In this post Thursday, I noted it seemed surprising that the two big Kurdish parties hadn’t yet presented their promised joint list for Iraq’s national elections.
Today, from IWPR’s “Iraqi Press Monitor”, I got evidence that Masoud Barzani’s KDP was– as of last Monday– calling for postponing the elections “for several months”.
This came in an email feed from IWPR. (As so often, IWPR has been slow getting this text up onto their website. I guess it might get there soon.)
What they have in the email feed is an editorial from the KDP’s daily Al-Taakhi, from Dec 6 (Mon.), which says:
- The neighboring countries, especially the Arab ones, have not proven their seriousness regarding the help needed to enhance stability in Iraq. The Arab countries have tried to create a political balance in Iraq on certain bases, including a role they imagine for residents of the “opposing triangle”, so to speak. Unfortunately, Iraqi social divisions have become clearer. There is the failure to form a unified list of candidates among the Kurds and their allies. There is also the Shia list. These divisions will lead to catastrophic consequences if there are disagreements over the elections results. Hence, we call for postponing elections several months.
…Juan Cole has a lot of good material up on his site today that gives more texture to the election-preparations story. In particular, he has two or three items making clear that Moqtada Sadr has been speaking out strongly against the current election plan.
But this piece from the Financial Times, that Juan links to, makes clear that some of Sadr’s supporters intend to vote in the elections anyway, disregarding his call that they abstain. The FT piece notes too that some of the “officials” (as they call him) who helped put together Sistani’s UIA list claim that some Sadrists– or possibly, at this point, “former” Sadrists?– have been included in the list…
Anyway, evidently a very intense form of politics is continuing within each of Iraq’s major ethnic/religious communities over the elections issue, as well as between different strands of different communities trying to build coalitions together.
Also interesting from the IWPR email feed was this (digest of an) editorial from the Islamic Dawa Party’s Al-Bayan, from last Sunday, which warned that:
- Several days ago, the gas and electricity crises became much sharper. We are not exaggerating if we say they might threaten the political process. Such crises, if they occurred in other countries, might shake even stable political regimes. In a country like ours, which is still suffering multi-faceted crises, burdens will be doubled…
Dawa is, of course, a prominent part of the UIA list, announced Thursday. So I guess the qualms of its leaders about the appropriateness of holding elections in January got assuaged somehow…
Juan Cole has quotes from Hareth Al-Dhari of AMS to the effect that it would be “impossible for fair or free elections to be held under the US occupation”.
Calling this “self-defeating and historically inaccurate”, Cole comments: “Nehru would not have been prime minister of an independent India if the Congress Party had not fought elections under British colonial domination”.
Well, fine, but hasn’t Cole also forgotten something? Like the Partition of India, and all that went with it? And that India stood, and still stands, for secularism, while Pakistan seceded for the sake of a confessional state?
It IS impossible for “free and fair” elections to be held under U.S. occupation for the simple reason that “free and fair” elections in Iraq will not serve the goals of the U.S. administration. If the Bush administration saw “free and fair” elections as serving their interests and goals, there would be an elected government in Iraq long ago.
I would like to hear more of the secular point of view in Iraq. I think a couple of “dissenters” like Helena Cobban and Juan Cole (I hope they would not mind being called that) would be more keen to find out about that side. Was it not the secular constitution of the USA that allowed so many different expressions of religion to flourish there?
I know it’s difficult, because the recent leaders of secularism in Iraq, the Ba’ath, are underground. But does not secularism have wider support in Iraq than just the Ba’ath? Does it help to disregard this body of opinion completely? If they are disregarded, will the insurgency not continue indefinitely?
Is it not the truth that it is the US occupation which is pushing for a confessional federation or deal? Is that not why elections have not been held yet? US are manipulating religious believers.
Actually, Juan Cole mentions today that the Communist Party may have become the fallback choice for some Iraqi secularists. He says that historically it has been a choice for Jews, Christians, and Shiites who didn’t want to be ruled by Sunni orthodoxy.
I’m also curious about the situation of secularists in Iraq. My impression is that many have been leaving or trying to get out.
Concerning how secularists feel to-day in Iraq, it may be interesting to read the blog of Raed.
Christiane, you can also go to http://iraquna.blogspot.com/, Abu Khaleel’s Iraqi Letter to America, and look at the three recent articles on “Sunni and Shia Iraq”.
No Pref, I did see those remarks of Juan Cole’s, which he exits from by saying that the communists have no chance, anyway. He doesn’t say why, just moves on.
I’m saying this matter of secularism used to be more than the rump concern of communists in this world. It used to involve the likes of the Coles and the Cobbans and especially the Gandhis of this world. What about Gandhi’s “experiments with truth”?
I object to all that being brushed aside and especially when the inappropriate example of India was given to support Cole’s complacency about the confessionalisation of Iraq.
Did I touch on a taboo? I had expected a strong response, but it turns out nobody wants to talk about this.
The new round of US colonialism is an odd thing. It compounds the liberal civilising mission (“democracy”) with the other liberal point of view, that of preserving the “culture” of the “natives” in their “own” areas. I suppose these two opposites were never easily separated, and that all intervention ends up the same: brutal, and compromised by business interests.
My view has always been that the sin of the Ba’athists was secular bourgeois nationalism, and that both Iraq wars were intended to demonstrate US intolerance of this.
