Sunday, February 08, 2009

What Iraqi elections taught the world

Saturday, January 31st, Iraq held provincial elections in fourteen of its eighteen provinces. To hear some of the War Hawks tell it, we learned democracy can dance across Iraq on two left feet. But what did we really learn?



elections



That the purple dye they use on your finger to indicate you voted leaves you with "a smelly, orange finger nail." That was about the only useful bit of information conveyed. We didn't learn who won -- but we did learn that preliminary results can be (and will be) treated as hard numbers (it will be weeks before the official count is known). We learned that when 440 people were elected, it's easier to ignore all of them and repeatedly spin the election as being about someone who was not running for office in the provincial elections.





Most of all, we learned to forget the squeaky wheel, it's the drive-by shooter that gets the grease these days.




Sheik Hammid al-Hayes, a thug who was an "Awakeing" Council leader (aka "We switch loyalties for coin") began stomping his feet in Anbar Province and insisting that he got his way or there would be violence. Alissa J. Rubin and Steven Lee Myers (New York Times) quoted al-Hayes threatening, "If the results aren't acceptable, then we'll bring back the old days. We will use rifles again, and we will eliminate the Islamic Party." Ned Parker, Caesar Ahmed and Saif Hameed (Los Angeles Times) quoted another "Awakening" thug, Sheik Ahmed Buzaigh abu Risha, issuing this fatwa, "If the percentage is true, then we will transfer our entity from a political to a military one, to fight the Islamic Party and the commission." Monte Morin and Caesar Ahmed (Los Angeles Times) quote the menacing Sheik Risha promsing, "There will be very harsh consequences if this false election stands. We won't let them form a government." The thought that the Iraqi Islamic Party would win the majority in Anbar was too much for the thugs who gladly took $300 a month from the US government but never bothered to bone up on democracy and were more than happy to inflame tensions to get their way -- a very telling move. Mu Xuequan (Xinhua) observed, "In Anbar province, in western Iraq, tension between rival Sunni parties have been running high after leaders of the Awakening Council groups, or Sahwa militant groups who fought al-Qaida militants in their areas, accused the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), headed by Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, of committing fraud to win majority of the 29-seat provincial council. IIP vehemently denied the accusation."


The "Awakening"s knew that if they threatened they'd get their way. On the 31st, many Iraiqs were repeatedly turned away from polling stations and they registered this dismay and objection and they peacefully marched to draw attention to the problem. The response? "It's not our fault that some people couldn't vote because they are lazy, because they didn't bother to ask where they should vote." Who made that statement? Some party hack? No, the elections commission chief Faraj al-Hadiari. Those peacefully demonstrating, he attacked. As for those who made threats of violence? He rushed to 'fix' things for them. Ernesto Londono (Washington Post) quoted al-Hadiari stating of the "Awakening" sheiks' charges, "We will deal with it seriously because it might change the result of the election in this province." Potentially millions of Iraqis disenfranchised and he blows that off but make a threat and he will "deal with it seriously" -- not the threat, but fixing the election the way you want it. Sam Dagher (New York Times) reported "al-Maliki sent a deputy, Rafie al-Issawi, a Sunni who is an Anbar native" to speak with Shik Risha and that the meeting was also attended by the Iraqi military. Sudarsan Raghavan (Washington Post) added the US Marines are back in "Ramadi in observation roles, patrolling areas from which they had largely withdrawn." And Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) observed how "quickly" the officials go into motion for the ones making threats in Anbar, "The Independent High Electoral Commission sent a committee from Baghdad Wednesday to recount ballot boxes from some polling stations in the province after tribal leaders accused the Iraqi Islamic Party, IIP, which currently controls the provincial council, of rigging the vote. The accusations of vote rigging came from an especially important source, Ahmed Abu Risha, the head of the province's Awakening Council, which is widely credited with bringing calm to Anbar."


Paid off with coin and still expecting to be paid off. UPI explained, "The Awakening Councils had looked to secure seats on the provincial councils as reparation for their role in routing al-Qaida militans from Anbar as part of the U.S.-led counterinsurgency strategy known as the surge."


The same thugs were paid off by the US to stop attacking US military personnel and equipment -- as US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and Gen David Petraeus told Congress repeatedly last April. All last week they threatened violence and instead of being told to knock it off, they were catered to. So it was no surprise when the 'results' (no official results from the elections are expected for weeks) unofficially officially were flipped in favor of the "Awakenings." Alone among those noting the absurdity was Marc Lynch (Foreign Policy):

The official results in Anbar are sharply different from the reports of the last few days. The IHEC tally gave the victory to Saleh al-Mutlak's bloc, followed by Abu Risha's Awakenings Bloc, followed by the Islamic Party in third place. This is a surprise. The behavior of the Islamic Party and the Awakenings bloc over the last few days strongly suggests that they had the same information about the preliminary results-- that the Islamic Party had won. This "adjustment" -- if that's what happened -- for now appears to have defused the crisis over the alleged electoral fraud by the Islamic Party and the threats of violence by the Awakenings leaders by denying victory to either of the two main rivals (Abu Risha says that he's happy with the result). This resolution is very, shall we say, convenient... and, perhaps, a clever solution to the escalating confrontation. I'm sure we'll be hearing more about this soon.. the Islamic Party's website is currently silent on this sudden change in their electoral fortunes. Where's Nate Silver to analyze the exit poll data when you need him?


Yes, it is very convenient and what it teaches is that there is no democracy in Iraq at present and never will be while the US is there to 'soothe' egos.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
 
Poll1 { display:none; }