đŸ Archived View for library.inu.red âș file âș andrew-flood-the-iraq-elections.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 06:59:24. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
âĄïž Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: The Iraq elections Author: Andrew Flood Date: January 29, 2005 Language: en Topics: Iraq, Elections, US foreign interventions, Iraq War Source: Retrieved on 8th August 2021 from http://www.anarkismo.net/article/206
Sunday Jan 30 Iraq goes to the polls and gets to choose its own
government.
Or so we are told. Probably no one who was opposed to the war actually
believes this but its useful to look at the flaws in the election
process and then to ask what hope is there for the Iraqi people.
The first obvious flaw, is that the election is taking place while Iraq
is occupied by a foreign army. Add to this that the current regime was
more or less appointed by that army. And that the process is setup to
return a national assembly which will have very little power to do
anything itself except draft a new constitution.
International election observers will not actually be in Iraq but in
neighboring Jordan â presumably peering over the border with very
powerful binoculars. Who is standing is actually a secret as is the
location of polling stations. It gets even more bizarre, US soldiers
have been passing out candy and election material while on patrol [1]!
Presumably this is the sort of thing that UN electoral division chief
Carina Perelli meant when she said that âthe US military has been I
would say overenthusiastic in trying to help with this electionâ.
Earlier this month a scandal quietly erupted when the (US government
appointed) Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was revealed to have handed out
$100 bills to journalists at a campaign meeting[2]. Some of the
opposition parties have been complaining of the lack of media coverage
they have received, this might be one explanation.
Even the method of voting is pretty odd. Basically the list of
candidates is being kept secret so you vote only for a party/list. There
are no constituencies, each party gets a number of candidates elected in
proportion to what its (supposed) national vote was. There is a choice
of over 90 of these lists and as many are themselves coalitions its not
at all clear what, if anything, most stand for.
The lack of constituencies is relevant when you consider that most if
not all Sunni Arab votes are liable to boycott the election. If Iraq had
been divided up into constituencies this wouldnât matter so much as even
a tiny turnout in areas that are predominantly Sunni Arab (i.e. the
âSunni triangleâ) would ensure a somewhat proportional number of Sunniâs
were elected. But without any such constituencies the end result will be
an Iraqi national assembly comprised entirely of Shia and (Sunni) Kurds.
If what you were aiming for was civil war leading to partition there is
an absurd logic to this. But maybe this is too cynical?
Of course the joy of being an anarchist is that even if these elections
were to be conducted perfectly weâd still recognize that all they would
do is bring to power a gang of politicians who the people would have no
power over. So to a certain extent we can stand above the squabbling
that is taking place in the anti-war movement in relation to the
elections. But the squabble is interesting.
Basically some anti-war commentators, most notably Gilbert Achcar have
pointed out that if the elections are conducted fairly the results may
be very uncomfortable for the US occupiers. In fact it would be likely
to âgive way to a Parliament and a government in which Shia
Fundamentalist forces, more or less friendly with Iran, are
hegemonicâ[3]. Given all the noise that the US government has been
making in recent days about war with Iran this could be a little awkward
for them. But in fact the powers of the national assembly are limited,
in particular unless it can get a 2/3 majority, so the US designers of
the election have probably already covered themselves against this
outcome.
Achcarâs suggestion that it might be a mistake to write off the
elections in advance greatly annoyed some of the trots involved in the
anti-war movement. They tend to quietly have the âmy enemies enemy is my
friendâ and thus try and silence any criticism of the resistance in the
anti-war movement. This rather self-indulgent line is based on hoping
that Iraqi workers will defeat imperialism for them and never mind if
the process of doing so throws them into the hands of Islamists. After
the mass executions of the left that followed the Islamist takeover of
the Iranian revolution this sort of self serving âlogicâ from the
professors of the western left seems and indeed is a little unpleasant
and I donât intend to discuss it further.
Both positions do seem to flow from a requirement of âwhat would be best
for us in the western leftâ. They ask âWould it be better if Iraqis
militarily defeat US imperialism for us or would it be better if they
defeat it through the ballot boxâ. Given the suffering our governments
have already imposed on the people of Iraq this seems like a very odd
way of approaching the question of the Iraqi elections.
