On Sunday Iraq faces the most decisive moment in its history since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.
About 19 million voters will cast ballots in parliamentary elections that will shape their country’s future, either consolidating Iraq as a fledgling democracy or plunging it back into civil war.
The vote will also shape the Middle East for years to come.
It holds the potential to derail or expedite the scheduled withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq by next year and will ultimately determine what influence Iran will wield in the region. After seven years of war, blood-soaked occupation, civil unrest and growing sectarian strife, Iraq now stands at a pivotal turning point. But there is no clearly defined path forward.
“The state remains so weak, its sovereignty so permeable and its political class so divided that it almost invites foreign interference,” warns a report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. The political landscape is so badly fragmented no single group can expect to win a majority or to govern alone. Tomorrow’s election features 6,200 candidates from 80 parties. That is a recipe for political deadlock that can revert to the vicious sectarianism that so recently tormented Iraq.
“The most likely [election] scenarios will probably lead to protracted negotiations over government formation that could hamstring the functioning of the government for some time, and might well provoke renewed violence,” said Kenneth Pollack, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution.
Whatever the election results, they will kick-off an intense — and possibly violent — period of horse-trading and deal making to form a government. Last time around, the six-month gap between the vote in December 2005 and formation of a unity government also marked Iraq’s descent into an insurgency that rapidly claimed more than 100 lives a day.
Last month, twice as many people died from violence as in January, and this week suicide bombers killed more than 50 people in six different attacks near Baghdad. In 2005, candidates could not meet voters in public and most refused to have their pictures on election posters for fear of assassination. Now electioneering is more open and freewheeling. The country is plastered with election posters and filled with small rallies. Voters, who prefer small gifts to promises, have been obliged by politicians who shower them with everything from cash to air conditioners.
U.S. and Iraqi officials warn insurgents will try to disrupt the poll and the government is deploying hundreds of thousands of troops to guard voters. On Thursday, police imposed a nighttime curfew on Iraq that runs until Monday; they also sealed the borders between provinces; and tomorrow, they will ban all vehicular travel, except for police and emergency vehicles, the news media and election monitors, to discourage car bombs.
Five years ago, U.S. troops played a major role in securing the polling places. This time, Iraqis are running the elections, providing troops for security, monitors to supervise the voting and courts to handle disputes.
Hopes the country’s divisions could be settled at the ballot box disappeared when politicians were unable to resolve such basic issues as sharing oil revenue, balancing powers between the central and regional governments or reconciling relationships between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
This election may have exacerbated the divisions instead of bridging them. Sectarianism has once again emerged as a dominant theme. For now, Iraq’s fate will be determined by the interactions of a few major coalitions.
The unified Shiite political front that swept the last election has split into two camps: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Da’wa or State of Law coalition, which presents itself as nonsectarian; and the far-more religiously inclined Iranian-influenced and Shiite-dominated Iraqi National Alliance, which combines the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and followers of the radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
A third group, the Iraqi National Movement , or Iraqiya, is led by Iyad Allawi, a secular nationalist who was the U.S.-appointed head of Iraq’s first post-war transitional government in 2004-05. Even the Kurds, kingmakers in the last parliament, are divided between the main Kurdish Alliance and the breakaway Kurdish Goran or Change party. Sunni Arabs, who make up about 20% of the population, boycotted the last parliamentary elections and see this poll as a chance to restore some of their lost power. But their votes will be divided between religious and regional parties, while 440 Sunni candidates have been banned from running because of alleged links to Saddam Hussein’s now-outlawed Baath party.
The disqualifications, imposed last month by a Shiite-dominated commission, plunged the country into a sectarian crisis as Sunni leaders claimed they were targets for discrimination and briefly threatened to boycott the elections.
U.S. diplomats and military commanders in Iraq blamed Iran for the crisis, accusing Tehran of trying to expand its influence among Iraq’s Shiite leaders, a situation that alarms neighbours Saudi Arabia and Turkey. In the end, one of the banned Sunni politicians, Saleh Muhamed al-Mutlaq, head of the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, abandoned calls for a boycott and threw his support to Mr. Allawi. Six months ago, Mr. Maliki seemed certain to win tomorrow’s election. A compromise choice for prime minister, precisely because he did not threaten anyone, he had benefited enormously by being in power when the U.S. military’s surge dismantled Sunni terrorist groups.
His power also grew when he used the Iraq military to rout Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra in March 2008. Mr. Maliki began to assert himself more and in 2009 broke with his Shiite allies to form his State of Law coalition in provincial elections, in which he received a plurality of votes in most provinces. For a while it looked like Iraq was moving away from religious-based politics under a strongman who could usher U.S. troops out of the country. But it has not worked out that way. Terrorists have escalated their violence, assassinations have soared and Mr. Maliki’s popularity has diminished as Iraqis continue to complain about corruption and a lack of services.
“The Iraqi people mostly remain frustrated with the corruption, frustration, fecklessness and incompetence of virtually all of their leaders,” said Mr. Pollack. “If they truly had their druthers, many (perhaps most) seem ready to get rid of the entire political leadership and start again from scratch in the hope of cultivating a new leadership.”
After rebranding himself a nationalist, Mr. Maliki reverted to sectarian rhetoric to win votes. So far, public opinion polls, which are not very reliable in Iraq, suggest tomorrow’s vote will be split roughly evenly between his State of Law party, the sectarian Shiite Iraqi National Alliance and Mr. Allawi’s Iraqiya.
That’s a recipe for prolonged political inertia in which no party can claim a mandate to form a government. It also fuels fears of a botched election, similar to recent frauds in Afghanistan and Iran, in which perceptions of illegitimacy will increase the likelihood of renewed violence.
In a worst-case scenario Iraq could descend into the hellish sectarian conflict of Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war, with Iran playing the role of Syria.
“Civil war in Iraq could easily metastasize into a regional war, involving pro and anti-Iranian Shiite groups inside Iraq, Sunnis and Kurds and Iran itself,” said Thomas Ricks, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security and author of several books on Iraq. “A regional war in the middle of the world’s largest oil patch could shake the global economy to its foundations and would likely make the current recession look mild.”
pgoodspeed@nationalpost.com
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