Commenter “b” posted the following thought-provoking comment onto Tuesday’s
post
here about the situation of holding elections “under the gun” of an occupying
army:
One point about Palestinian elections this coming Sunday. Many Palestinians
have been actually calling for such elections for a long time, knowing full
well they would be held under occupation. But having no elections had allowed
a corrupted political system to become entrenched. Those who favor elections
now — municipal, presidential and legislative — see this as a chance to
at least begin to put in place institutions that are responsive to those who
live under the occupation. It’s not a perfect setting for elections, but
compared to Iraq there will be a very large international presence, the actual
vote will probably be conducted by quite high standards of honesty, and there
are at least two plausible candidates who represent different positions on
key issues. So, for me, the clincher is that many Palestinians seem to want
the elections even in these circumstance, and the alternative right now is
not free elections free of occuaption, but no elections at all.
I agree with “b” on all his (or her) points, including: his (or her) empirical observation
that many– indeed, I would even say “nearly all”– Palestinians have been
calling for such elections for a long time, and for the reasons that “b” gives; the
judgment that though the setting of the vote is far from perfect, its actual
technical modalities will be pretty good; and the judgment that the important
thing is that this election is what “many”– or even “nearly all”– Palestinians seem
to want.
So that led me to ask the same kinds of questions about the Iraqi elections
later this month. In particular:
1. How actually democratic are the technical modalities for
these elections? and2. How strong is the proportion of Iraqis that seem to want them to proceed
even if the setting is very far from perfect and the modalities also imperfect?
As I’ve noted in other posts on JWN on both the elections in Afghanistan
in October and the upcoming ones in Iraq (notably
here
), what needs to be developed is a category of elections that are judged
by members of the relevant national constituency to be “fair enough”,
rather than technically absolutely perfect elections.
The “fair enough” criterion is really important in a situation of recent
or ongoing conflict, since it forecloses the possibility of ex-post-facto
challenges to the outcome. Such challenges can be absorbed and
handled in, for example, the US in 2000, or Ukraine more recently, because
these countries have relatively stable national communities that are not
on the point of bursting (back) into deadly civil conflict. Where you
have countries that lack that kind of stability, contestation over the legitimacy
of an upcoming or recent election can exacerbate the existing tensions and
plunge a country back into civil war.
Significantly, the Palestinian community inside the OPTs currently seems
to be moving toward increased rather than decreased internal cohesion. This
is a good thing. And if the elections are contributing to that, that
makes them good in my book– even though I recognize that this cohesion
is built on the basis of support for a general political/negotiating position
that will not, in the short term, make the pursuit of peace negotiations
any easier.
The very last thing the Palestinians need now is an internal civil war. Israelis
who want a stable and lasting peace should realize that an intra-Palestinian
civil war is certainly not in their interests either: “Divide and rule”
may be a useful approach if what you want to do is maintain an empire, but
it certainly doesn’t help you to find a stable, well-based negotiating partner.
(Rabin recognized that; I’m not sure that Sharon does.)
But back to the question of Iraq. What would constitute “fair enough”
elections there? Looking at the two numbered criteria I listed above,
I’d have to say:
(1) The technical modalities for the planned elections look fairly
deeply flawed: the kinds of problems that Riverbend reported; the hasty
cobbling together of the Iraqi Electoral Commission; the inability of the
UN to get in and play any meaningful consultative/monitoring role, as it
had originally been supposed to; the problems of the single-constituency
system; the apparent lack of any ability for anyone– political neutral Iraqis
or foreign observers, to do any meaningful, nationwide monitoring of the
campaign now and the election itself January 30; the rampant instability
in many Iraqi provinces; etc etc.
(2) Regarding the degree of support for the process from inside the
relevant constituency, even if it would be true to say that “a majority”
of Iraqis want the election to proceed according to plan even despite– or
perhaps, in some cases, because of?– its technical shortcomings, is this
not a case where a simple majority vote on the legitimacy of the process
is far from adequate?
In particular, given that this vote most likely will enshrine the handover
of most of the effective levers of power inside the country from the
previous, Sunni-dominated elite to one in which the majority Shiites have
power more nearly proportional to their demographic weight, how can people
expect the Sunnis to abide by its results if they roundly reject the legitimacy
of the way the vote is being held?
