Bush does Baghdad.(IRAQ)

Publication: Kurdish Life

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Kurdish Library

"As a new Congress gathers, all of us in the elected branches of



government share a great privilege: We've been placed in office by the votes of the people we serve. And tonight that is a privilege we share with newly-elected leaders of Afghanistan, the Palestinian Territories. Ukraine, and a free and sovereign Iraq." (Applause.)... "The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else. That is one of the main differences between us and our enemies ... Our aim is to build and preserve a community of free and independent nations, with governments that answer to their citizens, and reflect their own cultures ... "Our generational commitment to the advance of freedom, especially in the Middle East, is now being tested and honored in Iraq. That country is a vital front in the war on terror, which is why the terrorists have chosen to make a stand there. Our men and women in uniform are fighting terrorists in Iraq, so we do not have to face them here at home. (Applause.) And the victory of freedom in Iraq will strengthen a new ally in the war on terror, inspire democratic reformers from Damascus to Tehran, bring more hope and progress to a troubled region, and thereby lift a terrible threat from the lives of our children and grandchildren ... "We are in Iraq to achieve a result: A country that is democratic, representative of all its people, at peace with its neighbors, and able to defend itself. And when that result is achieved, our men and women serving in Iraq will return home with the honor they have earned." (Applause.) President George W. Bush State of the Union addres, February 2005

In light of events in Iraq since March 2003, lamentations would have been more appropriate.

In the United States and elsewhere, elections in Iraq were hailed as a landmark, a "turning point." In an early April commentary, Mark Danner took a different view. Here are excerpts: "As I write, two months have passed since Iraqis went to the polls and voted ... No government has taken office, the national assembly elected in January still hasn't chosen a prime minister, and the interim administration of Iyad Allawi has long since entered a state of drift, with ministries frozen in place, unable to issue orders or carry out policies ... Though as an information operation, the elections had been an enormous success--particularly in the United States, where the images reinvigorated the conviction, at least for a time, that the war made sense--as a political fact in Iraq the results of the election were much more mixed.

"'The real problem is the story here can't be shown in images,' said my friend, the television correspondent who, disgusted with 'hotel journalism,' left Baghdad before the election. 'You can't show the fear here with a television picture. You can't show the atmosphere of paranoia. The story escapes the images--the tools--that we have to tell it.' On Election Day, for example, the images could show clearly the beautiful, intricate ballot, with its hundred and ten-odd parties and coalitions--but not the fact that there were really only three choices, each with enormous sources of money: the Kurdish list, with its funding from the Kurdish autonomous government in the north; the Shiite list, with its image of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and its funding from the mosques in the south and the Iranians across the border; and the Allawi list, with its control of the interim government and its access to that government's money and television. On Election Day, Kurds voted for the Kurdish list, Shiites voted for the Shiite list, a relative handful, about 12 percent, voted for the Allawi list--and the Sunnis made their presence known by not voting at all. The election, in effect, was an ethnic census.

"In the ideal vision of a post-Saddam Iraq, the people would have come out to bless the new political dispensation, in which the Shiites assume their rightful place as the majority party and the Kurds, and especially the Sunnis, the erstwhile elite who throughout its modern history had ruled Iraq, take their place as proud, active, and politically vital minorities. This is not what happened on January 30. Shiites won a majority, but not enough under the peculiar rules imposed by the occupation to form a government. Kurds, turning out in enormous numbers for their single list, were overrepresented in the new assembly and gained, in effect, a veto over who would form the new government. And finally, little more than one in ten Iraqis came out and voted for Allawi, dashing American hopes that he could remain in power ...

"The real story on Election Day was that the Sunnis didn't vote ... The political burden of the elections was to bring those who felt frightened or alienated by the new dispensation into the political process, so they could express their opposition through politics and not through violence; the task, that is, was to attract Sunnis to the polls and thereby to isolate the extremists. And in this, partly because of an electoral system that the Sunnis felt, with some reason, was unfairly stacked against them, the election failed ...

