Fifteen Iraqi political parties, including the main Kurdish parties (remarkable, since things in Kurdistan are relatively stable), have petitioned to have the date of the national parliamentary election pushed back from its currently scheduled date of 1/30/05, for fairly obvious reasons. Interim PM Ayad Allawi insists the election should go forward as scheduled. http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/28/iraq.main/index.html Should the election be postponed? Will it be? Would it make any difference if it were postponed?
Leaving aside the security situation… I don’t think there is enough time to prepare/train/whatever is necessary to carry out a normal election. (That is what I’ve garnered from the news…) So even without insurgents blowing stuff up its a tight schedule.
Why not delay ? Allawi doesn’t want to give other groups more time to campaign… Americans don’t want the postponement to be seen as a “defeat”. I don’t think these political considerations warrant “risking” a bad election. So delay the dam thing and try to do something right in Iraq for a change is my opinion.
The goal of the insurgents has been to delay or to prevent the elections. I say let the elections go ahead as planned. Six months won’t make any difference. If the insurgents think they have been successful in delaying the elections, they’ll just redouble their efforts to make sure the situation as bad or worse in 6 months. We need to get the democratic process going in Iraq-- there will always be dozens of reasons NOT to hold elections.
Agreed. It might not be ideal conditions but between the various insurgent groups and the whack-a-mole antics of the occupiers, things aren’t going to get any better. Hold them, declare Mission Accomplished again and bug out in favour of a multi-national force under UN auspices.
I agree. The outcome of these elections will be irrelevant whether you hold them now or later. A Sunni/Shia civil war will prevent any real democracy from occurring in Iraq no matter when you hold elections.
A farce is a farce, whether it takes place in January or July.
Don’t delay. We know the elections will be rigged and the result a farce. But going through the motions will allow the US, however illegitimately, to declare victory and get the heck out of there. If the Iraqis choose an Islamic theocracy after the US pulls out, that is their choice to make.
With this President? Fat chance.
“Sorry, George – you made this mess, you clean it up.”
This may be a little off topic, but I keep seeing this hope expressed that a ‘proper’ Iraqi government will allow the US to withdraw. Even apart from the unrealistic nature of this hope (having a government doesn’t equate to being able to maintain order), is that really the agenda now?
What about the permanent US military bases that were planned? Has the idea been abandoned?
An interesting article by Peter Galbraith suggests that what Iraq will really need for stability is a loose three-state confederation:
This seems to indicate that the “permanent” US bases in Iraq (presumably replacing the ones in Saudi Arabia that so enrage some fundamentalist Muslims) could be based in the Kurdish region.
This looks like the most hopeful solution if it could be enacted, but it’s not clear that Iraq will be stable enough in the near future to enact it, even if the different factions could agree on it. I have no idea whether it’s likely to get worse or better if elections are delayed till June.
BLD: If the Iraqis choose an Islamic theocracy after the US pulls out, that is their choice to make.
Theoretically, yeah, but if we leave their country in such a shambles that it’s not even possible to hold free and fair elections, it’s a bit unfair to describe the outcome as “their choice”.
My guess is the reason we’re so keen to hold these “elections” is to avoid the democratic institution of an Iran-style theocracy, which is inevitable if the Shia majority get their way. The candidates will be hand-picked by the US, so those who wish to participate in the elections will have a choice of which puppet to nominate before they revolt. The less time people have to think about it before the selection and polling process are a fait accompli, the better.
How we will prevent the rather less-than-democratic and all-too-likely subsequent collapse through civil war into an Iran-style theocracy I haven’t a clue. Probably we can’t, any more than we could prop up the Shah without intervening militarily ourselves. I assume Bush will be out of office by then, in which case whatever happens will be blamed on the poor slob who inherits the mess; preferably a Democrat, of course.
Why do you assume that the Shia want a fundamentalist Islamic state? Al-Sistani certainly doesn’t seem to be with that progrram. There have already been many local elections held in Shiite regions, and the Islamists weren’t doing so well the last time I read about them.
Hell, the majority of the people in Iran don’t want a fundamentalist state either.
I do think a loose three-state confederation is possible. Why not? The Republic of Iraq States. Sounds like it might actually work.
Think Muqtada al-Sadr is going to stay under Sistani’s heel for long if he doesn’t ultimately get his way?
Unless he’s got the support of the majority of the population, he’s no threat to the democratic structure. And if he decides to re-start his insurgency, he might find his butt getting kicked pretty hard again. Remember, he was the leader of a failed insurrection. He called it quits after the American and Iraqi forces decimated his.
Would a three state system actually prevent civil war?
The oil would be landlocked in the Sunni and Kurdish areas, wouldn’t it? If they were somehow sharing the profits through charges for piping it through the port, it might work. Otherwise, I can see the Shities fighting to get any of the oil and the Sunni fighting to get more of it.
A three state republic is the most likely resolution of this, in the end. At least the most likely one that has a whole Iraq left. With or without a civil war.
Sam: in Lebanon, the groups banding together to gain power against other groups was what made millitas like Al-Sadr’s dangerous. They cannot stand up to our millitary, no one really can for more than a few weeks. But they could be a match for anyone that we are gonna train in three or four months.
We are gonna leave someday, I do not know when. I doubt it will be really long enough for Iraq to form into a united country that will be able to look past the rifts. Just uniting them against us is not gonna be enough. They are going to have to see a reason to need each other after we leave.
In a confederation where the Sunnis would be completely outnumbered, how long would it take for either the Kurds or Shia to annex the central region? Assuming of course that the central region was actually Sunni only, which it isn’t. The federation would clearly have to address the issue of who gets Baghdad. Recall Sadr City, 2 million people, mostly Shia (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/sadr-city-imagery.htm).
Secondly, how would one maintain the integrity of this federation without a stable central government? The Kurds would obviously press for greater autonomy and the right to a militia. The Shia and Sunni factions would press for the same rights out of mistrust and fear of civil war. Then you have the spectre of Turkey, who would most certainly walk in and smear the Kurds if their own Kurdish population renewed efforts to create an autonomous Kurdish state. A loose federation is simply incentive to try for a looser federation (i.e. autonomy) - there is no incentive to stay together. A unified state where the rights of all ethnicities and religions/sects are enforced by law can create incentives to stay together, especially when you consider the alternatives.
All very interesting questions. If only someone had bothered asking them before we got ourselves in this mess.