Bourgeois, secular, nationalist, anti-imperialist states like my own South Africa look on this situation with dread. Why is there no understanding of our plight from our former supporters? People will cite Nehru but with no acknowledgement of what he really stood for, or of the perilous state of independent nationalism (and its corollary, true internationalism) in the world today.
The anti-colonial independence struggles of the post WW2 period were well understood, and supported, on the basis of general principles including the Atlantic Charter and the UN Charter. These principles were rooted in the European Enlightenment and the secular tolerance of difference, including religious difference. Now that rug is being pulled form under our feet, and nobody speaks. Can people really be ready to settle for a new world of statelets, each with its own state religion?
You haven’t mentioned any taboos that I’m aware of. If you think that secularism should be stronger in Iraq, you should talk to Iraqis. My overall impression is that there is broad agreement among Iraqis that a government should be based on Islamic principles but not run by clerics, and freedom of religion should be protected.
No Pref, I wonder if you read Christiane’s link to Raed, above? Or Abu Khaleel’s blog? To name but two.
I’m looking at this from a South African point of view. We want to be independent and decide for ourselves. I presume, as you do, that the Iraqis want the same.
Our independence rests first and foremost on our own determination, but it also needs a degree of backing from the world in general. It needs a “Westphalian” type of external environment.
We used to have that, but now things are different. It is not just the international, especially US, consensus that Iraq is all about Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds (and maybe it’s o.k. if they split up, they might say). There are other signs, for example the book “Constructing a Global Civil Society” by David Chandler, reviewed by James Heartfield in spiked!, at http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA812.htm.
Dominic, hi.
I don’t feel constrained by any “taboo” about talking about secularism in Iraq. I do have a general analysis of the situation there that’s based on (1) a general tendency of many people, at times of great social stress, to “return” to the safety of trusted, sometimes “pre-modern” communities… including families, “tribes”, and religious communities; (2) the presumed robustness of, in particular, Shi-ite religious networks in Iraq, which showed that by the fact they survived at all (with a little help from Iran) despite the terrible things Saddam did to try to tear them apart; (3) the fact that in Ottoman days, non-Sunni religious communities had a high degree of self-governance, and in some Arab countries that has been transformed into “religious” communities also becoming and acting like political blocs…
I know that Iraq is not the same as Lebanon. But my long experience in Lebanon, where all the above factors operated, led me to predict as long ago as in this April 12, 2003 post that the Shi-ite religious networks in Iraq would become key political actors there after the fall of Saddam. See also this and this, from May 2003.
Of course in Iraq , don’t forget that the last great proponent of secularism was Saddam himself, which did tend to give the idea a bad name…
Having said all that, I should say (1) Many of my best Iraqi friends are secularists!, (2) Secular politics is very well represented in the Kurdish community, where the divisions are mainly “tribal”, for whatever that’s worth. (3) I would tend not to write off the Communists as quickly as Juan did because they are tough, smart (even wily) survivors.
On the other hand, the Shi-ites are about 60-65% of the population, and in their community “religious” networks of a number of different kinds evidently dominate the scene.
Dominic, thanks for those informative links. I think that the US would actually prefer a “secular bourgeois” Iraq to a religiously oriented one. But that’s not the main issue from the US point of view. The main issue is whether the country will be a reliable supporter of the US. Look at the wide variety of corrupt dictatorships we do support in the Middle East, ranging from the extremely religious (Saudi Arabia) to secular (Tunisia).
Dear Helena,
Thank you for your very full reply. I would have acknowledged it sooner if not for a terrible electric storm here in Johannesburg knocking out my connection for the second time in ten days.
I looked at the links as well. I agree with nearly everything, and especially about the crucial place of mass organisation, whether it be the Congress Party in India or the Hizbullah in Lebanon.
No Pref, I guess you know the US subjectively better than me. I see a disgust among the “left” there and in Britain, for “nationalism”. US state policy coincides with this (here I’m contradicting you, I know). US policy is to undermine any independent state power. Bourgeois secular states are independent. That’s what they are for.
The US “left” gives tacit support to “anti-nationalist” policies.
A good case study is Venezuela. It is not a dictatorship of the proletariat, it is a bourgeois nationalist state. It is secured, as it can only be, on the organised support of the mass of the people. Will the US “left” support it when things get ugly? I bet you they will not.
Going back to Iraq, Allawi is never going to have a mass base, for sure. His base is US support. He is a puppet. He and the US know that all mass movements are a threat. A nationalist threat. Even if they are religious. Mass movements will have to grow in a semi-clandestine way if they are not going to be crushed. They will need external sympathy, but they won’t get it from the anti-nationalist US “left”.
The US public is closer to the French “left” position (anti-nationalist, modernizing mission) during the Algerian war, than it is to the British anti-colonial tradition of, say, Fenner Brockway or D. N. Pritt. The US “left” is hobbled.
“Allawi is never going to have a mass base”
Allawi would not last more than a few days at most without the protection of the American forces. Even the Americans who are his personal guards would not be able to save him for very long.
Shirin, you are right.
Therefore, Allawi must repress any movement that does have a mass base, whether religious or secular.
Right, Dominic – that’s the kind of democracy the Bush administration is bringing us, isn’t it?