[Marxism] The Real Story of the Iraqi election

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Subject: The Real Story of the Iraqi Elections (by Gareth  Porter)



The Real Story of the Iraqi Elections  
By Gareth Porter | February 8, 2005 
(Foreign Policy in Focus _http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2005/0502real.html_ 
(http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2005/0502real.html) )
The U.S. government and most pundits have painted Iraqâs recent elections  as 
a great victory over the Iraqi insurgents, who opposed them, and as a  
vindication of the Bush administrationâs policy of bringing democracy to the  
Middle 
East. Amid the orgy of self-congratulation over the bravery of Iraqi  voters, 
officials and commentators have ignored the most important story of the  
election results: a Sunni electoral boycott that demonstrates a level of 
support  
for the insurgency in the Sunni triangle that is far greater than what the  
administration has admitted. 
 
The image of millions of Iraqis dodging bombs and bullets to vote is highly  
misleading. In fact, given the geographic concentration of the insurgency in  
Sunni areas, there was never any possibility that the insurgents could prevent 
 Shiites and Kurds from turning out in great numbers. There were 5,000 
polling  places in the country, but only 109â2% of the totalâcame under 
attack.  
The only real uncertainty surrounding the election was whether significant  
numbers of Sunnis in the Sunni heartland would participate. The administration  
had considered it a major objective of its policy to weaken the hold of the  
insurgents on the Sunni strongholds sufficiently to allow the population of  
those cities to vote. The U.S. command announced in early December that it had  
decided that it had to establish control over the major strongholds of the  
insurgency in Baghdad, Mosul, Ramadi and Samarra by the end of the year, so 
that  the Sunnis would be able to vote in the elections. In particular, the 
command  had set its sights on seizing control of Ramadi. Gen. George Casey, 
the  
commander of the Multinational Force Iraq, boasted, âWe believe a solution in 
 
Ramadi is now obtainable.â  
In light of the U.S. ambitions for at least temporary control over the major  
Sunni cities, the fate of the elections in those cities is the clearest  
indicator available of the political strength of the insurgency. Eyewitness  
press 
reports from the Sunni strongholds make it clear that the Sunnis were  united 
in honoring the boycott of the elections called for by Sunni clerics  aligned 
with the insurgency. NBC News reported from Ramadi that only about one  
percent of the eligible voters in Ramadi went to the polls, including non-Sunni 
 
troops and police. In the Sunni sections of Mosul, Steve Fainaru of the  
Washington Post reported that one polling place visited had not had a  single 
voter 
all day except for the Iraqi soldiers protecting it and at another  only 60 
people had voted.  
In Samarra, which U.S. forces patrolled in force, the polling places were  
deserted most of the day. The joint U.S.-Iraqi task force providing security 
for 
 the election reported that fewer than 1,400 people, including the mostly 
Shiite  soldiers and police, out of a total population of 200,000, had cast 
ballots. The  same scene of deserted polling places was reported by Associated 
Press in the  desolated city of Fallujah, where as many as 140,000 carefully 
screened people  have been allowed to return. And in West Baghdad, Iraqi 
journalists reported  that only about 500 of the tens of thousands of 
temporarily 
resettled refugees  from Fallujah voted.  
Based on these partial eyewitness reports, it appears that only about one  
percent of the Sunnis at most defied the electoral boycott in the main Sunni  
strongholds, despite the efforts of the U.S. occupation forces to wrest control 
 
of those cities from the insurgents. Threats of retaliation undoubtedly  
intimidated some middle class Sunnis who would otherwise have voted. But most  
Sunnis boycotted the election because they considered it the illegitimate 
result  
of a deal between occupation authorities and the Shiites. A Wall Street  
Journal story about a Christian engineer in a Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad  
who 
wanted to vote vividly described the Sunni neighborhood in which he lived,  
which included many displaced Fallujans, as overwhelmingly hostile toward the  
U.S. occupation and to the election.  
The U.S. continues to claim that only a relatively small minority of Sunnis  
in the country sympathize with the insurgency. The almost complete 
effectiveness  of the election boycott makes it clear, however, that the 
insurgents now 
command  the loyalty of the vast majority of the Sunni population.  
While it is tempting to be carried away with the symbolism of purple Iraqi  
fingers, the most important message is that there is no possibility of a  
military solution to the insurgency. Instead the United States must accept the  
need for a political settlement. Such a settlement requires negotiations 
between  
the Shiites who won the election and figures who can speak on behalf the 
Sunni  resistance forces to agree on arrangements for limiting and sharing 
power 
in the  new political order, a ceasefire and surrender of insurgents, and a 
timetable  for speedy withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign forces.  
Gareth Porter is a historian and an analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus  
(online at _www.fpif.org_ (http://www.fpif.org/) ). His latest book, Perils of 
Dominance:  Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, will be 
published 
by  University of California Press in May. 

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