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The Iraqi Situation: A Bitterly Divided Society |
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Thursday, 16 February 2006 |
At last, on Friday February 10, 2005, the Iraqi independent electoral commission released what it called the final and official results of the last election. The British Foreign Secretary said immediately that this was a great leap in the democratization of Iraq. The results were accepted by the international committee which was looking into the dozens of complaints and grievances and after a very critical judicial process. The committee decided that all of the complaints should be disregarded and that everybody should accept the result of the elections and that the Iraqi politicians should start immediately to form a government that includes all sections of Iraqi society to start the process of building the new democratic prosperous Iraq!
This was the last election in the series that started on the last January 30th and resulted in the extant national assembly that oversaw the writing of a permanent constitution, which was in turn ratified in a referendum by the Iraqi people on October 15, 2005, on whose provisions this last election was conducted. It has been almost two months after the closing of the ballots and we still don’t have the promised permanent parliament or the 4-year government. The lack of a real government has plunged the country in a very serious administrative and constitutional vacuum and has led to a very serious deterioration of the general situation in the country. Security is out of control with very serious daily attacks on mosques, churches, working places, foreign reporters and Iraqi individuals. The essential services are practically non-existent, the energy and food provision is at a very low level. The current situation in Iraq is chaotic, and extremely worrying, it is worse than that in Somalia.
At this juncture I think it might be useful to recapitulate some of the most important events which had taken place in Iraq after its occupation by the Americans which followed their overthrow of Saddam and his regime. The American campaign which started during the early hours of March 20, 2003, and was accomplished on April 9, 2003. The codenamed operation Iraqi freedom has lasted about three weeks at the end of it Saddam was on the run and his regime has completely collapsed. With the military came into the country an assortment of ex-State Department officials and diplomats and a number of retired generals, these were incorporated into an organization which was called the Office of Rehabilitation and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) under the directorship of a retired army general Jay Garner. Garner who has been for the last decade been doing reconstruction work in the north of Iraq following the brutal ending of the Kurdish uprising which followed Saddam’s expulsion from Kuwait after the failure of his unfortunate adventure in Kuwait. ORHA lasted for only a little more than two weeks at the end of which it was disbanded and Jay Garner was without a job. Garner was replaced by L. Paul Bremer an ex-State Department official who has until recently been working in the Kissinger consultancy in New York. Bremer was named a presidential envoy to Iraq and headed a new outfit that was called the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the CPA inherited the remnants of ORHA and was a coalition authority in name only it was completely an American creation and its director received his orders directly from the White House as a civil administrator of the occupied country.
When ORHA was dismantled it was called a failure, but if ORHA was a failure, the CPA was a disaster, its director was dictatorial, knew nothing of the administration of a country with a very diverse geography and demography like Iraq and his personal behavior was rumored to be less than acceptable socially and financially. Bremer's organization was inefficient and very corrupt. The CPA in its turn was dissolved in June of 2004 and the United States transferred sovereignty to the Iraqis. Bremer left and was replaced by John Negroponte a career diplomat who was until recently the American Ambassador to the United Nations and was involved in all the machinations that have been taking place in the security council during and after the invasion. Bremer left Iraq, but he left behind a script with hard and fast rules which laid out a quick succession of goals starting with the January 30th election for the current national assembly that oversaw the drafting of a permanent constitution in August and its ratification in the October 15 referendum. The script culminated on December 15th with the last election that was conducted to elect a permanent parliament and a government with a legitimacy earned at the ballot box to govern the country for the next four years. Negroponte left the country after only 8 months on the job, his stay was characterized by a very different approach to his job he was taking what was termed by some writers as a back seat in evident attempt to absorb some of the shocks of the Bremer imperial style. John Negroponte after a lapse of four months was replaced by Zalmay Khalilzad (Zad) another career diplomat, an Afghan born envoy who has been lately the ambassador to Afghanistan. King Zad is outgoing, charming and prone to the oriental methods of wrangling and cajoling he knew most of the current Iraqi politicians, he was the coordinator of the various Iraqi opposition groups when they were outside the country, he knew how to get what he wants.
About midday during elections day one of the electoral commission’s spokesmen said that the final results of these elections will not be known before two weeks or a bit later. The same commission in a surprise announcement on the 20th declared that the preliminary results of the counting of the votes pointed to a very clear victory to the Shiite group and to make things even more controversial its statement was worded and presented in a way which made the preliminary results look like a final one! That's when hell broke loose with the others shouting “cheating” and “fraud”, and were questioning the neutrality of the commission. The Sunnis started bombarding the commission with dozens of grievances and complaints and described incidents of threats and intimidation to the voters during the days that preceded the elections and on balloting day. They demanded the annulment of the results and a re-run of the elections. The most serious complaints centered on the role that the Iranians were playing in the process, the most flagrant evidence of this interference was the capture of a trailer that was full of ballot boxes similar to those which were used by the commission. The captured trailer is said to have been one of four which were brought into the country the other three were never found. The Shiites side stuck to its guns and started to talk about the formation of the new government and named two of its members as candidates to the job of Prime Minister. They also started to woo the Kurds who have swept the north including Kirkuk, but these attempts only helped in hardening the position of the losers who were now coalescing in a major alignment of about 40 political parties and groupings and independent personalities, and they were threatening civil disobedience and the boycotting the newly elected parliament. The situation has become inflamed and badly polarized, it has degenerated into a very serious crisis.
When the final results were announced the were received differently by the three main groups, the Shiites were very pleased and accepted the results immediately, the Kurds were a bit reserved, the Sunnis were not happy and threatened a return to the earlier quarrels. The British Foreign Secretary intervened with a statement in which he declared that this was a very important step in the democratization of Iraq and that all parties should accept the results which have been looked into by the judiciary and have been approved by the international committee and concentrate on the formation of a national unity government which should include all the elements in the Iraqi society. The statement was tailored in very diplomatic terms, but the message was very clear, ENOUGH, now they were all talking about understanding and compromises and the need to resolve the crisis and finish with the job of forming the long awaited cabinet. The omens are not very good, the differences and suspicions are very serious and deep rooted and have permeated even the individual groups themselves, the Shiites who have been haggling amongst themselves over the choice of their candidate for the last two months were only able to select their candidate for the prime minister’s job after a bitter and a very divisive secret ballot. The society has been highly polarized almost irreversibly on purely ethnic and religious lines, Iraq is a bitterly divided place.
Dr. Najeeb Hanoudi
Sunday, Feb. 12, 2005
Amman/Jordan
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