The handover from a minority regime to a majority regime is certainly desirable
from the democratic point of view. But it’s not an easy thing to accomplish
through the ballot box. The most notable place where it’s
been successfully done in recent times is South Africa. But I note
that what happened there was a two-stage process very different from what
we see in Iraq today:
Step 1: The National Party government, already engaged in negotiations
with the ANC on the modalities of a handover to one-person-one-vote rule,
went to the existing Whites-only voters and exlicitly asked for– and won–
a clear mandate to complete this negotiation.
Step 2: The NP and the ANC completed their negotiation, and then
sent the resulting agreement to a completely new voting list containing all
adult South Africans, to win support for it (and also to name a Constitutional
Assembly and new, democratic provincial governments).
Both those two elections were important in the South African transition.
During the nationwide elections held at Step Two, there were some White
hardliners who sought to disrupt the vote. But the “vast majority”
of White South Africans resisted their call to do that, and agreed, some
enthusiastically, others rather sullenly, to go along with the new order.
Very different from what is now happening– and what may indeed continue
to happen for some time– inside Iraq.
I guess we have to conclude that Ayatollah Sistani is no Mandela. And
there’s no-one on the Sunni side to be Iraq’s De Klerk.
I just hope I’m wrong about Sistani. I would love to see him or someone
high up on the UIA list that he helped form making a really dramatic move
to reach out to the Sunnis. Please God may it happen.
I also note that though my general theme here has been “elections held under
the gun”, the internal political situations in Palestine and Iraq are actually,
and crucially, very different from each other.
Regretfully, according to Chris Albritton the U.S. is planning a new offensive in Mosul in the coming days. This is not going to make the election process any easier, though I guess from their point of view Mosul is so overrun with insurgents that voting wasn’t going to happen anyway.
IMO this electoral process looks too painful and will only produce a distorted result. I would suggest just asking Sayyid Sistani to appoint a salvation government and save the trouble and danger of voting. He has made efforts to reach out to the Kurdish and Sunni Arab communities in the past, and is a moderating influence in general. I’m sure he would do his best to try to bring as many factions together as possible. Otherwise, this election is a trainwreck that will further divide Iraq. If the Sistani slate does not come out on top, I guarantee that they will be crying foul, and the chaos will deepen. If they do (as expected) win, they will be so beholden to the U.S. military for security that little will change. The continued provocations in Sunni dominated areas will make this a certainty.
“Fair Enough”
Hard to say. Hopefully the fact of the election will alter the reality in a good way, and future elections will make more improvements.
Some societies manage to forge democratic systems out of very difficult circumstances. Italy wrestled with the Mafia (especially in Sicily) for decades. The Phillipines are in continual turmoil with several different insurgencies ripping at the social fabric. The US survived slavery, the Wild West, and several waves of extreme corruption. Nevertheless, there has been progress in all three societies.
WarrenW, “the US survived slavery, the Wild West &c.”?
Who, exactly, survived?
Actually the South African analogy is good in another way – to point up the real lack of leadership on all sides of this issue. In particular, there doesn’t seem to be an Iraqi Desmond Tutu or Nelson Mandela around to act as an inspiration for a post-Baath, post-occupation Iraq. All the main figures: Sistani, Sadr, Allawi, Barzani, etc. are “tainted” in some way, either incidentally or fatally, to the other parties in this conflict. Mandela was able to transition South Africa peacefully because all but the hardest Afrikaaners accepted him as a humane man and leader who wanted genuine reconciliation. I don’t see an Iraqi Mandela. Absent this, any leader(s) produced on January 30 will be as partisan as Andrew Johnson was in 1866 – reviled by some as a brutally jackbooted occupier and collaborator, by others as too “soft” on “terrorism”. Honestly, I suspect that we’re seeing the beginning of the end of “Reconstruction” (in more than one sense) and the preliminary steps to the establishment of some sort of Iraqi Jim Crow, where the winners of the civil war will impose a victor’s peace on the losers. At best! At worst, the country descends into a Bosnian anarchy, a Hobbesean war of “all against all”…
Pity. Poppy looks downright statesmanlike, in retrospect, compared to the fruit of his loins…
FDC Chief, do you really believe that Nelson Mandela did it all by himself?
