Iraq

Until 1920, there was no country known as Iraq. It was created by the carving up of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious forces of the First World War. The civil sectarian war, to split the artificial country created by Britain after World War I, started at the end of the 1991 Gulf War to retake Kuwait from Saddam Hussein – the only remaining issue is the revenue share formula for the oil revenues – which are in the Shiite south and Kurdish north. The majority of the people went to the polls as Shia, Sunni or Kurds – not as Iraqis. The forces pulling it apart are greater than those trying to glue it together. The British are well entrenched and in coalition control of the south as is America in the north to oversee and supervise the funeral of the new democratic state they thought they gave birth to – unless they reverse course and create three independent states and fulfill the democratic aspirations of the liberated by America and Britain. The alternative, both have again created two new Talibans – they doubled up on their respective mistakes in Afghanistan. The Saudis in the center with their fellow Sunnis, control the biblical antiquities of the old and new testament and the Sunni communities. They are in an uncomfortable alliance with secular Baathists and number one enemy Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda led insurgency. Not really a dilemma since the number one representative of al Qaeda in Iraq is Abu Musah al-Zarkqwi, a Jordanian Sunni determined to take out whatever and whoever he can in Jordan, where he had been imprisoned by the Hashimite royal family who are in Jordan after being displaced from Saudi Arabia after World War I, while still having a legitimate claim to their throne there in Mecca -- the holiest of Muslim cities. Tough to beat the intrigue of an Arabian night, especially when one looks up at the moon reflected Middle East clouds that include Israel, Turkey and Iran. Let’s not forget that Shiite Arian Iran was at war with Shiite Arab Iraq run by Secular Sunnis with American support then – just as now. Any wonder America and Iran are at it again?

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad said it despairingly blunt; “It looks as if people have preferred to vote for their ethnic or sectarian identities….But for Iraq to succeed there has to be cross-ethnic and cross-sectarian co-operation.” Unfortunately for Bush’s fundamentalist Christian coalition, the fundamentalist Muslim Shiites and Sunnis control two of the three future democratic countries in Iraq today.

Diffusion

Watching the news about the Iraq election in Australia, while Australians who are active and vocal partners of America’s in Iraq were reeling from the Cronulla race riots against Muslims, was another refreshing reminder of how interlocal and media spun the world is.

The December 15, 2005 election to choose the country’s first full-term parliament was hailed universally as a “historic day,” with a “great turnout.” There were over 12,000 Iraqi-Australians who cast their absentee ballots in Australia.

Iraqis were not voting for a united Iraq. They were voting for sectarian separation and the restoration of water and power and other basic necessities. The jubilant Iraqi voters were not excited about a democratic Iraq. They were excited about the prospects of a diffused Iraq. There were over 150,000 Iraqi soldiers and police on the streets with a backup of nearly 160,000 U.S. soldiers to prevent insurgent attacks. All automobile traffic and flights in and out of the country, except for the U.S. helicopters patrolling the air above, were banned. That’s democracy? There were also masked Sunni insurgents protecting polling stations in Sunni neighborhoods to ensure maximum Sunni voter turnout, especially in Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit? Why, for a representative government to hold Iraq together? Highly unlikely, the appearance of unity to hasten the removal of U.S. and coalition troops as Republican and Democratic leaders promise in America in the face of the looming 2006 congressional and 2008 presidential election there is more likely. Iraqis traded dictatorship for chaos and bloodshed in the short term in the interest of sectarian separation.

The fundamentalist sectarians took nearly 90 percent of the nationwide vote. The U.S.-British backed secular and nationalist parties and candidates lost big time, even though they ran well financed campaigns with slick television ads. Dr. Ayad Allawi’s ticket which included prominent Sunnis and Shi’ites won only 25 of the 275 seats – that represented a 38 percent loss from the number of seats won in the January election. Ahmad Chalabi, the former Washington darling did not even win a seat. Their dream of establishing a pro-western secular democracy in a united Iraq failed big time. Trying to build a coalition government of historic enemies -- who distrust and are reluctant to work with each other -- is doomed. The Shiite United Iraqi Alliance won 128 seats out of parliament’s 275 seats. The Kurdish Alliance won 53 seats, leaving the Shiites and the Kurds three seats short of the two-thirds majority needed to elect a president and push through constitutional reforms.

The Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front won 44 seats and another Sunni coalition won 11 seats and a few more Sunnis won seats on other tickets – while still complaining of election irregularities and promising to bring up in parliament election challenge to the Iraqi judicial system – something no one could do under Saddam’s Sunni dictatorship. The political combatants had 48 hours to appeal against the results of the December 15 election to a judicial commission after the electoral commission released final, but uncertified figures. The commission had two weeks to rule on the appeal before the final results were certified and the parliament could meet. “These big Sunni political groups will have limited influence on former Baathists who support Saddam, and no influence over Islamic militants,” said Hazim al-Naimi, a political science professor at Iraq’s Mustansiriya University.

