Elections amidst ongoing violence
The Iraqi election is scheduled for 30th January. The vote will be for a 275-member transitional National Assembly. This will choose a president and two deputy-presidents from among their own members. This so-called presidential council will in turn appoint a prime minister who will hold the main power, and other ministers. The National Assembly will then draft a constitution to be voted on in a referendum by 15 October 2005, and if approved it will be followed by another election for a permanent government in December 2005. So, the 30th January election is only the first stage in a long process. While President George Bush, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and many others have insisted that the election will be held as scheduled, many others including the Iraqi insurgents have vowed to disrupt the election.
Meanwhile, the reports from Iraq are getting worse by the day. Even those who were advising the US and Britain not to go ahead with their illegal invasion of Iraq could not have imagined that things would get so bad so quickly. It was hoped that after the initial shock and horror, the situation would gradually improve. Unfortunately, the further we move away from the initial ‘shock and awe’ operations, things are deteriorating further, to the extent that there is now a real possibility that the insurgents might be able to push the Coalition forces out of Iraq or to unleash a full-scale civil war. If this happens, it will create a nightmare much worse than anything that existed under Saddam Hussein. Even if this gloomy prediction does not come true, there is every indication that the conflict will continue for a long time, and that it will get worse before it gets better.
On the one side, we see brutal murderers, religious fanatics, suicide bombers, and throat slitters who do not show any mercy even to a kind and helpless woman, Margaret Hassan, who had spent most of her life helping the Iraqis. All these unimaginable atrocities are committed in the name of Islam. On the Coalition side, apart from the daily attacks on the insurgents, we have witnessed the almost total destruction of Fallujah, a city of more than half a million people. This must surely be regarded as the worst US atrocity since the Second World War that can only be compared to the destruction of Grozni by Russian forces. In the Vietnam war, US forces destroyed a few villages in order to ‘save them’, but the destruction of Fallujah falls into a different category.
According to US claims as many as 1,600 insurgents have been killed during the operations in Fallujah, and God only knows how many civilians also perished. Out of hundreds of thousands of residents who fled the city before the attacks, only a few hundred have returned to their bombed out houses, and even some of these have decided to leave as there is nothing for them to come back to. The rest are still living in temporary tents, with no water, electricity or medical facilities, out in the cold. All this, meanwhile, is done in the name of democracy and human rights.
Yet the grim statistics provide an account of continuing misery and loss of life on both sides. On 7th January 2005 it was announced that seven US soldiers had been killed in a bomb attack by insurgents in Baghdad. In a separate incident, the military reported that a marine had been killed in Anbar province, west of Baghdad. The Pentagon revealed that more than 10,000 US military personnel had been wounded in Iraq before the end of the year 2004. Of the 10,252 total wounded, the Pentagon said 5,396 had sustained serious injuries such as lost limbs and sight and were unable to return to duty and 4,856 sustained injuries that were light enough to allow them to resume their duties. These figure do not include tens of thousands of non-combat related injuries that are omitted from this carefully edited picture of the occupation. More than 31,000 veterans have sought “disability” benefits for physical or psychological injuries. Also most experts concede that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – which can lead to alcoholism, domestic abuse, homelessness, and suicide – could affect up to 75 percent of all returning soldiers.
Meanwhile, the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq stood at 1,335 by the end of the year, according to the Pentagon. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing the US taxpayers at least five billion dollars a month, and there is no end in sight for either conflict, and there is no indication that US forces can leave Iraq or Afghanistan in the near future. The US Administration is expected to ask the Congress for another £100 billion to cover the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the Iraqis have borne the main brunt of casualties. According to the research led by Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and published in the reputable British medical journal The Lancet, about 100,000 Iraqi civilians – half of them women and children – have died in Iraq since the invasion, mostly as a result of air strikes by coalition forces. They also found an increase in infant mortality from 29 to 57 deaths per 1,000 live births since the invasion.
On Thursday 6th January it emerged that 18 Iraqi men recruited to work at a US base near Mosul had been murdered. On Wednesday 5th January, dozens of Iraqi police and soldiers were killed, at least 15 of them during a graduation ceremony in Hilla, south of Baghdad. On the same day a car bomb killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded 10 others in Baghdad. These explosions came a day after gunmen assassinated the governor of Baghdad, Ali al-Haidari, the highest-ranking Iraqi to be killed since the assassination of the chairman of the interim governing council in May. In a separate attack, the insurgents killed at least 10 people outside the headquarters of the Iraqi National Guard. In a separate incident, at least four civilians died and two more were injured when they were caught up in fighting between US forces and insurgents in the Sunni town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad.