I’m battling here. I can’t quite believe that US people really do think that it is all down to one man, the President. Then I see evidence to the contrary, like your message.
It seems that “democracy”, US-style, is not “Power to the People” as it is in South Africa, but on the contrary, a ritual and repetetive handing away of power from the people.
I think this situation is much more complicated than the South African one, even apart from the questions of leadership. In South Africa, there were clearly two sides. Agreements only had to be bilateral to be successful. I would think of Iraq more like a pond full of fish. In the previous organization of things, with Saddam confined with sanctions and no-fly zones, the pond was really in stasis. Some fish had it good, and some, not-so-good, but the situation was stable. Now, all the rules are gone. Each fish is scared of a bigger fish. Sunnis are scared of Shi’a. Kurds are scared of Arabs. Turkmen are scared of Kurds. And, after the recent church bombings, the Christians are starting to look a little jumpy too. The big question is, how do you come to a consensus among this entire hodgepodge of groups? Even under ideal conditions, I think this would be extremely difficult, requiring a great amount of compromise and understanding on all sides. That would mean we need several Mandelas and Tutus and DeKlerks, with some people having to play a couple of the parts at once, negotiating their own power while re-assuring other groups who are worried about theirs. Even before it became clear precisely how bad the administration was going to botch this whole thing, I thought that going in and toppling Saddam was not going to be worth it for Iraq simply because of this huge downside potential combined with the rather good odds that this downside would be realized in all its horror. I fear, what was on paper back in 2003 a 50/50 game of success or failure has become a 95/5 game in favor of failure. Negotiating a multi-party compromise government in this situation, with so much distrust and widely varying views of what government should look like, would be difficult even in a time of complete peace. With widespread violence on the streets, there really just is not that much hope at all. So what do
For your information, and just because I had to look some of this up today for other purposes:
Tomorrow is the 93rd Anniversary of the African National Congress. In 1990 when it was unbanned it was already 82 years old. It always had a diverse membership internally, and was united with other organisations under the slogan “Unity in Action”.
One of these organisations was the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), founded in 1955 and allied with the ANC in that year, together with the Congress of Democrats, the Coloured Peoples’ Organisation, and the Indian Congresses, when the Freedom Charter was passed at the Congress of the People. That is 50 years ago this year.
You take for granted the unity of our side against the old South African regime. That is a mistake. The unity of our side took an enormous effort to build, over a very long period of time. Nor was it a question of a few strong personalities, but of thousands and tens of thousands of leaders.
The Iraqis will have to build their unity, if they are going to succeed. The US government cannot be trusted to stand aside from this process and not interfere. It will never be an honest broker. It should get out and go home without any delay, taking the British, too.
Now that a decent number of hours have passed, and since no-one else has commented, I hope I may be permitted to add a few more words to the previous comment.
Thursday was the tenth anniversary of Joe Slovo’s death. He is one of possibly only two whites buried in the enormous Avalon Cemetary in Soweto. The other one is Helen Joseph, buried next to her friend Lillian Ngoyi. Just three of our thousands of leaders.
Jow Slovo was a member of the ANC National Executive in exile and after 1990. Following the election in 1994 he became a minister, but died before a year had passed. One of the names by which he was known was “iJuda” – “the Jew”.
There was a ceremony by the grave on Thursday, and tomorrow part of the new Constitutional Court complex is to be named after Joe Slovo in another ceremony.
I’m not saying things cannot possibly improve quickly in Iraq. I would say that by comparison with South Africa, Iraq has a long way to go to create the necessary political unity, and that in South Africa’s case it took many people and many years.
Shochu John,
Your analysis that “Each fish is scared of a bigger fish. Sunnis are scared of Shi’a. Kurds are scared of Arabs. Turkmen are scared of Kurds.” has something to it, but is oversimplified, and not quite accurate. In addition to being a not quite accurate description of the present day situation, it ignores aspects of Iraqi political history and society that only Iraqis and a tiny handful of actual experts (whom the Bush administration carefully ignored in favour of the “experts” who would tell them what they wanted to hear) seem to be aware of.
In the current situation, and looking solely from the perspective of political power, it is not a hierarchical feeding chain as you describe. It is more that each fish is scared of each other fish. These mutual fears existed in the beginning, but to a far, far lesser extent than they do now. The Bush administration has taken many, many steps to exacerbate them enormously. Whether out of ignorance or intention to drive Iraqis apart (divide and conquer), they have made religious and ethnic division a centrepiece of their thinking, their propaganda, and their actions in Iraq.
