.
In a press conference Bush predictably argued that election turn out, estimated to be at 60%, proved that Iraqis embraced “freedom” and defied “terrorism.”
Images of elderly Iraqis walking to distant polls, or the smiles peeking through abeyas as women held up their ink blotched finger as proof of having voted, lent substance to this rhetoric. Many World leaders and American democrats critical of Bush joined him in hailing the Iraqi election as a “success” in light of the bravery Iraqis displayed and the failure of insurgents to disrupt it. Although a string of attacks left forty-four dead, over eight million Iraqis voted. The dark lining of the election’s outcome is, of course, that the Sunni turn out appears to have been paltry.
We do not have final results, but in Samarra polls did not bother to open and in populous Baghdad and Mosul Sunnis mostly stayed home.
Condoleezza Rice suggested Sunday that this election would build consensus on Iraq’s future and marginalize the insurgents, but when the euphoria of voting fades will Iraqis wake up to a new reality or a country that remains divided along sectarian lines, occupied by a foreign power, suffering from crippling unemployment and rampant crime, and where many citizens lack basic utilities?
Deeming Iraq’s election a “turning point” in these circumstances seems as imprecise as it is premature. For most Americans, a “turn around” would signify some diminution in the US’s heavy military and financial commitment to Iraq. The Center for Strategic Studies, however, estimates that the Iraqi army has only about 11,000 fully trained and armed troops, with only a handful of those capable of operating independently of coalition forces. That seems to guarantee that American troops will remain in Iraq at least through 2006. Troop levels may even need to increase as coalition partners anxiously withdraw as expected, or if the insurgency continues to gain strength as some experts predict.
The daunting challenges that still face Iraqis and the uncertainty of their future is lost on some Americans who indulge in lofty words like freedom, democracy, and election that Bush uses to pepper his speeches.
Bush has worked hard to associate Iraq’s election with America’s own founding fathers, and to depict this ritual as an important stepping-stone towards the country’s democratic future. Such optimism, however, requires one to assume that the insurgency was dealt a deathblow by the polls, something not corroborated by any evidence. This discourse also misrepresents the motives of many Iraqis. For them this election was not the outcome of some indigenous popular movement, but an imposition of the occupying power. Creating a democratic Iraq did not seem to be the principal thing on the mind of many voters. The Kurds, for instance, conducted an unofficial referendum on independence suggesting that their ultimate goal was securing an autonomous Kurdistan. The Shia also went to the polls in large numbers, but as the majority, the election only rubberstamped their preordained ascension to power. Most Sunnis voted to st ay home so as to discredit the election as an “American sham” that lacked any legitimacy.
There is nothing undemocratic about groups voting their interests, but the election in Iraq was unlikely to articulate the “will of the people” for a simple reason: twenty first century Iraq remains less a nation and more of a post-colonial state. The British created Iraq after the First World War.
From Paris they carved up the Ottoman Empire drawing lines on a map according to a geological survey and projected oil deposits. Like many post-colonial states Iraq’s modern history is written in the blood and animosity of sectarian division. The Sunni minority has traditionally controlled Iraq’s government and terror has served as a coagulant keeping the state together.
The idea that a US sponsored election could dissolve ethnic and religious divisions in a single stroke or resolve historic grievances and future oil interests was naïve. The success of Bush’s Mesopotamian adventure always depended not on bringing democracy to its people, but resolving a flawed national blue print. The formula for building a stable Iraq lay not in holding an election, but creating conditions in which such an election could reconcile the interests of Iraq’s three main groups. The timing of this January’s election, however, did not coincide with the achievement of such a consensus, but on the contrary reflected the Bush administration’s increasing desperation as its disastrous policies triggered a growing Sunni led insurgency that continues to produce ever mounting casualties.
Only time can reveal if the Iraqi election is remembered as “historic” or a “sham.” One outcome is clear. Iraq’s future now falls to a predominantly Shiite and Kurdish regime and leaders such Shia cleric al Sistani must solve problems that Bush could not.
Will al Sistani be able to broker a lasting power sharing arrangement between Kurds, Sunnis, secular and religious Shias? Is it possible to equitably divide oil resources unequally distributed throughout the country? Can Kurds be convinced to slough off their ambitions for sovereignty? Will Sunnis buy into a state in which they have only partial representation?
Will Shia remain magnanimous in the face of an insurgency that is increasingly targeting its people, leaders, and clerics? No one knows if al Sistani will succeed in convincing a majority of Iraqis, who are not religious Shiites like himself, to buy into a common Iraq. Neither do we know if the US will increase its financial and military commitments to support this fledgling regime against a growing insurgency. Precisely because the election failed to resolve Iraq’s fundamental problems it marks a turning point of sorts. Without immediate and dramatic progress Iraq is headed for some kind of civil war.
Averting this disaster will determine if posterity will remember the January 2005 election as a success or a more ominous kind of historical moment.
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