Unpredictable Iraq

Introspection is not the purpose of this occasional column, but a moment ofit seems appropriate in the wake of the election recently held in Iraq. Thatelection might have been a blood-soaked fiasco, aborted by insurgent forces. Itmight have been a nonevent, with sparse turnout and sullen voters. It might havebeen well attended but still inexpressive and mysterious, a merely formalexercise whose meaning was hard to interpret. But none of these eventualities --which pretty much represented the range of my expectations -- transpired.Instead, the election was a full-throated, long-suppressed cry by millions ofoppressed and abused people against tyranny, torture, terrorism, penury, anarchyand war, and an ardent appeal for freedom, peace, order and ordinary life.

I had not thought that, two years after Saddam Hussein's fall, such apowerful current of longing could well up. I did not believe that an electionwith 7,000 candidates, most of whose identities were secret, could inspire suchenthusiasm. Above all, I did not believe that so many Iraqis, whose dislike ofthe American occupation is wide and deep, would seize an opportunity provided inpart by that same occupation to express their desires with such clarity andforce. On the contrary, I thought that national pride -- one of the mostpowerful forces of modern times -- would prevent it.

But express themselves the voters did, with compressed, elemental eloquence.What impressed was not turnout, which remains unknown, especially in Sunniareas; it was the demeanor and comments of those who did vote. A woman inBaghdad explained to the New York Times, "A hundred names on theballot are better than one, because it means that we are free." Anotherwoman in Baghdad said to the Washington Post, "We were sad for along time and this is the first happiness we ever had."

The election was a direct, powerfully expressed and articulated rebuke tocar-bombers, kidnappers and beheaders. "Enough fear," a woman inBaghdad said. "Let us breathe the air of freedom." A man in Najafwhose father had been killed by Saddam's regime said, "My father helpedbring this election today." People brought their children. A manaccompanied by his son said, "I expect he will be voting many times."Another man said, "How much those terrorists hate the Iraqis. They weretrying to kill us just because we want to do the thing we like to do." Manyvoters spoke with deep emotion. A man told the Los Angeles Times, "Ikissed the ballot box." Another said to the New York Times,"People have been thirsting for these elections, as if it was awedding."

There was, I confess, a momentary temptation for someone like me, who hasopposed the war from the start and believed it would lead to nothing good,simply to scant the importance of the event, or react to it defensively, orspeed past it on the way back to an uneasy confirmation of previous views. Butthe impulse passed. After all, hadn't I been irked that the war's promoters,including the President, had refused to admit a mistake when they had not foundweapons of mass destruction in Iraq, when they had failed to foresee theinsurgency that soon broke out after Baghdad was taken, when American forces,encouraged by memos penned at the top levels of the Administration, hadcommitted widespread acts of torture? More important, when masses of ordinarypeople act with courage to express deep and positive longings, shouldn't onegive them their due? But most important of all, wasn't full acknowledgment ofthe magnitude of the event necessary for any real understanding of what mighthappen next in Iraq?

The first question for me, therefore, has to be how a decidedly popularelection occurred under the auspices of a decidedly unpopular occupation. Thatunpopularity cannot be doubted. It was manifested in opinion polls (forinstance, in May a poll taken by the Coalition Provisional Authority found that92 percent of Iraqis saw American forces as "occupiers" and only 2percent saw them as "liberators"), but also in the statements of mostIraqi leaders not actually participating in the interim government approved bythe occupation. The most significant of them were leaders of the Shiite Muslims,who make up almost two-thirds of the population in Iraq and who came to berepresented in the election mainly by the party called the United Iraqi Alliance(UIA).

Before the vote, the Shiite leadership's position had been clear: It demandedthe withdrawal of American forces after the election. Yet as Trudy Rubin hasreported in the Gulf Times, the UIA has dropped its demand for a speedy,timed withdrawal, now asking only for "an Iraq which is capable ofguaranteeing its security and borders without depending on foreign troops."Iraqi Vice President Ibrahim al-Jaafari, an alliance member, told Rubin,"If the United States pulls out too fast, there would be chaos."

The story of this reversal perhaps began in January 2004, when the spiritualleader of the Shiites, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, announced his oppositionto an indecipherably complex American plan to hold eighteen regional caucuses,which would then choose a national assembly. Sistani demanded direct electionsfor the assembly instead. He may or may not have been a true believer indemocracy, but he certainly understood that in any democratic vote Shiites wouldwin power, reversing several centuries of rule by the Sunni Muslims, who make uponly about 20 percent of Iraq's population.

The Bush Administration balked. Sistani insisted. He made a show of strengthby summoning hundreds of thousands of Shiites to demonstrations in Basra andBaghdad in support of his plan. He called for an end to the occupation as soonas the vote was held. The demonstrators in Basra chanted, "No, no toconspiracies. No, no to occupation," and "No to America, no to Saddam,no to colonialism." The Bush Administration, afraid of further estrangingtwo-thirds of the population of Iraq, acquiesced.

Having brought the Administration to heel, Sistani next faced a challengefrom within Shiite ranks. In spring 2004, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadrlaunched an armed insurrection against the occupation. Sistani stood by whileAmerican forces badly bloodied Sadr's forces in several weeks of fighting in theholy Shiite city of Najaf, and then he successfully summoned both sides to joinin a truce in which the forces of both were withdrawn from the city. He granteda meeting to Sadr, who offered a guarded fealty. At the same time, Sistaniexpressed a sort of vague acceptance of Sadr's enemy, the US- and UN-appointedinterim government.