What very, very few non-Iraqis have a clue about is that historically Iraqis have tended to form political affiliations based on ideology rather than sect or ethnicity.
Sunnis have been the dominant political power in Iraq since the Ottomans put them in that position. When the British took over Iraq after WWI they installed a king from what is now Saudi Arabia, and who was himself a Sunni, and they chose to maintain Sunni dominance in government, which continued until now.
Thus, contrary to the impression created by the Bush administration and the media, it was not Saddam who created this situation. He merely continued what had been the situation for centuries. At the same time, Saddam did a great deal throughout his rule to divide Iraqi society along sectarian and ethnic lines, and to sideline Shi`is and Kurds in particular. However, it is critical to understand that this was not due to sectarian or ethnic considerations – Saddam was, despite later pretenses – a very secular person – but about doing what he saw as necessary to maintaining his power and control.
It is also a fact that apart from politics, Iraqi society is, and has been throughout its history, far more integrated than anyone in the Bush administration, the stenographic media, or the “experts” appear to realize. Despite all the misleading information put out by the various sources, Iraq has never had serious interethnic or sectarian conflict, let alone violence, let alone civil war. The mixed nature of most of its large tribes, and the number of mixed families all over the country tells us more than the information we get from phony experts.
Tragically, the Bush administration is doing a very good job of changing all this.
Sorry, I am afraid my post above is rather disjointed. I mentioned the historically non-sectarian, non-ethnic nature of Iraqi political affiliations, then launched into a brief history of Sunni domination of the political scene without returning to the first issue. I can try to address that a bit more if anyone is interested.
Shirin,
Your answer to Shochu John was very interesting. It didn’t seem confuse to my ears. But if you want to tell more about it, I’d be glad to hear more.
I agree with you that the US occupation has increased the risk of inter-ethnic fights. Ethnies seems to play a bigger role in the US society, than in many other; so their attitude could also result of the failure to recognize that other social logics may exist. And as you say, “divide and rule” is an old strategy.
That said, I can’t help remember the story of Faiza’s Kurd employee : for years, he had been a perfect engineer and suddenly decided to go away and expressed a lot of bitterness, which Faiza didn’t understand, but which could have been secretely there for years. May be that the dominant Sunnis failed to recognize latent feelings of frustration, to which the Americans opened the lid ? (I know, Faiza is not a Sunni, but I think his husband is and probably that the Kurd employee only saw them as Arabs).
Under Tito, Yougoslavia seemed to have found a common goal, socialism, but after his fall, ethnics fights came back instantly, with the exhumation of all kinds of historic resentments. Yet, as in Iraq, the ethnies were all mixed up. With Serbs and Croats and slovens in the same families.
Shirin,
Thank you for your thoughtful response to my comments. I guess my big question here would be, is it possible that Iraqis have not fought each other because they have really had nothing to fight about? From the Ottomans, to the British, to the series of governments that Iraq has had to this point, input from the citizens was neither asked for nor heeded. What’s the point of fighting? Now, just like, as Christiane mentioned with Yugoslavia, the old rules are gone and now the citizens really do get to choose their path. On the subject of ideological division being more important in Iraq than ethnic or sectarian, it seems that they have quite a bit to do with each other in the new Iraq, with clerics playing no small role in the process. In addition, it seems, that with some admitted crossover, the parties are down ethnic and sectarian lines, with the Kurds, for example having their two paries, and such outfits as the United Iraqi Alliance being predominantly Shi’a. It is clear that ethnic and sectarian tensions are becoming increasingly inflamed. However, I think about another historical example, Czechoslovakia, in which both Czech and Slovak majorities wanted to maintain the single, united, nation, but could not agree how to do it, so they finally agreed to just split it. Luckily, the two sides split neatly into two nations and no bloodshed was needed. It seems that the same is true with Iraq. Iraqis consider themselves Iraqi and want to maintain one nation, but may have irreconcilable differences on how to do it, and since Iraq cannot split as neatly as Czechoslovakia did, we may see bloodshed.
Here’s hoping someone’s still reading this post, because this discussion is interesting.