|
|
|
|
THE ROVING
EYE
Vote or
no vote, we will kill you
By
Pepe Escobar
"And to George W Bush, we
say, 'You have asked us to bring it on, and so
have we. Like never expected. Have you another
challenge'?"
- Message from the Sunni
Iraqi resistance, January 12
 History
will salute it in kind: the US administration of
George W Bush, parts 1 and 2, has introduced to
the world the concept of election at gunpoint. The
guinea pig: Iraq, on January 30. The rules:
candidates must be anonymous (otherwise they will
be killed). Voters cannot go out and vote
(otherwise they may be killed). Even if they
wanted to vote, they wouldn't know where, because
the location of the polling stations will be known
only the night before the election.
Of
1 million eligible expatriate voters, only 10%
will actually vote. There are no Sunni Arab
candidates (in part because the US military killed - or
jailed - many Sunni party and tribal leaders). For
any Iraqi in Jordan, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia or
Turkey, it will be impossible to cross the border
and vote: borders will be closed for three days.
Inside Iraq there will be curfews - and even
traffic will be blocked. Half of all candidates
have already withdrawn. And there will be no
international monitors. As the names of the
roughly 7,700 candidates on 80 party coalition
lists are still unknown on the eve of polling day,
no wonder the word on Baghdad's streets is that
"the Americans gave us the first secret elections
in history".
Asia Times Online sources in a
ravaged Baghdad under a gloomy, grayish sky filled
with smoke from fires and weapons and smog from
cars and generators confirm that something like
40% of Iraqis believe they are electing a president
- when they are in fact voting for a list
of candidates representing a party or coalition.
Each party chooses the pecking order of candidates
in each list. The word in Baghdad is that
at least 4 million of 15 million eligible Iraqi
voters will not show up on Sunday (roughly 27%). In
neighboring Jordan, the estimate is that at least
40% will not show up.
So far, 53
political parties - roughly half of the registered total
- as well as all 30 independent candidates
have abandoned the elections to protest that they
are being held under occupation. A crucial absence
is the Patriotic Front for Iraqi Tribes, a
coalition of 40 major Sunni tribes. US troops recently
killed Sheikh Abd al-Razzaq al-Ka'udd, one of the
chiefs of the powerful Dulaim tribe of the western
desert - a big, big mistake. The tribe responded
that with no security, voting is out of the
question. It also accused many parties of being
involved in an industry of fake ballots.
The election result is a
foregone conclusion: a parliament dominated by
Shi'ites, with a few Kurds and no Sunni Arabs. "If you
vote we will kill you," says the Sunni resistance
to the Iraqi population. "If you don't vote, we
will kill you later," says the Pentagon to the
Sunni resistance. Under these circumstances
the elections cannot possibly be credible, and
cannot possibly result in a legitimate government.
Only one thing is certain: the guerrilla war
afterward will be even bloodier - with ominous civil-war
overtones.
A Sunni 'parliamentary
quota'?
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of
the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq (SCIRI) and the leading man in the United
Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani-endorsed Shi'ite party list that will
win the elections and form the next government, is
on the shortlist for being chosen as prime
minister, as well as Ibrahim Jaafari of the Da'wa
Party - the most popular politician in Iraq at the
moment. There is also plenty of speculation in
Baghdad over another SCIRI member, Adil Abdul
Mahdi, a secular Shi'ite and former Marxist who is
currently the finance minister in the Iyad Allawi
regime.
Shi'ites may win it - but they may
not get it. Baghdad is awash with rumors that
Washington is still trying to strike some kind of
deal with Sistani so "the man from the Americans"
or "Saddam without a mustache" (as he is known in
Baghdad) Allawi remains in power, along with his
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asset-infested
government, which encouraged and applauded the
destruction of Fallujah. Washington
neo-conservatives are concerned about the
influence of Shi'ite Iran on the Shi'ite parties;
thus the Washington-Green Zone axis in Baghdad is
busy maneuvering not only to keep their man in
power, but to get a sort of "parliamentary quota"
for the Sunnis as well - as a way of conferring
some legitimacy to the political process. The
Iraqi Islamic Party has already said "no" to a
similar offer by the UIA.
This is
happening just as the powerful Sunni Association
of Muslim Scholars (AMS), in a remarkable
turnaround, finally decided to accept a
Shi'ite-dominated government - and now insists it
has only "differences of opinion" with Sistani.
The AMS still stands by its call for a boycott of
the elections. And its priority remains a
definitive deadline to get the Americans out. This
is the priority of virtually the whole Iraqi
population, Sunni, Shi'ite or Kurd.
But
now Sheikh Ibrahim al-Adhami, the leader of the
crucial Abu Hanifa mosque (where the Iraqi
resistance was born) and a key AMS senior member,
is saying that "the elections are one matter, the
constitution is another". The next parliament will
double as a constituent assembly. Adhami and the
AMS are now saying that "all Sunnis must take part
in drafting the constitution".
