Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Iraq matures
William Shawcross, who knows a thing or two about counterinsurgency (and who was, I seem to recall, a supporter of the invasion of Iraq in 2003), has an interesting column about the weekend's election in Iraq in the Guardian (of all places). I have not followed the story too closely, but this bit seemed very encouraging (emphasis added):
The turnout, 51%, was less than some predicted but importantly it included many Sunnis who had boycotted the last elections in 2005. Turnout in some of the Sunni areas was as high as 60%. The hope is that these Sunnis have turned from the methods of al-Qaida, which dominated the early post-Saddam years, to the political process.
The peaceful polling was remarkable and so were the results. All the Islamic parties lost ground, especially that associated with the so-called "Shia firebrand", Moqtada al-Sadr, whose share of the vote went down from 11% to 3%. The principal Sunni Islamic party, the Islamic Party of Iraq, was wiped out.
The only Islamic party to gain ground was the Dawa party of the Shia prime minister Nouri al-Maliki - and even that party dropped the word Islamic from its name. The power of Maliki, who has emerged a stronger leader than expected, is further enhanced by these elections. Now no Islamic parties will be able to control any provinces on their own. The election is thus a big defeat for Iran which had hoped that Shia religious parties would control the south and enable Iran to turn them into a mini Shia republic.
Instead, a new generation of Iraqi politicians is coming forward. Many of them are young and secular. They have lived always in Iraq, not in exile; they are Iraqis with local roots first and foremost - they are not pan-Arabs or pan-Islamists. Nor do they have connections to the US.
If Shawcross' interpretation of the results holds up, the election is a repudiation of Islamism, Iran, and those Westerners who regarded the allegedly (but not actually) secular Saddamite Iraq as somehow preferable to the "theocracy" that threatened to emerge in its stead. Well, nobody's talking about a theocratic Shia state in Iraq any more.
Also, American hawks ought not fret that Iraq is creeping toward political and psychological independence from the United States. We and others need Iraq, as always, to countervail Iran. The government in Baghdad, any government, is more likely to assert itself against Iran with confidence if national pride attracts votes, and that will happen only if Iraqis prove they can run their own show without visible help from the United States. This is progress of the best sort, and the world should, but won't, celebrate.
3 Comments:
By 
Viking Kaj, at
Tue Feb 03, 07:39:00 PM:
What was the turnout in the Shia dominated south? Less than 50%?
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Feb 03, 10:42:00 PM:
Here.
By Viking Kaj, at
Thu Feb 05, 02:47:00 PM:
Looks like problems in Basra with voter registration fraud.
