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Newsday, NY
Jan 12 2005
THE PROJECTED WINNER IN IRAQ: FAILURE
As violence rages and Sunnis and Kurds prepare to boycott the
elections, no good outcome is in sight
Edwin Black
Edwin Black is the author of "Banking on Baghdad, Inside Iraq's
7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict," from which 6this is
adapted.
Iraq's proposed elections later this month are a lose-lose
proposition.
Most Sunni and Kurdish political parties have either formally
withdrawn or are threatening to because the insurgency has now
targeted the entire electoral process. That reality has been driven
home daily. Last month, a grenade was tossed into a school with a
note warning the building to not become a polling place. Weeks ago,
an election commissioner on Baghdad's main street was dragged from
his car in broad daylight and shot in the head by men who didn't even
mask their faces.
Osama bin Laden has declared in an audiotape that those who
participate in the election - even by voting - will be deemed
infidels and targeted. Electoral commissioners have resigned en
masse. The Association of Muslim Scholars, Iraq's highest Sunni
religious authority, has demanded all Sunnis boycott the election.
But the Shias are adamant that elections proceed. Their supreme
religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, has decreed that voting is
the highest religious obligation. Sistani rebuffed recent Sunni-Kurd
election delay requests, saying the question was "not even up for
discussion." Indeed, a delay makes no sense, as the insurgency
becomes only more lethal with each day. Hence, Arab Sunnis and Kurds
- together some 40 percent of the population - are now on an
electoral collision course with the majority Shias, who compose
approximately 60 percent. The dynamics of this looming showdown
embody the very ethnic torrents that have plagued Iraq for centuries.
Minority Sunnis and majority Shias have massacred and oppressed each
other in Iraq since the seventh century, taking time off to do the
same for minorities such as Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Jews and
Kurds.
Since the 1920s, Sunni Ba'athist strongmen have ruled, Saddam Hussein
being the latest. The concept of one-man one- vote, in which the
results will parallel the religious groups, automatically guarantees
that the Shia majority will finally seize control of the nation,
settling old scores and disenfranchising everyone else. This only
sets the stage for another civil war.
Historically, the assumption or seizure of authority in Iraq has
never constituted a true representative government accepted by the
warring tribal factions, but rather an expression of ethnic
supremacy. More and more, the Jan. 30 vote seems not a national
election, but a mainly Shia election. So even if the election takes
place, even if the Shias deliver a statistical majority for the
turnout, the forces of Sunni and insurgent rejection will demonize
the results and elected officials, thus further plunging the populace
into violence.
Adding a volatile dimension is the distinct possibility that majority
Shia rule will not propel the nation toward Western-style democracy,
but speed it toward an Iranian-style theocracy. Shia Iran and the
dominant Shia holy cities such as Najaf have been joined at the hip
and the heart for centuries. Citizens on both sides of the border
freely pass and function jointly in matters religious, spiritual and
social.
Should a Shia-controlled Iraq legislate itself into an Iranian- style
theocracy, and even consider a pan-Islamic confederacy, the
ramifications are towering. Such bi-national unions in the Islamic
Middle East have been common since World War II.
The people of Iraq have never wanted Western-style pluralistic
democracy or elections. The idea has always been imposed from abroad.
In 1920, the nations of the Middle East were created where no nations
had previously existed by Western oil imperialism and the League of
Nations - this to validate under international law the post-World War
I oil monopolies France and England had created. Pro-western monarchs
and other rulers were installed to sign on the dotted line,
legitimizing Western oil monopolies. At the same time, the Western
capitals spurned the Arab national movement. When the Arabs hear the
term "democracy," they hear a code word for "stable environment for
oil."
A post-election Iraq will resemble pre-election Iraq, with a savage
insurgency determined to sabotage the government. America will then
have to decide if it is still willing to hold the invented nation
together with political thumbtacks and military muscle, or support
the forces of ethnic partition. Either way, we have no alternative
but to survive in Iraq long enough to intelligently withdraw. That
will require alternative energy resources to detach us from this
place where we are not wanted, where we should not be, and upon which
our industrialized world is now dependent.
Iraq, the so-called Cradle of Civilization, has a 7,000-year head
start on the United States and Britain. If its people wanted a
pluralistic democracy, they could have created one without a
permission slip from Washington or London. Elections do not make
democracies; democracies make elections.
