BUSH AND Blair have been quick to hail the elections in Iraq as a "victory
for democracy" and a vindication of their brutal occupation of Iraq, but this
was largely for public consumption. They know that in reality not a single
issue has been resolved by the Iraqi elections.
A western-style democracy, with all its restrictions, is not even on offer
to the people of Iraq. How can any democratic election take place under the
guns of a foreign occupation force? All that imperialism offers the Iraqi
people is continued bloodshed, suffering and the looting of Iraq’s economic
resources.
Iraq’s macabre election went ahead amidst gunfire, exploding bombs and
deserted streets. Streets in cities across Iraq had been emptied for two days
before the election, borders sealed, airports and roads closed. Hardly anyone
voted in the ruins of Fallujah.
As Robert Fisk of The Independent observed, it was more like the
preparation for a war than an election, with US and coalition troops on every
street corner. The votes will not be counted for a few days yet, but some
results are already assured: greater sectarian division and heightened
insurgency.
The election displayed all the divisions that the US-led invasion has
created in Iraqi society. The brutal occupation has opened sectarian wounds in
Iraq that lay under the surface before. There were high turnouts in the Shia
and Kurdish areas but the overwhelming majority of Sunni Muslim Iraqis in
central Iraq boycotted the election.
The turnout in Shia areas reflected the reaction to years of repression
under Saddam, but also the Shiite parties’ jockeying for position to achieve
greater influence in the national assembly. Ayatollah Sistani, spiritual
leader of many Iraqi Shias, had issued a fatwah to vote, an instruction which
he said was even more important than prayer.
And the election also revealed the almost universal hostility among Iraqis
to the imperialist occupation. One of the main things that unites Iraqis
whether from a Shiite or Sunni background, voters or boycotters is a universal
hatred of the occupying forces. Most Sunnis boycotted the election in protest
at the US occupation and most Shias voted in what they saw as the best way to
get rid of the occupiers.
More problems ahead
THE ELECTIONS could not elect a sovereign government, whatever the vote’s
result. Whoever is selected as prime minister the real decisions will still be
made in Washington, transmitted through the giant US embassy in Baghdad and
exercised through the barrels of the guns of American troops. The election’s
main task was to elect a constituent assembly to write the new constitution
due by 15 August. This in itself will raise more problems than solutions.
The Sunnis’ boycott will make it difficult to patch up a constitutional
arrangement that includes all Iraqi ethnic groups. Sistani and Shia leaders
realise they have to include Sunnis outside the national assembly in
negotiations for a new constitution, but they will not be willing to
relinquish the dominant position they conquered through the elections.
The high turnout of Kurds in the northern provinces reflects their desire
for autonomy, but this throws up even more conundrums for the assembly and
problems for imperialism. Kurds leaving the polling stations also voted in an
unofficial ballot for an independent Kurdistan, which is intended to increase
the bargaining power of Kurdish leaders for autonomy.
Any attempt to include Kirkuk, which lies in the heart of the northern oil
fields and has a large Arab population, in the Kurdish autonomous areas would
be resisted by Sunni Arabs in the province and beyond. It would also encourage
the oil-rich Shia-dominated provinces in the South to push for some form of
autonomy.
The election has not resolved a single problem facing the US administration
in Iraq. According to US military estimates 200,000 insurgents, including
40,000 hardened fighters, pin down 150,000 American troops.
The US administration had hoped to create some kind of Iraqi security force
that will allow an American withdrawal. But there is no chance of the
newly-created Iraqi national guard containing the insurgency with only 40,000
largely untrained volunteers recruited so far and its own ranks depleted by
desertions and already infiltrated by insurgent sympathisers.
Bush and Blair, both under intense pressure at home to withdraw from Iraq,
try to portray the election as some kind of light at the end of the tunnel.
This might actually add to the pressure on Bush to withdraw American troops as
their death and injury tolls mount.
But the US administration do not expect to pull out of Iraq for at least
two years. Some Pentagon analysts believe they will be there for much longer.
Long gone are the triumphalist days immediately after the war, now US policy
in Iraq is reduced to damage limitation.
Some strategists of the American ruling class recognise that there is no
solution and favour an early exit leaving Iraqis to their fate in a divided
country. But Bush cannot countenance such a humiliating u-turn.
Imperialist nightmare
TALK OF a capitalist "democratic domino effect" spreading across the Middle
East is pie in the sky. On the contrary, Bush’s Iraq adventure has threatened
to destabilise the whole Middle East.
The emergence of a Shia-dominated Iraqi National Assembly and the outline
of a "Shia crescent" stretching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon
threatens all the Sunni oil kingdoms containing large, oppressed Shia
populations including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain.
Some of the neo-con "crazies" in the US regime are seriously considering
the scenario of these oil states falling and another military adventure in
Saudi Arabia while at the same time rattling its sabre at Iran.
As the socialist predicted before the invasion, the war and occupation of
Iraq has resulted in a serious setback for American imperialism, but it has
brought terrible suffering to the people of Iraq, worse even than in the
period before the war under Saddam.
Throughout Iraq in every community, most working people want unity and fear
ethnic division. But imperialism’s actions, for example its use of mainly Shia
Iraqi National Guards in the horrific destruction at Fallujah, is serving to
drive a wedge between the communities and threatens society with an escalation
of sectarian conflict.
Elections under imperialist occupation can solve none of the problems of
working people in Iraq. Instead we call for a mass movement of the working
class and oppressed masses cutting across all ethnic divisions that can build
a force capable of ending the occupation of Iraq.
Then it would be possible to call for the convening of a constituent
assembly of democratically-elected delegates to prepare a workers’ and poor
farmers’ government leading to a socialist confederation of Iraq with national
and minority rights.
Imperialism promises even more death and destruction across the Middle East
and the rest of the world unless the working people of the world can hold down
the warmongers’ mailed fist and begin the journey towards a socialist future.