On the same day (5th January), the Iraqi interior ministry released figures that revealed that a staggering 1,300 Iraqi policemen have died in attacks during the last four months alone. Just during the past couple of weeks, the number of Iraqis and Coalition forces killed runs into hundreds. On 19 December 2004 more than 60 died in twin suicide car attacks in Najaf and Karbala. A suicide blast in a US military base in Mosul on 21st December killed at least 24, including 14 US soldiers and 4 contractors, and wounded 57. On 27th December, at least 13 died in a Baghdad car bomb targeting the office of the chairman of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdul-Aziz Hakim, who according to the polls is the most popular Iraqi politician. On 2nd January 2005 at least 23 Iraqi soldiers were killed by a car bomb in Balad. On 3rd January more than 20 people were killed in a day of violence across Iraq. The grim list goes on and on. The question is how much worse can it get? The sad answer is probably much worse, especially if the terrorists and the insurgents win.
These dreadful statistics have forced some Iraqi and foreign politicians to call for a postponement of the election. They include Iraq’s president and most senior Sunni Arab official, Ghazi al-Yawar, who after his earliest assurances to President Bush that the election would go ahead as scheduled, on 4th January suggested that the United Nations should examine whether national elections should be postponed. The Elder statesman Adnan Pachachi, who chaired a meeting of a coalition of Sunnis calling for the postponement of the election for at least three months, has again called for a delay. In a letter in the Washington Post he argued that the delay might reduce the level of violence and encourage more Sunnis to take part in the election. A leading Sunni party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, is boycotting the vote. Most importantly, the influential Sunni dominated Association of Moslem Scholars has come out strongly against the elections. The Iraqi Defence Minister Hazem Shaalan said that if Egypt and Jordan could persuade the Sunnis to take part in the election at a later date, the election may be postponed.
From outside Iraq, some leading Sunni politicians, including King Abdullah of Jordan and various Egyptian and Persian Gulf leaders have also called for a postponement. Even in the United States some senior politicians, including Henry Kissinger and General Jay Garner, the first US civil administrator of Iraq, have sounded alarm bells that the election might result in a Shi’i-dominated government that will lean towards Iran. In view of these conflicting views it is important to study the facts about those who advocate to hold the election on time, and those who call for a postponement, and to examine the reasons that are put forward for postponement.
Analysing the opposition to elections being held now
Those inside Iraq who oppose the election and are hostile to the presence of Occupation forces can be divided into four groups:
1. Al-Qa’ida terrorists led allegedly by Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, and a number of other militant groups. A statement on the website of the Ansar al-Sunna group, believed to have been behind the attack on a US base in Mosul, warned the Iraqis not to take part in the election. It was co-signed by the Islamic Army of Iraq and the Army of the Mujahideen. The main argument of these groups was not that the Sunnis would be under-represented or that the time was not right for holding the election, they were opposed to the idea of election in order to choose a government. Their statement said that democracy was un-Islamic, polling stations were centres of atheism and that the election would lead to the passing of un-Islamic laws. “This vote is a mockery by the enemy to grant legitimacy to the new government which serves the crusaders. Participating in these elections would be the biggest gift for America, which is the enemy of Islam and the tyrant of the age,” the statement said.
These groups are responsible for the most barbaric atrocities, such as large-scale kidnappings and beheadings of innocent victims, the most deadly attacks not only on coalition forces, but also on the hapless Iraqi security forces and soldiers, and on Shi’is. The group associated with Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi was probably behind the massive car bomb in Najaf that killed more than 100 people, including Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The same group now known as Iraqi Al-Qa’ida also claimed responsibility for the recent assassination attempt on the life of Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim, the brother of the dead SCIRI leader and the present leader of the group. It has also been blamed for the recent spate of attacks in both Najaf and Karbala.
There is no way of reaching a compromise with these groups. It should be borne in mind that if the election is postponed it would be mainly due to the atrocities committed by these terrorists, and they will be the ones who will take the credit for destroying the chances of democracy in Iraq. Their victory would be seen as a terrible capitulation to terrorism and would constitute a long-term defeat both for the Coalition, as well as for the prospects of calm, security and the rule of law in Iraq. The postponement of the election would boost the morale of the terrorists and would recruit many more to their ranks.
