Defying the bombers to cast their votes

Jan 31st 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

Iraq's Shia Muslims and Kurds have turned out in force for the country’s first elections since the toppling of Saddam Hussein. The insurgents have failed in their bid to wreck the elections, though they are unlikely to go away soon

THE insurgents had declared “holy war” on the elections, on any “infidel” who took part in them—and indeed on the very concept of democracy. But on Sunday January 30th, millions of Iraqis defied the bombs and bullets, the threats and the curses, and queued to cast their votes in the country’s first elections since the American-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003—indeed, the country’s first genuine multi-party elections for half a century. Because of the fear of assassination, by and large only the most senior party leaders had done any visible campaigning. The names of most of the 7,000 candidates for the 275-seat Iraqi national assembly, and the location of many polling stations, had been kept secret until the last moment.

As had been expected, turnout was highest in the Kurdish region in northern Iraq and in the strongholds of Iraq’s majority Shia Muslim population. Voters formed long queues to cast their ballots, in some cases chanting and clapping with joy at being granted their first ever chance to choose their government. Some proudly showed their fingers, stained with indelible blue ink (to prevent multiple voting), as they left the polling stations.

Turnout was derisory or zero in many Sunni Muslim areas. But not all: astonishingly, a modest stream of voters was seen in the bombed-out remains of Fallujah, in the deadly “Sunni triangle” west of the capital, which American-led forces recaptured from insurgents in a bloody battle last November. President George Bush declared the elections a success, while the United Nations’ secretary-general, Kofi Annan, congratulated those Iraqis who had plucked up the courage to vote, saying that: “They are voting for the future of their country. They are voting for the day when they will have their destiny in their own hands.”

One of the most bloodthirsty insurgent groups, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian affiliated to al-Qaeda, bragged on the internet that it had been behind a number of suicide-bombings of polling stations, mainly in Baghdad. In all, around 35 people were killed in attacks while the polls were open. Ten British servicemen were missing, believed killed, after a Royal Air Force transport plane crashed near Baghdad on Sunday, possibly due to an attack by insurgents. However, even before voting closed, it had become clear that—as in Afghanistan’s presidential election in December—the insurgents had failed to terrorise Iraq's voters into staying at home.

There had been fears in recent days that the rebels were conserving their resources to launch spectacular attacks on polling day. But this seems to have been prevented by stringent security restrictions and the strong presence of troops from the American-led coalition, alongside Iraqi forces. America had boosted its troop levels in Iraq from 138,000 to 150,000 to provide additional security for the elections, in which a total of around 300,000 Iraqi and foreign troops were on guard.

At first, officials from Iraq’s electoral commission claimed that as many as 72% of the 13m registered voters had cast ballots. But they later backtracked, saying that perhaps around 8m, or 60% of registered voters, had turned up, and that this was only a preliminary guess. The interim Iraqi government, led by Iyad Allawi, had set itself a target of at least a 50% turnout. In addition to the overall turnout figure, close attention will be paid to the participation in Sunni areas: clearly, the Sunnis will be under-represented in the national assembly, but the question is by how much.

The counting of ballots has already begun, though even preliminary results are not expected for about another week. The most likely outcome is that the United Iraqi Alliance (better known by Iraqis as “the Shia house”, “the clerics' list” or simply “169”, after its number on the vast ballot paper) will do best, since it has the tacit blessing of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential cleric among the 60% of Iraqis who are Shia Muslims. A catch-all Kurdish Alliance is sure to sweep up the vast majority of Kurdish votes. And a list headed by Mr Allawi, a secular Shia, may do better than was once expected, thanks to his image as a tough, steady leader.

No turbans allowed

Mr Allawi’s group is more secular and less sectarian than the Shia house, though the latter’s leaders insist they are not seeking an Iranian-style theocracy: “We will have no turbans in the government,” says one. The likely outcome of the election is a coalition involving the Shia house, the Kurds, Mr Allawi’s lot and several Sunni Arab-led parties. In recent days there has been speculation that Mr Allawi may succeed in persuading the other parties to let him stay on as prime minister, though there may be a long period of wrangling before the new government emerges.

Seats in the new assembly will be allocated by pure proportional representation. It must first vote for a president and two vice-presidents who, in turn, as a presidential council, must unanimously choose the prime minister. He must then choose a government, which must be endorsed by a simple majority of the assembly’s members. Perhaps more important, the assembly must oversee the writing of a new and final constitution, to be drafted by mid-August and endorsed in a referendum by mid-October, leading to a full general election under new rules by mid-December (though the rules allow for some slippage). If two-thirds of voters in three provinces reject the new constitution, the process must start again. That gives both the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs a veto.

All this, however, seems immaterial while the insurgency rages, at a rate much higher than a year ago. American officers say their troops are subjected to some 70 attacks a day. Since the invasion, around 1,100 have died in combat and another 250 or so in accidents. Even more grimly, the tally of Iraqi civilian deaths continues to rise inexorably. IraqBodyCount, an anti-war but fastidious group, reckons that 15,000-18,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since March 2003.

By a Brookings Institution estimate based mainly on Pentagon briefings, some 32,000 insurgents have been killed or captured since the conventional phase of the war ended in April 2003. Yet the number of active insurgents, though hard to count, has plainly continued to swell. The head of Iraq's intelligence service suggested earlier this month that there were 40,000 hard-core rebels, with another 160,000-odd Iraqis helping them out. That is several times the standard, albeit rough, estimate of a year ago.

So the new government will face colossal challenges: the huge numbers of frustrated, unemployed Iraqi youths are a willing pool of recruits, not just for insurgent groups but also for the armed gangs and criminal underworld that hold sway in many parts of the country. A rebellious young cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, and his thuggish militia, known as the Mahdi Army, have been lying low since Mr Sistani talked them out of their rebellion against American occupation late last summer. But they control swathes of the centre and south, and could rise up again if he or his group were cut out of a power-sharing deal. And while the Kurdish north is the safest part of Iraq, tension is growing over the bitterly contested and oil-rich city of Kirkuk, to where many of the Kurds displaced in Saddam’s brutal Arabisation campaign are returning.

The insurgents will do their utmost to provoke sectarian warfare between Kurds and Sunnis, and Sunnis and Shias, or among any of the country’s other ethnic and religious groups. Any one of several potential flashpoints might trigger wider unrest that, unless the new government handles things skilfully, could push Iraq towards civil war and even a break-up.

Mr Allawi argues that, provided the Americans do not cut and run, the insurgency can be contained, if not beaten. The main plan is to beef up the home-grown Iraqi forces (now totalling 127,000 against an eventual goal of 273,000), enabling the Americans and their allies to wind down their troop numbers. This, within the next few years, is a false hope. The Iraqi forces are utterly feeble. At present, only some 5,000 of them are a match for the insurgents.

Besides giving more moderate Sunnis fair representation on the new presidential council and on the committee drafting the new constitution, the new government must also reach out to spokesmen for the insurgency, which is far from monolithic. Most insurgents are above all nationalists. The government might accommodate many of them if they could be convinced that the Americans were certain to leave—if not immediately, at least soon. A new government could ask foreign troops to leave; but that is barely conceivable in the short run, because any government is bound, for now, to rely heavily on American force for its mere physical survival.

A rough timetable could be spelled out: some voices in the Sunni rejectionist camp have aired the possibility of a ceasefire if the Americans promised, in principle, to leave in, say, six months. That is unthinkable for the moment but may offer a chink of light for negotiations. Mr Bush told Friday’s New York Times that he would withdraw American troops if asked but that the political leaders likely to win the election understood the need to keep them for now.

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