Another approach â an internationalist approach â would be to ask what
is in the interest of the ordinary Iraqi people and what can we do to
show solidarity with them. When you ask that question the choice offered
above between a Shia dominated Islamist regime or a Sunni dominated
Islamist regime doesnât seem to have so much to offer. Already huge
numbers of women are now forced to wear the veil in Iraq. Over 1,000
Iraqi women have abandoned their university studies. Hinadi, the star
dancer of the group âel-Portoqalaâ was killed by Islamists while
visiting her family. Apparently âel-Portoqala sings modern songs, which
outraged some Islamists who said the songs were pornographic, liberal
and âalien to conservative Iraqi societyâ. In reality the songs merely
showed women dancing and posing as loversâ[4].
If you rely on the mainstream media and the left then Iraq seems to be
without hope. The choice it appears is only between US imperialism and
Islamist reaction. In fact Iraqi workers have not been sitting by since
the occupation â there have been many militant workers struggles in
Iraq, it is just nobody bothers to report on them because they donât fit
into the predefined conceptions of the struggle.
There have been rumors and some reports of anarchists active in Iraq but
it seems that such forces are not yet significant. However there are
other progressive forces who have managed to get news of their
activities onto the web. They are also calling for a boycott. In
particular the Worker â Communist Party of Iraq declares that âThe
Election is a Puppet Show to Legitimatize the U.S Policy in Iraq.[5]â
They see the intention of the US in this election to be âto impose a
reactionary Islamic and ethnocentric puppet government.[6]â The WCPI are
an interesting neo-Leninist group which broke with orthodox communism
out of their experiences in the workers councils thrown up in the
Iranian revolution of 1979 and the uprisings that followed the 1991 Iraq
war. The conclusions they came to are in some ways similar to that of
the Dutch and German Council Communists of the 1920âs. Naturally enough
this experience also left them with a healthy hostility towards the
Islamist program. They warn that âIraq has become a battlefield for a
war between American and Islamic terrorism and the Iraqi masses are
constant victims caught amid the fire between both these terrorist
forcesâ.
They have a fairly comprehensive English language website (at
), which includes regular PDF newsletters detailing the struggles they
are involved in. There is an obvious enormous gulf between anarchists
and Leninists but if we leave that aside for this article the WCPI offer
a real breath of fresh air in much of the debate around Iraq. Their real
efforts to build union and womenâs organizations in Iraq offer at least
an alternative that can be built on.
Their recent document âWorker-communism and the Armed Struggle in
Iraq:guerrilla war or mass armed resistance?â[7] is well worth reading
as it tries to sketch out an alternative path to ending the occupation.
This acknowledges a need for armed resistance but seeks to âavoid the
traditional guerrilla-style of armed resistanceâ substituting one which
âfocuses on mobilizing and leading the population to reclaim various
suburbs, villages, towns and cities and bans both US forces and
Islamo-ethnocentric militia from entryâ. Significantly for anarchists
one of the reasons they give for this alternative form of resistance is
that âIt encourages the population to intervene in running their own
affairs. It will embroil the masses in a process, which will raise their
awareness.â
It has become clear that the occupation in Iraq is not likely to be a
short term event but something that is intended to go on for years and
even decades. The US military machine is deeply entrenched both in Iraq
and in the Whitehouse. Ending the occupation will not come about as a
result of a march, no matter how big or any other single event.
We need to view the war in Iraq not as a distant event but as part of
our own backyard. The fight of Iraqi workers for justice is part of our
own fight for justice. And just as we would refuse to accept a struggle
led by those who seek only to be an alternative oppressor we should not
demand that Iraqi workers switch one oppressor for another.
The election this Sunday will change nothing for the better, even if
those it brings to power are somewhat hostile to the US occupation. What
we need to be doing is to look for and reach out to whatever progressive
forces are struggling in Iraq and show solidarity with these. At the end
of the day our fight for freedom is a global fight â or it is no fight
at all.
[1] A picture of them in action is at
[2] Reported at
[3] See
[4]
[5] See for instance the text of their leaflet announcing demonstrations
in England
[6]
[7] Online at