If the election were to be postponed, it would be much more difficult to reinstate it later, and there is no guarantee that any postponement of the election would calm the situation. On the contrary, the cancellation of the election would further intensify the violence, as the terrorists would come to believe that their atrocities are bearing fruit and scuppering Coalition Plans. Even those who are strongly opposed to the presence of the Coalition forces in Iraq must realise that if the terrorists win they will establish a regime far worse and more violent than that of the Taleban in Afghanistan. Any regime led by Al-Qa’ida and the likes of Zarqawi would be more fundamentalist and extremely more brutal than anything that the world has experienced in the past and would provide a new base for international terrorism, both in the region and beyond.
Postponing the election due to the activities of these terrorists would also alienate and infuriate the majority of Shi’is. The postponement of the election would not win back the terrorists, but might incite the Shi’is whose dream of a democratic participation in power has been denied due to terrorism, to take up arms and join the opposition to the Coalition forces. That eventuality would greatly compound the problems faced by the Coalition forces, and might actually result in civil war and the partition of Iraq between the Kurdish north, the Sunni centre and the Shiite south. That would definitely be the worst of all scenarios and it should be avoided at all costs.
2. The second group is composed of the remnants of the Ba’thist regime, some of whom have been gradually co-opted back to the system after they were summarily dismissed by Paul Bremer shortly after he was appointed the administrative governor of Baghdad. The hasty disbanding of hundreds of thousands of soldiers who were generally apolitical and who could have been won to serve in the new Iraqi administration was wrong and ideologically motivated. It is the presence of these trained and armed former soldiers and members of Saddam’s intelligence forces, the Mukhabarat, in the ranks of the insurgents that has made the security situation in Iraq so grim.
US and UK officials constantly refer to the insurgents as being composed of a few ‘dead-enders’ and ‘former regime diehards’, and put their number between 5,000-10,000. However, the head of Iraq’s intelligence service General Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani told a Saudi newspaper on Tuesday 4th January that US and Iraqi forces were facing as many as 40,000 ‘hardcore fighters’, backed by 150,000 to 200,000 other insurgents, guerrillas and spies. When asked if the insurgents are winning, Shahwani replied: “I would say they aren’t losing.”
Many Iraqi and foreign experts believe that these figures are closer to reality than the much smaller number suggested by US officials. Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, commented: “The Iraqi figures do… recognise the reality that the insurgency in Iraq has broad support in Sunni areas, while the US figures downplay this to the point of denial.” These figures do not represent an insurgency. They represent a full-scale war. In fact, if these figures are correct, the number of insurgents far exceeds the number of US forces, while in a classic guerrilla war the number of regular forces should be many times that of the guerrillas if they can have any hope of success.
James Dobbins, Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at Rand, and a former U.S. Special Envoy in Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia, and Afghanistan, has for the first time admitted that the Iraqi war is a lost cause. In an article in the influential Foreign Affairs he writes: “The beginning of wisdom is to recognize that the ongoing war in Iraq is not one that the United States can win. As a result of its initial miscalculations, misdirected planning, and inadequate preparation, Washington has lost the Iraqi people’s confidence and consent, and it is unlikely to win them back.” His grim prediction is that the US Administration is faced with only a bad and a worse choice. He writes: “Keeping U.S. troops in Iraq will only provoke fiercer and more widespread resistance, but withdrawing them too soon could spark a civil war. The second administration of George W. Bush seems to be left with the choice between making things worse slowly or quickly.”
Yet if US forces cannot defeat the insurgents, it is quite clear that the poorly trained Iraqi forces are no match for that large group of fanatical and dedicated fighters, as the events of the past few weeks have shown. There have been many reports indicating that the insurgents have infiltrated the Iraqi forces, as was seen in the recent suicide attack on a US base in Mosul, which according to the latest figures killed 24 and injured 57, which was described as having been an inside job. But even when Iraqi forces have not been disloyal, their performance against the insurgents has been very weak. When Iraqi forces were put in charge of Fallujah after the US attacks in April 2004, they surrendered to the insurgents en masse, giving them their weapons and equipment. On many occasions, as in Mosul in December 2004, the insurgent attacked the Iraqi forces, killed a large number of them and stole their weapons and uniforms.
Having done the damage, it is very difficult to reverse it, except through a democratic process. Postponing the inevitable will not help. Only if proper elections are held and the insurgents see that they have not been able to disrupt the will of the majority will they begin to give up their opposition and join in the democratic process. This is why it is important for the Assembly that emerges out of the election to be open and magnanimous to the Sunni fighters and try to co-opt them into the new Iraq. However, that is the only realistic concession that can be made to the insurgents, not capitulation in advance. Any postponement of the election would simply convince the insurgents of their power and the correctness of the methods that they have adopted, without any hope of guiding them towards a democratic process.