The mixed result leaves the door open for militia groups and guerillas to continue their insurgency. Sunni Arab rebels claim they are digging in for a long fight with the next Iraqi government. “We’ll spread snipers in all of Iraq’s cities,” said Abu Huda al-Aslam, a senior member of the Iraqi militant group Mujahedeen Army Brigades, who served in Saddam’s army. A report released in early 2006 by U.S. Agency for International Development said the security situation in Iraq as dire, amounting to “social breakdown,” in which criminals have “almost free rein.”

America gerrymandered the election in the hope of getting a working coalition together to keep Iraq united. What it got instead is gerrymandered borders for three separate states at war with each other. The Iraqi columnist Nibras Kazimi summed it up best: “Iraq did not hold an election…it held a census.” No different than what happened in Britain between the English, Scots, Irish and Welsh before they united – and now have again separated. Much like America after independence from Britain -- that resulted in a civil war along sectarian and ethnic lines -- 19th century style – and today again divided into religious red and secular blue. The most recent Middle Eastern bloodletting contemporary example is the Lebanon 1975-90 civil war. The Americas, like Europe, Asia, Africa and other continents and regional groupings that will be engaged in the interlocal civil war of the 21st century unless traditional soft borders are redrawn and re-instated.

Sunnistan

Is it any wonder the Sunnis questioned the outcome of the December 15, 2005 Iraq election? With a tanker truck seized with thousands of forged ballots from Iran, with the driver acknowledging there were other tanker trucks with forged ballots favoring Shiite Iraqi candidates, one can understand why the Sunnis wanted a recount because of the large Sunni voter turnout that was not reflected in the vote count -- and then a new election when they were turned down. No surprise they were turned down on both counts or the 10 extra seats they requested in the new parliament.

The Pentagon wasted hard earned taxpayer dollars trying to bribe Iraqi clerics to propagate effective propaganda to get their followers to vote for Americas hand picked puppets, or believe the stories planted in Iraqi newspapers by the soldiers hired by U.S. media consulting and media placement firms to believe the American spin .America still has not learned the lesson of “Take the Loot and Scoot,” practiced in the Muslim world, especially when it comes to Infidel loot for a fellow Muslim – a lesson America was last taught in the Bora Bora mountains of Afghanistan when it tried to capture Osama bin Laden by bribing local Muslim allies.

Billions of dollars earmarked for rebuilding Iraq have been diverted from reconstruction projects to fight the insurgency because of under-estimated security needs. This is the assessment made by Stuart Bowen, the special inspector-general for Iraq reconstruction. He said the funds had to be diverted from much needed water, sewage and electrical projects, to help cover the costs of providing security, and combating a consistent and aggressive insurgency.

The sectarian civil war is already in full swing. While Iraqi politicians and U.S. bureaucrats haggled over the formula of a national unity government, two months after national elections, the February 22, 2006 bomb attack that destroyed the gilded dome of the 1000-year-old Shiite mausoleum of Iman Ali al-Hadi in Samarra --- was the most graphic visual of the gilded political rubble the U.S. has created in Iraq, and also a sneak preview of the looming civil war in a united Iraq. Iraq is clearly sliding into anarchy as the sectarian bloodbath in the wake of the Golden Mosque bombing highlighted. The Sunnis boycotted the unity government talks as the sectarian violence spread to 168 Sunni mosques that were attacked, 10 imams killed and 15 abducted. It took Bush’s personal intervention to bring the parties back to the negotiating table. “I think the danger of civil war as a result of this attack has diminished, although I do not believe we are completely out of danger yet,” U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalizad said after the talks resumed. He went on to warn Iraqi politicians that they risk a loss of America’s support if they do not form a genuine national unity government, saying America will not invest its resources in institutions run by secterians. Why not? That is exactly what it should be doing. Why should Iraqis have to be subjected to several more years of secterian carnage and wait another five to seven years for a reliable electricity supply that runs 24 hours a day?

The sectarian violence gets worse after every election America stage manages. Any wonder the U.S. cannot train an Iraqi military capable of replacing U.S. military personnel that belongs back home? It is impossible to do so. Iraq is already torn apart by sectarian religious and cultural centrifugal forces that America can only manage constructively if it acknowledges the country cannot be kept together unless America makes a long term commitment, similar to what it did in Japan, Germany, Korea and other mis-handled war trophies. To pull troops out of Iraq prematurely because of the political spin benefits during the 2006 congressional elections is short sighted and self defeating. It will give al-Qaeda the victory it has been promising.
The new constitution Iraq overwhelmingly approved in a referendum on October 15, 2005 created three defacto states. Shiite in the south, Kurdish in the north, and Sunni in the center. Local laws are superior to national law. The Shiites in the south and the Kurds in the north will own newly discovered oi reservesl. It should therefore not come as a surprise that the Shiites and Kurds do not want to allow substantive amendments to the constitution, especially to the provision that keeps the central government weak. The Sunnis participated in the election believing they would be able to amend the constitution. Another reason for the ongoing violence that will only get worse if America leaves prematurely or tries to keep a united Iraq.