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Doubts arise as the UN readies elections
team
By Thalif Deen
UNITED
NATIONS - Pressed by the United States, the United
Nations will send an electoral team to assess the
feasibility of holding nationwide elections in Iraq
before the end of June. But some observers doubt the
world body will be able to present an unbiased
perspective of the view on the ground, because of US
opposition to the proposed vote.
After a meeting
with US President George W Bush on Tuesday, Secretary
General Kofi Annan told reporters his institution has a
definite role to play in Iraq - but he left undefined
what that role would be. So did Bush, who claimed the
"United Nations needs to play a vital role, and it's an
important role", but stopped short of spelling out what
that means for Washington. "I have decided to send in a
team, a team that will go in to try and work with the
Iraqis in finding the way forward," Annan added.
The UN team will travel to Iraq at a time when
both the political and military climates have continued
to deteriorate. Politically, the Shi'ite majority is
demanding direct elections by June 30, a proposal
rejected by the United States. Militarily, suicide
attacks in Iraq have continued to rise, making it unsafe
even for international humanitarian organizations to
operate inside the occupied country.
"We are
going to go there to help the Iraqis, to help them
establish a government that is Iraqi," Annan said. "The
date of June 30 has been suggested, but there is some
disagreement as to the mechanism for establishing the
provisional government." The United Nations has already
dispatched two separate teams to probe the security
situation in advance of the electoral team. As well,
"the coalition has promised to do the maximum to protect
the UN team working in Iraq", Annan added.
But
according to a longtime UN employee, "If the United
States cannot protect its own soldiers from the
continued suicide bombings in Iraq, how can it assure
the safety of UN personnel?"
When US Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz attended a town council
meeting in northern Iraq last weekend, he was told
clearly that the majority Shi'ites will not compromise
on their demand for direct elections in the country. The
United States, which claims security is not adequate for
nationwide elections, is seeking endorsement from the UN
team to help jettison the proposal for the June vote,
say Middle East experts.
Washington fears that
given the vote, the Shi'ites might establish an
Iranian-style Islamic government in Baghdad, the experts
point out. Dilip Hiro, a Middle East expert and author
of the just-published Secrets and Lies: Operation
Iraqi Freedom and After, says he is not sure
security fears are prompting Washington to block
elections.
"The Pentagon claims that the number
of attacks has declined to 17 from 35 per day, and
security patrols have been reduced to 500 from 1,500 per
day," Hiro said. That means security concerns are not
sufficient grounds to deprive Iraqis of a say in their
own political future, he added.
"You must be
aware that despite the 50,000 deaths in 15 years in
Kashmir [with a population of 9 million], the Indian
government continues to hold both parliamentary and
state elections there by over-saturating the province
with soldiers and paramilitaries," Hiro said. He added
that Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shi'ite leader
demanding direct elections, suggested as early as
December to get the UN to decide.
Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA) head Paul Bremer "paid no
attention to Sistani", Hiro said. "And now there is a
grassroots movement for early elections."
The
real reason for US opposition to direct elections can be
found elsewhere, says Hiro. The best answer, he said,
was provided by Noah Feldman, a New York University law
professor and constitutional adviser to Bremer, who is
quoted as saying, "It would be a disaster to have an
election whose legitimacy was contested ... Historical
experience also suggests that quick elections under
postwar conditions elect people not dedicated to
democratization. Simply put, if you move too fast, the
wrong people could get elected," Feldman said.
Ali Abunimah, a co-founder of the online website
Electronic Iraq, said it is reasonable to assume the
Bush administration is afraid of the "wrong people"
being elected. "We can only guess at US motives, but it
is very ironic that Bush went to war supposedly to bring
democracy to the Iraqi people, and now hundreds and
thousands of Iraqis are marching for elections that the
United States does not want to have," he said.
Before the war, said Abunimah, US postwar plans
were very vague, "but we can almost be sure that they
did not include turning Iraq over to any regime in which
the Shi'ite establishment are the key players".
Instead of elections, the United States wants
provincial caucuses - a totally new concept to Iraq and
the Arab world - that in effect would ensure that its
hand-picked nominees take over the civil administration
when the CPA leaves Baghdad on June 30.
"The
Shi'ites do not require divine revelation to see through
the US plans to perpetuate its influence through an
opaque process of caucuses designed, implemented and run
by Washington and its Iraqi appointees," said Robert
Scheer, writing in The Nation magazine in December.
"It's just colonial politics, as usual. That's why the
conservative Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the revered
cleric of Iraq's Shi'ites [who make up 60 percent of the
country], is requesting a transparent one-person,
one-vote election," he said.
Hiro says the
arithmetic is simple: about 80 percent of the Shi'ites,
one-half of the Sunnis and 10-15 percent of the Kurds
support an Islamic republic. "The neo-conservatives [in
the United States] know this, as do the members of the
US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council," he said.
Last month, Annan jumped the gun when he said
direct elections before June 30 might not be possible
for logistical reasons. Asked whether the United
Nations, increasingly perceived in some quarters as a
mouthpiece of the Bush administration, could be trusted
to support Iraq for Iraqis, Abunimah said, "I think
there are two things about the United Nations that are
consistently true in recent years.
"First," he
went on, "it is staffed by some of the most dedicated
and talented professionals the world has. Second, the
top leadership, especially the secretary general, has
shown an alarming tendency to fold under US pressure.
"I am not sure how the United Nations is
perceived by Iraqis - probably with very mixed feelings
- but here in Jordan, I think many people feel that Kofi
Annan has been a very weak and compliant leader,"
Abunimah said.
(Inter Press
Service)
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