3.The third group of those who oppose the election is made up of ordinary Sunnis who have been angered at being sidelined and who have been especially infuriated as the result of the destruction of Fallujah and attacks on other Sunni towns. However, if they see that the only way that they can have a say in the future of Iraq is by taking part in the election they could be persuaded to do so. For a large number of ordinary Sunnis, the Sunni-Shi’i split is not an issue. They have lived together for decades and there are many close links of marriage between them. Most Iraqi cities, including the capital Baghdad, have a mix of Sunnis and Shi’is. There are at least two million Shi’is in Baghdad, mainly in Sadr city.
Therefore, the argument that the Shi’is would receive a bigger vote in the election and this would prevent the Sunnis from taking part in the election is an exaggerated myth. That attitude is only true of the Wahhabi fundamentalists, often supported by some Arab regimes in the region, and does not apply to the majority of Iraqis. The Arab Sunnis realise that constituting only 15 percent of the total population of Iraq does not entitle them to have a monopoly of power as was the case under Saddam Hussein’s regime. They can only play their part and have their say in future Iraq if they take an active part in the election. Otherwise, they would marginalize and disenfranchise themselves.
The domination of the Sunnis in Iraqi politics dates back to the time when the Sunni Ottomans ruled over Iraq and in their confrontation with Shi’i Iran tried to make use of the Iraqi Sunnis. That situation was perpetuated during the colonial period when the British also felt it useful to use the services of the Sunnis who held the dominant positions in the government. However, in an Iraq that wishes to be democratic and live by the ballot box rather than the bullet, it is natural that the Shi’is, who constitute a much bigger majority than the Sunnis, will be able to achieve their proper share of power. This, however, does not mean that one group will dominate the other, because that kind of language belongs to an era of despotism not to a more democratic society which will hopefully emerge in Iraq.
The majority Shi’is have formed an umbrella organisation led by a former nuclear scientist, Husain Al Shahristani, called the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA). This embraces 22 factions, including both Shi’is and Sunnis. In fact, the list of election candidates that has been prepared with the blessing of Ayatollah Sistani includes many prominent Sunnis, and even Christians and Turkmens, as well as Shi’is, but formally excluding the young radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. If more prominent Sunni candidates come forward and win seats to the Assembly their share of deputies would clearly increase further. The majority Sunni population of Iraq must not allow itself to be manipulated by radical Wahhabi groups. Although election under occupation is not the desired option, yet even a faulty election is much better than the victory of the terrorists that would create a hell for both Sunnis and Shi’is.
4. The fourth group that is opposed to holding the election is composed of radical Shi’is led by Muqtada al-Sadr. In the past year, he tried to stir up trouble against the interim Iraqi government and against the Coalition forces, but he failed. In his attempt to use the holy shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf – one of the holiest places for the Shi’is of the world – into a battlefield, he alienated many Iraqi Shi’is. It was only due to the wisdom and popularity of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that Sadr’s rebellion was contained and the city of Najaf was saved the fate that befell Fallujah. Although he clearly enjoys support among some sections of Iraqi Shi’is, it is clear that he has been overshadowed by the much more influential Ayatollah al-Sistani.
Iran and Iraq – intertwined for centuries
Apart from these domestic groups, some outside figures, such as King Abdullah of Jordan, have also raised the alarm about Iran’s desire to form a “Shi’i crescent” in the region, stretching from Iran to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. This kind of sectarian talk can only inflame passions and deepen the divisions. Do they propose that the 65 percent Iraqi Shi’is should always be excluded from power, just because they share the same faith as the Shi’is in Iran? There is no evidence that the establishment of an Assembly with a majority of Shi’is would necessarily mean an increase in Iranian influence. In fact, up to a short time ago, many American commentators argued that the establishment of a Shi’i-dominated government in Iraq would undermine the rule of the mullahs in Iran, and that Najaf would become a main theological rival to Qom.
Grand Ayatollah Sistani has openly declared that he is not in favour of the establishment of an Islamic Republic ruled over by the mullahs. The experience of the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq is sobering. Although Iranian clerics tried to incite their fellow-Shi’is against Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi Shi’is demonstrated that the idea of Iraq had gelled in their minds and that they were Iraqis first, and Shi’is second. There is no reason to suppose that in the future, the Iraqi Shi’is would lose their patriotism and would link up with Iran.