"The images could not show, finally, the peculiar system of government under which those elected are now struggling to function--a system in effect imposed by the American occupation in the interim constitution, known as the 'transitional administrative law.' That system demands among other things, that the national assembly bring together two thirds of its votes to confirm a government, a requirement found in no other parliamentary system in the world. That requirement is an artifact of the larger conundrum of Iraqi politics: it was demanded by America's critical Iraqi ally, the Kurds, who are deeply ambivalent about their connection to and role in an Iraqi state dominated by Shiites, and it was supported by the Americans. In effect the two-thirds requirement, and the political impasse it has fostered, is a legacy of the Americans' reluctance to confront the logical implication of their war to unseat Saddam Hussein and his Sunni elite: that there will come to power in Iraq a government dominated by the Shia, powerfully influenced by Islamic law and favorably inclined toward the United States' foremost enemy in the region, the Islamic Republic of Iran ... These facts are vital to comprehending the dramatic difference between the encouraging images we are shown and the stubborn and bloody reality on the ground." (TomDispatch.com, 3.31.05)

No sooner were election results on the table. Shiites and Kurds were haggling over cabinet posts for themselves and positions for their followers. Naturally each accused the other of pursuing "a narrow ethnic agenda." Local papers were said to be "full of reports about corruption and patronage." (Reuters 3.23.05)

Some Sunni sheiks were publicly urging followers to "strike with force" against Kurds and Shiites. In Kirkuk, Sheikh Sattar Abdulhalik Abdurahman told tribal leaders: "The Americans aren't the problem; we're living under an occupation of Kurds and Shiites. It's time to fight back." At a local gathering, Sheikh Mohammed Mahmoud al-Mudaris of the Iraqi Islamic Party warned off a Shi'a attempting to reach the podium, saying: "You are from a Shi'ite family. Why do you insert yourself into our affairs?" Whereupon the Shi'a stormed off shouting, "Fine, have it your way, Sunnis against Shi'ites. That's exactly what the Jews want." (Globe 3.27.05)

By late March, still the crucial cabinet post of oil minister remained vacant. According to Knight-Ridder, "Kurds, who number at the outside no more than 20% of Iraq's population, were demanding 25 percent of the nation's oil revenues." To sweeten the deal, they agreed, at least on paper, to allow "some" of their peshmergaa to be "absorbed" into Iraq's security forces. (3.27.05) PUK official Barham Saleh told Agence France Presse a different story: Shiites were "refusing to give Kurds the oil ministry unless he took the post himself. 'Some of the Shiite brothers said if you were the candidate for this post it is possible to agree. But I apologized and I said I have my reservations about this." (Knight-Ridder 3.28.05) Truth be told, no Kurds would turn down such a strategic post.

It was end March before the newly installed National Assembly convened for the second session, having accomplished virtually nothing in the first. Still there was no speaker. Said frustrated Shiite cleric Hussein Sadr: "Public opinion on the street is now waiting for some action by us. What can we answer? What shall we say to history?" But members of the assembly weren't talking to history; for the most part, they weren't talking to each other. Minutes into the second session, temporary president Dhari Fayad demanded that the media leave the hall. 'We're having a secret session," he told reporters. The conclave then set a new deadline to try to elect a speaker. Shiites and Kurds decided to reserve some posts for Sunnis, including that of speaker, but they had no prospect prepared to accept the post (WP 3.29.05)

While they bickered, a hunger specialist informed the UN that malnutrition among the youngest Iraqis "almost doubled" since the invasion. By last fall, 7.7 percent of children under five were suffering from acute malnutrition, as compared with 4 percent after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. (AP 3.30.05) But the assembly had more important things to think about: in particular the August 15 "deadline" set by the U.S. for completing the draft constitution. According to member Hajan al-Hassani: "There are certain groups that want to see the TAL (the U.S. drafted transitional administrative law) as the basis of the new constitution. If that is agreed upon it will make our job much easier to finish by August. But probably we'll see some big differences. State and religion will definitely come up again; federalism will come up again; some of the touchy issues will crop up. Personally I think we'll see an extension." (AFP 3.31.05) Not if the White House has its way. And if past is prologue, the White House will get its way.

Meanwhile Ayatollah Jawad al-Khalisi, head of the Iraqi National Foundation Congress--an alliance of secular and religious organizations encompassing all religious and ethnic groups in Iraq--launched this missive in an op ed for the Guardian: "The U.S.-British occupation of Iraq is poisoning...

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