In the early 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the successful staging of democratic elections in various spots around the world became the act of political ritual that came to symbolize the transition of whole nations from authoritarianism to democratic self-rule. In South Africa, the successful staging of the April 1994 election symbolized not just that, but also an amazingly peaceable transition from white-exclusivist colonial rule to a one-person-one-vote democracy in a situation in which the non-White South Africans outnumbered the “Whites” by about seven to one.
Iraq is not South Africa.
As I think I’ve written here before, there is one key similarity between SA-94 and what ought to be happening inside Iraq at this point: that is, a handover of the main reins of power from a previously ruling minority group to members of the majority group– hopefully, with good guarantees from continued democratic and tolerant interaction between all citizens.
But in South Africa, the negotiations over how that should occur happened before the elections. They also happened without the intrusive, massively violent, and polarizing presence of a gigantic foreign occupying army.
Yes, the SA “Defence” Forces under the apartheid regime were a terrible and grossly abusive blight on the lives of most South Africans. But at least all the people in those armed forces, from Defence Minister Magnus Malan down to the legions of coerced black “askaris” who worked under the control of the SADF were members of South African society who had a stake in the success of the transition to majority rule.
The same is notably not true of the US troop presence in Iraq.
I have expressed the hope in the past that the presence of the US forces would lead to a unifying– in opposition to that presence— of many of the different strands inside Iraqi society. Last April, that seemed about to be taking place– that was when there were anti-US battles raging in both Fallujah and Najaf and much of the rest of the Shiite south.
After that, the US occupation forces managed to “pacify”– imperfectly, but sufficiently– the mainstream of the Shiites. They did that using a very wily combination of both carrots and sticks. One of the main “carrots” was the promise made to Sistani back in April that the Constitution-writing body would indeed be elected, not appointed; and that was the origin of the elections planned for this Sunday.
(Sistani wanted to have them much sooner. But the Americans wanted to stall– I wonder why? They claimed it “would not be fair” to use the old ration-card rolls as an electoral roll, and that time was needed to constitute a new roll. Guess what? They never did that, and are going along with the suggestion Sistani had originaly made… So they could have had the elections in May if they’d wanted, and skipped out on all the past nine months of killing and violence.)
Then, the Americans prepared their massive– and, as they hoped, “decisive”– assault against the Sunni militant base in Fallujah.
I was really sad to see so many Shiite political figures supporting that assault. Moqtada Sadr, to his credit, never did.
I mean, I know that just about all the different strands of Shiite society have been hit very hard indeed by terrorist attacks from people alleged to be in or around the groups directed by the extremely shadowy– and possibly apocryphal?– Abu Musaeb al-Zarkawi. But still, the tacit or on occasion overt support that some Shiite leaders gave to the assault on Fallujah gave the US occupation planners a huge opportunity to try to deepen the Shiite-Sunnite wedge and even present the US forces as somehow “protecting” the Shiites’ safety and interests.
Oh well, soon enough we will see what effects the upcoming “elections” might have.
At many levels, they seem almost irrelevant. We know that their conduct will be deeply flawed– and also, that we won’t even be able to tell how deeply flawed they are, because of the total lack of transparency in all steps of their conduct.
The “main” contest that seems to be shaping up is that for “first place”, between the Allawist list and the Sistanist list. How different are the leading figures on these two lists? I used to think, significantly different– at least on the issue of how they would propose to deal with the US troop presence.
Now, I am not so sure. Trudy Rubin had an important piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Tuesday– sorry, I don’t have the link– in which she reported on recent conversations she’d had with many leaders of the Sistanist list:
Continue reading ““Transitional” elections: Iraq and South Africa”