The late Ayatollah Mohamed Baqir Al-Hakim, addressing thousands of worshippers in a speech in Karbala, demanded to know why Iraqis were not running their country. “Haven’t Iraqis reached the age of reason? Why do they not have the right to form a government and to manage their affairs?” he asked. “We do not want a war for hegemony waged by the clerics to take power. We want a modern government, but one that respects Islam and its values.” These sentiments have been echoed by his successor Abdul-Aziz Hakim who also said that the Iraqi government would not be modelled on the Iranian system. Even Ahmad Chalabi, the former darling of the Neo-Conservatives in Washington, has recently said that he does not want Iraq to become a battleground between the United States and Iran.
It is often forgotten that the moderate Ayatollah al-Sistani is an Iranian by birth, and yet he has always been against Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s thesis of Velayat-e Faqih (the guardianship of the jurisconsult), or rule by the clergy. In fact, most of the leading grand ayatollahs in Iraq have been of Iranian origin. Ayatollah Shirazi, the most eminent source of emulation in recent times, who was one of the main voices in anti-British campaigns and who led the Tobacco boycott in Iran against a British company was Iranian, as were most of the leading clerics during the past few decades. Ayatollah Khomeini taught in Najaf for 13 years, and Grand Ayatollahs Kho’i, Mar’ashi-Najafi, Golpayegani, Behbahani, Hakim and a host of other leading ayatollahs who have wielded great influence in Najaf were Iranians. As Professor Juan Cole has pointed, “To say that Iran should not interfere in Iraq is like saying that the Pope should not interfere in Ireland”, or indeed in the Vatican. The religious history of Iran and Iraq has been intertwined for centuries, and it would be foolish to pretend otherwise.
Loose federation, no partition
Apart from the Shi’is, the Kurds in the North too have warmly welcomed the elections. They have been living under a partial form of autonomy during the past decade, and they would like to consolidate their position in a new democratic Iraq. In fact, if the present Sunni insurgency and boycott of the election continues, the outcome would be the partition of Iraq and the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in the north, something that will not be in the interest of Iraq, and indeed Turkey, Iran and Syria. The only factor that can fuse all these ethnic and religious groups into one state would be a form of democracy that respects and recognises the right of all its citizens.
Indeed, one solution that would give the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shi’is some space and would prevent the domination of one group over another would be the formation of a loose federation in Iraq. Traditionally, Iraq was divided into three governorates under the Ottomans, consisting of the Kurds in the North with their main cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, the Sunni Arabs in the centre with Baghdad as their capital, and the Shi’i south mainly based around Basra, Karbala and Najaf. Although it is important to maintain the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq, there is no reason why that unity cannot be maintained within a federation. The Kurds would like to be able to preserve their distinct identity, their language and their customs. They will be best able to do that in a loosely structured federation, while the Sunni and the Shi’i Arabs, the Turkmens and others could form the other major components of a united, federal Iraq, without any need for the partition of the country. This would mean that even if in the present election the Sunnis do not achieve a proportionate share of power, the door would always be open to them to play a larger role in the future.
The larger regional perspective and what the U.S. must do
In the above-mentioned article in Foreign Affairs, James Dobbins rightly argues that if the United States wishes to achieve success in Iraq, it must simultaneously do three things. It must win the support of Iraq’s neighbours, must try to find a solution to all the problems of the Middle East, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, and to engage other countries in Iraq. He writes: “Peace, stability, territorial integrity, and respect for national sovereignty are the themes on which a compelling regional strategy can be built to motivate Iraqis to take responsibility for their own destiny, induce Iraq’s neighbors to support the emergence of a moderate, broadly representative, and regionally responsible regime in Baghdad–as Afghanistan’s neighbors have done in Kabul–and secure broader international support for the effort.”
The United States cannot hope to succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan by constantly trying to antagonise Iran by isolating her, and antagonise the Arabs by turning a blind eye to the plight of the Palestinians. At the same time, it will not receive the backing of major European countries, or China, Russia or Japan without a serious involvement of the United Nations in Iraq. The time is ripe for a bold and farsighted approach that would include all Iraq’s neighbours. However, any hope of long-term success in Iraq must be accompanied with an unequivocal promise that US forces will leave Iraq at the earliest opportunity and that the US does not intend to stay permanently in Iraq and control its fate.
The cancellation of the election at this late hour would only increase terrorism, embolden the insurgents, alienate the Shi’is and the Kurds, prevent regional countries from helping to stabilise Iraq, and prolong the agony of US troops in Iraq.
* Farhang Jahanpour received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in Oriental Studies. He is a part-time tutor at the Department for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford and a member of Kellogg College, Oxford. He was formerly professor and Dean of the Faculty of Languages at the University of Isfahan, and also worked for 18 years as the Editor for Middle East and North Africa for the BBC.