This in essence means that the whole ball game after
the elections will revolve on when and how to kick
the Americans out. It's also the only window of
opportunity for the future Shi'ite government to
seduce moderate Sunnis who fear civil war, and the
only way to isolate the guerrilla resistance.
But if the whole neo-conservative
rationale for the invasion and occupation of Iraq
was to facilitate the expansion of greater Israel
and control a key energy source in the Middle
East, how is it possible for Washington to even
envision a retreat? The Pentagon has already
announced that it is ready to keep at least
120,000 troops in Iraq for the next two years,
under two pretexts: to train Iraqi security forces
and to fight the guerrilla war. President George W
Bush has spelled it all out: the US will not be
leaving Iraq any time soon because he has
interpreted his re-election as a confidence vote.
Ask Vice President Dick Cheney (although he won't
answer): the whole point of the US in Iraq is
long-term domination over Arab oil.
What Sistani wants
Drafting the
permanent constitution will open a Pandora's box -
but one thing seems to be certain at the moment:
Iraq post-election will not be an Islamic
republic. Even with the Shi'ites deferring to
Sistani's wishes, it's fair to expect a strong
federal state, highly centralized, with secular
law occasionally clashing with Islam, but only as
far as personal beliefs are concerned.
It's critical to consider that Sistani has
never issued a fatwa or even a
mere commentary asking for the Americans to leave
right after the elections. Until now, the uneasy
feeling among most Sunnis is that Sistani has
been cooperating with the invaders/occupiers. This
has led to wild speculation among Sunnis, our
sources say, about an evil alliance between the
Americans and the Shi'ites to smash the Sunnis. But the
fact is the crucial Shi'ite electoral promise is
to negotiate the American way out. If an
elected Shi'ite government won't do it, it will
be immediately denounced by Shi'ite cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr - who maintains that there cannot be
free and fair elections under occupation. There's
no electoral campaigning at all in the 2.5-million-strong
slum of Sadr City in Baghdad, Muqtada's
stronghold.
It's also taken for granted in
Baghdad that the Shi'ites will deliver a Kurdistan
to the Kurds, composed of six of Iraq's 18
provinces - with incendiary consequences. On
January 16, the Allawi regime and the Iraqi
electoral commission allowed 100,000 Kurds
expelled from oil-rich, multi-ethnic Kirkuk by
Saddam Hussein to vote in the province. Sunni
Arabs were livid: Kirkuk is currently out of the
Kurdish autonomous region, and Kurds dream of it
as the capital of a future Kurdistan. Immediately
afterward, the head of the Arab Unifying Front,
Wasfy al-Assy, said his coalition had pulled out
of the elections.
The specter of
Fallujah
Since April 2003, eight US
divisions cannot even secure the road from Baghdad
airport to the Green Zone. The Allawi regime,
brutal as well as illegitimate, only benefited the
guerrilla war. The "Salvador option", CIA-run
death squads, is also not likely to smash the
guerrilla war.
Washington
neo-conservatives cannot create a "new Iraq"
because Sunni guerrillas have already infiltrated
and will keep on infiltrating every new
institution. Moreover, the Pentagon has no
intelligence to engage in effective
counterinsurgency - thus the desperate talk about
the "Salvador option".
Fallujah has disappeared from the news - as well as
from the face of the Earth - but the
guerrilla war continues. There was no "breaking the back
of the insurgency", as the Pentagon
mantra claims. Fallujah was in essence obliterated by a
man-made tsunami to prove the superiority of
"American values". The Sunni resistance in
essence responded: "Is that all you've got?"
Asia
Times Online sources close to the resistance in
Fallujah confirm that a running joke among the
mujahideen - reminiscent of many a hip-hop lyric
in the US - is that the Americans control the day,
but then the muqawama (resistance) imposes
its own curfew and controls the night. The
fighters' rage against the occupiers - compounded
by Abu Ghraib, repeated killings of innocent
civilians, perceived napalm bombing in Fallujah -
is boundless. Last weekend, the Fallujah
mujahideen, according to a military plan by the
general command of the Iraqi Islamic Resistance,
decided to withdraw from the southern part of the
city - which they controlled - because dozens of
other resistance groups around the country were
asking to share their expertise.
They have
time. They have loads of weapons. They have plenty
of financing. One of these groups alone - the
Islamic Army in Iraq, which kept two French
journalists as hostages for four months - has
17,000 jihadis, including some former Saddam
Republican Guards. Even Iraq's chief spook,
General Mohammed Shahwani, agrees that the
resistance numbers at least 40,000 hardcore
fighters, with a support group of "as many as
200,000". Their motto is "victory or death". Vote or
no vote, "free" or "secret" elections, for them
any new Iraqi government will be seen as a mortal
enemy.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for
information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
© Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
|
|
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong
Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
|
Asian Sex Gazette Middle East Sex News
|
|
|