Still another potential challenge to Sistani's plan was the largely Sunniinsurgency, heavily concentrated in the city of Falluja. When, after a longdelay, American forces attacked Falluja, Sistani again stood aside; but thistime, he made no offer to broker a truce or mutual troop withdrawals. Fallujawas bombed, emptied of most of its people, invaded and occupied.

Sistani's stance toward the occupation had now become at least implicitlyequivocal. Having defied the United States in the matter of the election, he hadtwice stood by while American forces battered internal enemies--first Sadr, thenthe Sunni Fallujan rebels. Even as he was offering the elections as a means ofending the occupation, he was relying on the occupation to make the electionshappen.

Then yet another danger to the election took shape, this time in the form ofbloody attacks largely by Sunni insurgents upon Shiites specifically, includingone of Sistani's aides. Sistani acted once again to defend his plan -- this timeimposing a remarkable and impressive restraint on his followers, who did notretaliate. Had they done so, he certainly knew, the country might have descendedinto civil war, and the elections would have been ruined. The Sunnis could stillboycott the voting, and the great majority of them reportedly did, but theyfailed to stop it entirely.

In sum, the election on January 30 -- conceived by Sistani, forced upon areluctant Bush Administration by Sistani, and defended by Sistani (in concertwith American forces) against both Shiite and Sunni insurrections -- was firstand foremost a kind of Shiite uprising. It was an astonishingly successfulrevolt against subjugation and repression that Shiites have suffered in Iraq atthe hands of foreigners and domestic minorities alike. That this uprising tookthe form of a peaceful election rather than a bloody rebellion is owing to theshrewdness, and possibly the wisdom, of Sistani.

The results of the election, though incomplete at this writing, confirm thatit was above all a Shiite event. As expected, Shiite and Kurdish turnout wasreportedly high, Sunni turnout low. The joy the world witnessed at the pollingplaces was mostly Shiite joy. (If Kurds were less effusive, it was because theyhad long been the de facto masters of their territory.)

What the election was not was a decision by "the Iraqi people."It's not even clear that at this moment there is such a thing as the Iraqipeople. Opinion among scholars and others is divided on the point. Iraq is anation without a constitution (it is governed by a Transitional AdministrativeLaw) and without a state. If some observers are correct, it is also a nationwithout a nation. Its three major groups -- the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds --lackthe common ties, these scholars say, required for nationhood and have merelybeen forced to live in a single polity, first by the British and then by Saddam.(It's notable that Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan DemocraticParty, took the occasion of the election to comment that he hopes to see anindependent Kurdistan in his lifetime.) Other observers argue that genuinenational feeling still can unite the groups.

It's significant -- and discouraging -- that Sistani's first act after theelection was to signal through aides that all Iraqi law should be founded inIslamic law. For all his tactical sagacity, he may turn out to belong to thelong list of leaders able to win power but unable to found a just new order. Allthe parties express a desire to avoid civil war, but there is a distinctpossibility that what the vote strengthened was not "the Iraqi people"but each of the subgroups.

The high vote of the Shiites and the low vote of the Sunnis may have carriedthe same message: When all is said and done, we are more faithful to theinterest of our own group than to a unified Iraq. The very steps Sistani took toachieve the Shiite electoral triumph may turn out to have fatally undermined anyfuture government. When he acquiesced in the smashing of Falluja, he passed upan opportunity for national solidarity that may not come soon again. The dangerfor the Shiite leadership is that by associating themselves with an occupyingpower, they will -- even among many Shiites -- throw away the legitimacy thatthe election has just given them. Then all hopes, including those so movinglyexpressed on January 30, will have been betrayed.

It's in this radically unpredictable and rapidly developing context that thequestion of the future of the American occupation must be considered. There canbe no doubt that the election was a rebellion by the Shiites against theirtraditional oppressors in Iraq. Was it also a rebellion against the occupation?For all the eloquence of the voters at the polls, they gave little clue on thispoint. In the coverage I saw, there was much gratitude for voting but little orno love for Americans. The scene of the Iraqi woman kissing the mother of theslain American soldier occurred in Washington at the State of the Union address,not in Iraq. Some voters said that their vote had been against the occupation aswell as past tyranny, but they also were few.

Since the invasion, Americans have been absorbed in the debate over whetherU.S. troops should remain in Iraq ("stay the course") or leave. Theissue of the moment is whether the commitment should be open-ended or, as Ibelieve, limited by a deadline for withdrawal. The danger for the United Statesin staying is that it will wind up on one side of a civil war that its presencewill continually exacerbate but be unable to quell. This American debate iscrucial, but now a prior question pushes to the fore. Will the new leadership ofIraq invite American troops to stay or ask them to leave?

The rudiments of a new governing authority in Iraq have appeared for thefirst time since the war that felled Saddam. It's unknowable whether such anauthority can surmount the sectarian divisions it faces -- in effect, creatingan Iraqi nation -- or, if it does succeed, whether it will invite Americanforces to remain. What we can know is that from now on it is Iraqis, notAmericans, who will be making the most fundamental decisions in their country.

Jonathan Schell is the Nation Institute's Harold Willens Peace Fellow. TheJonathan Schell Reader was recently published by Nation Books. CopyrightC2005 Jonathan Schell. This article will appear in the upcoming issue of TheNation Magazine. Courtesy, TomDispatch.Com