Jan 12 2005
THE PROJECTED WINNER IN IRAQ: FAILURE
As violence rages and Sunnis and Kurds prepare to boycott the
elections, no good outcome is in sight
Edwin Black
Edwin Black is the author of "Banking on Baghdad, Inside Iraq's
7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict," from which 6this is
adapted.
Iraq's proposed elections later this month are a lose-lose
proposition.
Most Sunni and Kurdish political parties have either formally
withdrawn or are threatening to because the insurgency has now
targeted the entire electoral process. That reality has been driven
home daily. Last month, a grenade was tossed into a school with a
note warning the building to not become a polling place. Weeks ago,
an election commissioner on Baghdad's main street was dragged from
his car in broad daylight and shot in the head by men who didn't even
mask their faces.
Osama bin Laden has declared in an audiotape that those who
participate in the election - even by voting - will be deemed
infidels and targeted. Electoral commissioners have resigned en
masse. The Association of Muslim Scholars, Iraq's highest Sunni
religious authority, has demanded all Sunnis boycott the election.
But the Shias are adamant that elections proceed. Their supreme
religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, has decreed that voting is
the highest religious obligation. Sistani rebuffed recent Sunni-Kurd
election delay requests, saying the question was "not even up for
discussion." Indeed, a delay makes no sense, as the insurgency
becomes only more lethal with each day. Hence, Arab Sunnis and Kurds
- together some 40 percent of the population - are now on an
electoral collision course with the majority Shias, who compose
approximately 60 percent. The dynamics of this looming showdown
embody the very ethnic torrents that have plagued Iraq for centuries.
Minority Sunnis and majority Shias have massacred and oppressed each
other in Iraq since the seventh century, taking time off to do the
same for minorities such as Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Jews and
Kurds.
Since the 1920s, Sunni Ba'athist strongmen have ruled, Saddam Hussein
being the latest. The concept of one-man one- vote, in which the
results will parallel the religious groups, automatically guarantees
that the Shia majority will finally seize control of the nation,
settling old scores and disenfranchising everyone else. This only
sets the stage for another civil war.
Historically, the assumption or seizure of authority in Iraq has
never constituted a true representative government accepted by the
warring tribal factions, but rather an expression of ethnic
supremacy. More and more, the Jan. 30 vote seems not a national
election, but a mainly Shia election. So even if the election takes
place, even if the Shias deliver a statistical majority for the
turnout, the forces of Sunni and insurgent rejection will demonize
the results and elected officials, thus further plunging the populace
into violence.
Adding a volatile dimension is the distinct possibility that majority
Shia rule will not propel the nation toward Western-style democracy,
but speed it toward an Iranian-style theocracy. Shia Iran and the
dominant Shia holy cities such as Najaf have been joined at the hip
and the heart for centuries. Citizens on both sides of the border
freely pass and function jointly in matters religious, spiritual and
social.
Should a Shia-controlled Iraq legislate itself into an Iranian- style
theocracy, and even consider a pan-Islamic confederacy, the
ramifications are towering. Such bi-national unions in the Islamic
Middle East have been common since World War II.
The people of Iraq have never wanted Western-style pluralistic
democracy or elections. The idea has always been imposed from abroad.
In 1920, the nations of the Middle East were created where no nations
had previously existed by Western oil imperialism and the League of
Nations - this to validate under international law the post-World War
I oil monopolies France and England had created. Pro-western monarchs
and other rulers were installed to sign on the dotted line,
legitimizing Western oil monopolies. At the same time, the Western
capitals spurned the Arab national movement. When the Arabs hear the
term "democracy," they hear a code word for "stable environment for
oil."
A post-election Iraq will resemble pre-election Iraq, with a savage
insurgency determined to sabotage the government. America will then
have to decide if it is still willing to hold the invented nation
together with political thumbtacks and military muscle, or support
the forces of ethnic partition. Either way, we have no alternative
but to survive in Iraq long enough to intelligently withdraw. That
will require alternative energy resources to detach us from this
place where we are not wanted, where we should not be, and upon which
our industrialized world is now dependent.
Iraq, the so-called Cradle of Civilization, has a 7,000-year head
start on the United States and Britain. If its people wanted a
pluralistic democracy, they could have created one without a
permission slip from Washington or London. Elections do not make
democracies; democracies make elections.