THE
ROVING EYE First we vote, then we kick you
out By Pepe Escobar
No matter
what the spin from Time magazine's "man of the year", US
President George W Bush, or defense chief Donald
Rumsfeld, there's one overarching question facing the 83
entities - nine coalition lists, 47 political parties
and 27 individuals, totaling more than 5,000 candidates -
now competing for the 275 seats in Iraq's interim
parliament and that will be entitled to write the next
Iraqi constitution. The absolute majority of Iraqis want
the Americans out of their country as soon as possible.
But how?
The United Iraqi Alliance - the
Shi'ite, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani-supervised
electoral list (228 candidates) - has a detailed,
23-point platform. According to its main negotiator,
Hussein Shahristani, the platform insists on the
"sovereignty, unity and Islamic identity" of Iraq, and
most crucially includes a plan with a precise date for
the end of the military occupation. Whether the
Americans will accept the plan (neo-conservative dreams
for the Middle East collapsing in the sand), or whether
this will be enough to placate Sunni anger, no one yet
knows. The powerful Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars
is maintaining its boycott of the elections. But a few
Sunni formations are running, such as the Islamic Party,
an offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood (275 candidates);
the independent democrats of former ambassador Adnan
Pachachi (70 candidates); and the Democratic National
Party of Nassir Chaderchi (12 candidates).
"Unity" for the moment is a chimera, even within
Shi'ite ranks. With firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and
his movement, the Sadrists, off the electoral list, the
question now is to what extent the Shi'ites will be able
to monopolize the critical mass as the foremost channel
of expression for the disenfranchised. The Sadrists
won't be part of the next elected, interim parliament.
This means they will be free to constantly keep the
Sistani-endorsed congressmen in check as far as their
crucial point - kicking the Americans out - is
concerned.
Asia Times Online sources in Baghdad
confirm that moderate Iraqis - Sunni, Shi'ite, Kurds,
Christians - fear above all the "Lebanization" of Iraq.
The risk of post-election civil war is immense - as
attested by the proliferation of mono-ethnic and
mono-confessional electoral lists, or the recent
bombings outside the holy Imam Hussein shrine in
Karbala. Neo-Ba'athists active in the Sunni resistance
will never accept a United Iraqi Alliance victory. So
there's a straight confluence between the strategy of
the neo-Ba'athists and the radical Islamists of Tawhid
wa Jihad, Jordanian-born extremist Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi's movement, helped by up to 2,000 Salafi
jihadis from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Syria and
Kuwait.
Washington will keep trying in the next
few weeks to push Syria up against a wall - even if
Damascus has nothing to do with Iraqi insurgents. Two
Syrian clerics are being strictly monitored: Imam Abdul
Aziz al-Khatib, from the al-Darwishiya Mosque in
Damascus, and Imam Abu al-Daaqaa, of the Aleppo Mosque.
Syria remains the main jihadi transit point into Iraq
for two reasons: as long as one is a national from an
Arab League country, it's easy to get a temporary
resident visa; and for the Syrians, it would be next to
impossible to survey their long desert borders with Iraq
in the midst of widespread corruption among border
officials.
Washington's accusations that Iran
is interfering in Iraqi politics are also baseless.
A Shi'ite-dominated Iraq will inevitably entertain
good relations with Iran - but that does not mean it will
be subordinated to Tehran, as Iraqi nationalism plays
a much stronger role than confessionalism, the
religious school one follows. There's an insistent rumor
in Baghdad about the only possibility for preventing
a Shi'ite-dominated government in Iraq: it would be a
coup d'etat concocted by interim Prime Minister Iyad
Allawi and his coterie of co-opted neo-Ba'athists, backed
by the US military, who would then have to face
Shi'ite guerrillas. The neo-cons, in this case, would
have their pliable "Saddam without a mustache" - as
Allawi has been referred to in Baghdad since he took
power last June. But obviously this scenario, from
Bush's "spreading freedom" point of view, is out of the
question.
January 30, 2005, the day slated for
Iraqi elections to be held, could be the thunder and
lightning announcing the start of the Iraqi Civil War.
Or, as many Iraqis convey in their prayers to Allah, it
could lead to an elected Shi'ite-dominated government -
but Iraqi nationalist nevertheless - convincing moderate
Sunnis that their political commitment to the end of the
occupation is more effective than a guerrilla strategy.
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