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THE
ROVING EYE
Before the breakup, the
breakdown
By Pepe Escobar
Iraq now has 275 bright, beaming members
of a new parliament. Flushed with victory, many
are already shedding their virtual shells to meet
their flesh-and-blood voters - thus running the
risk of being obliterated by a suicide bombing or
a drive-by shooting. Some parts of the world say
this is an exercise in democracy. Other, larger
parts of the world fear this is an exercise in
blood - and God - for oil. No matter what, the
Iraqi elections reality show must and will go on.
The official winners: The Grand Ayatollah
Ali al-Sistani-blessed Shi'ite list, the United
Iraqi Alliance (UIA), with 133 seats. The really
big (disproportionate) winners - the Kurds, with
71 seats. The (relative) loser - "Saddam without a
mustache", current Premier Iyad Allawi and his
Iraqiya list, with 38 seats, despite Allawi
spending more than US$4 million in a lavish
campaign (nobody knows where the money came from).
The (predictable) losers: The Sunnis, 20%
of the population, only 2% of registered voters in
crucial Anbar province going to the polls. The
Independent Democrats of moderate Sunni Arab
nationalist Adnan Pachachi didn't even get a seat.
The Iraqiyyun list of current President Ghazi
al-Yawer, a (Sunni) Samar tribal sheikh, received
only five seats.
How the (Sunni) Baghdad
street sees it: It's nearly as gloomy as the
really bad-news scenario - the UIA getting 140
seats, the Kurds 75-85, and Allawi the rest.
Prime contenders for prime minister:
Shi'ites Ibrahim al-Jafaari (Da'wa) and Adel
al-Mahdi of the Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Jafaari, a moderate,
is arguably Iraq's most popular politician. Mahdi,
a former Maoist turned ultra-neo-liberal, is very
cozy with Washington.
The ultimate Trojan
horse: Mahdi, indeed. He's promised to privatize
Iraq's oil industry. He supervised the signing of
many deals with ChevronTexaco, Shell and BP before
the elections. And he personally negotiated the
usual, one-size-fits-all "austerity package" with
the International Monetary Fund.
Key
backroom deal to watch: Allawi goes Kurd,
supporting the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's
Jalal Talabani for president and plotting with the
Kurdistan Democratic Party's Masoud Barzani.
Key wheeler-dealer to watch: Convicted
fraudster and former Pentagon darling Ahmad
Chalabi. He's paying his way to become at least a
member of the cabinet.
A done deal: By
capturing only six more seats from small Shi'ite
parties (three from the Sadrists, two from the
Organization of Islamic Action and one from the
Islamic Da'wa movement, a splinter from Da'wa) the
UIA gets a certified majority in
parliament.
What the (other) big players
say: The powerful Sunni Association of Muslim
Scholars still says the elections were unfair and
the results doctored. Muqtada al-Sadr wants an
Islamic government. And he also wants to see a
deadline for the US withdrawal, signed, sealed and
delivered: if the new government does not deliver,
major Shi'ite lumpenproletariat trouble is
inevitable.
What the UIA wants: Power;
Sharia law; expand Iraq's public sector, keep the
oil and erase the country's debt; Americans out
only when there's enough security.
What
the Kurds want: The presidency; federalism;
Kirkuk, oil included; no Sharia law.
What
the Kurds really want: An independent Kurdistan.
What the UIA gets with federalism: All the
revenue from Basra's oilfields (currently
everything goes straight to Baghdad).
What
the Kurds get with Sharia law: Nothing.
What might suit everybody: A constitution
decentralizing power to the provinces; if each
province is left alone to decide on adopting
Sharia law (as in Nigeria), the Shi'ites get
exactly what they want.
What the
Washington/Green Zone axis will do: Use the Kurds
to block by all means the UIA's push for Sharia
law, thus exasperating Sistani.
What Iran
says: Everything is cool. Sistani, the parties in
the UIA, even Talabani, everybody enjoys close
relations with Iran's regime.
What the
majority of Iraqi voters and non-voters do not
want: The privatization of Iraq's oil industry and
14 Halliburton-built US strategic military bases
securing control over Iraq's oil wells and a
Pentagon free-fire zone in the Middle East, ie the
Bush administration's two key strategic
objectives.
The other Bush administration
strategic objective: A heavy push for federalism
with a weak Baghdad and two strong, autonomous
regions, thus breaking up the Iraqi state.
The neo-conservatives' ultimate nightmare:
No more Sunni Iraqi resistance, no ethnic and
religious tensions, Iraqis drawing force from
6,000 years of history to rebuild a unified,
modern Arab nation.
The Diogenes the Cynic
scenario: The Najaf ayatollahs get control over
Iraqis' personal lives, ChevronTexaco and company
get the oil, the Bush administration gets its 14
"enduring freedom" military bases, Iraqi voters
and non-voters get nothing.
Who's really
won big since March 2003: Bechtel, Halliburton,
Lockheed-Martin, oilmen, arms dealers, investment
firms, anyone connected with the Bush cartel, plus
the wily operators who pocketed those $8.8 billion
in "reconstruction" funds - the Iraqis' own money
- which simply "disappeared" under the
responsibility of former proconsul L Paul Bremer's
Coalition Provisional Authority.
What the
40,000-strong Sunni resistance is saying now that
they're "back to normal" (a minimum of 70 daily
attacks): Victory or death; it ain't over till the
last mujahideen sings.
Match of the day
(week, months ahead, regardless of the results):
Sunni Iraqi resistance vs US occupation.
And if everything continues to go badly
wrong, as it will, who's to blame: George W Bush,
Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld
and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz are unanimous: Syria
and Iran.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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