Humanitarian

More than two weeks after the citizens of Iraq voted for the first time in 50 years, election officials have announced that the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance won nearly half of the 8.5 million votes cast. The Shiites, the majority in Iraq and a group long oppressed by Saddam Hussein’s Sunni regime, will have substantial power in government and will hold about 48% of the seats on the Transitional National Assembly.  The Kurdish alliance won about a quarter of the votes cast, with Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister and his US-backed secular list winning only 12% of the vote.  The Sunni Arabs, who make up around 35% of the population in Iraq, preformed abysmally in the election, with their largest list led by the country's interim president Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Arab, winning less than 2%.  Few Sunnis participated in the vote, either because of violent conditions in many Sunni strongholds or because of boycotts organized by prominent Sunni leaders.  Because the Sunnis did not participate in the election, many of them will not view the results or the Assembly as legitimate.  58% of eligible voters participated in the election, which is unsurprising, as Dahr Jamail reports that most voters thought that by voting they could help end the occupation.

          Of the three occupied votes that have been held since the start of 2004 (in Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq), this is the first election where the candidate backed by the occupying force has not won a substantial majority.  The fact that Allawi did not win in a landslide, unlike US endorsed Hamid Karzai who won with 60% of the vote in Afghanistan and Mahmoud Abbas who won with 62% of the Palestinian vote despite being overwhelmingly supported by politicians in the US and Israel suggests that perhaps this election was more legitimate than the Palestinian election, in which Abbas’ leading opponent (political prisoner Marwan Barghouti) voluntarily dropped out of the election, and the Afghanistan election which became a farce due to fraudulent activates that were so widespread all fifteen of Karzai’s opponents launched a protest against the results of the election.

          While the results of the Iraq election do not appear to have favored the US puppet candidate, there is no possibility of the Transitional National Assembly becoming autonomous and making decisions that the US disapproves of while Iraq is still under military occupation.  If the Assembly peruses any policy that is even slightly democratic and in defiance of US interests, the US will undoubtedly destroy the assembly or at least threaten it into submission.  If the US was interested in the creation of a democratic society in Iraq it would withdraw the greatest obstacle to democracy in Iraq: American soldiers. But after spending billions of dollars on a war, there is no way the US will let something as insignificant as the will of the people stand in the way of its plunder.  These elections were not held by the US in the hope of creating a democratic society in Iraq, they were held to save the reputation of ‘humanitarian intervention’ as an imperialistic ideology, and only after much nonviolent protest. As Noam Chomsky said in a recent blog entry at www.zmag.org:

“In many respects, the elections were successful.  The main success, however, is being mentioned only marginally, by a few reporters: the US was compelled to allow them to take place.  That is a real triumph of non-violent resistance, for which Sistani has been the symbol.  The US sought in every possible way to avoid elections, but has been compelled to back down, step-by-step.  First, it tried to ram through a US-written constitution.  That was barred by a Sistani fatwa.  Then it tried to impose one or another device (caucuses, etc.) that could be controlled completely.  Also blocked by non-violent resistance.  It continued until finally the US (and UK, trailing obediently behind) had no recourse but to allow an election—and of course, the doctrinal system went into high gear to present it as a US initiative, once it could no longer be avoided.”

          The struggle for autonomy and democracy in Iraq will not take place in the ballot box, but rather, it will be fought against foreign occupiers who wish to force Iraq and its people into a submissive state under a neocolonialist regime in which all of Iraq’s resources will be drained from under its feet into the coffers and safes of first world war profiteers.  There is no greater democratic struggle than the struggle against a military, economic, and political occupation, such as the one Iraq is currently dominated by. 

          In reality, it is largely irrelevant who is elected to the Transitional National Assembly, the Iraqi people will never gain control of their country by voting in a US sponsored poll.  The people of Iraq will only become autonomous when the US occupation is ended