Iraqi election for a new US puppet regime

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Iraqi election for a new US puppet regime
By James Cogan
8 March 2010

The third parliamentary election held in Iraq since the US invasion of
the country in March 2003 took place yesterday, with some 6,529
candidates, 86 political parties and 20 electoral coalitions competing
to win 325 seats in the legislature. A preliminary result is expected
to be announced on Tuesday and a final result by the end of the month.
Initial indications suggest that none of the main coalitions will win
an outright majority.

The voting was disrupted by some 100 small explosions in areas of
Baghdad and other cities that killed as many as 38 people. Overall,
however, a massive security operation involving hundreds of thousands
of Iraqi troops and police, supported by US aircraft and helicopter
gunships, prevented anti-occupation opponents from carrying out
threatened attacks on polling stations.

The reportedly high turnout among voters elicited a predictable
response from the American political establishment and in the media.
President Barack Obama declared it was proof that “the future of Iraq
belongs to the people of Iraq”. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said it
“was a good day for the Iraqis”. The New York Times’s report hailed
Sunday’s voting as “arguably the most open, most competitive election
in the nation’s long history of colonial rule, dictatorship and war”.

Concealed by such empty statements is the real state of Iraq. Over one
million people have been killed and at least two million are living as
refugees in neighbouring countries. The majority of the population has
suffered a staggering decline in living standards. Entire cities and
suburbs are still in ruins as a result of US bombing and other
operations to suppress Iraqi opposition to the invasion. Depleted
uranium munitions have contaminated much of the country. A BBC report
this month documented a terrible increase in birth defects in the
Anbar province city of Fallujah, which was virtually destroyed by
American forces in 2004. Women are now being advised not to get
pregnant. The most affected area is the working class suburb of
al-Julan, where boys as young as 14 fought and died to protect their
families and homes from US marines.

Far from its “long history of colonial rule” ending, Iraq has been
reduced over the past seven years to a de-facto colony of the United
States. It continues to be occupied by close to 100,000 American
troops. Its so-called sovereign government takes no major decision
without consulting the massive US embassy that dominates the central
Baghdad skyline. The candidates who stood yesterday are
representatives of the venal ruling elite that has been prepared to
collaborate with a destructive and brutal occupying power in the hope
of gaining privilege, position and wealth.

US General David Petraeus coined the term “Iraqcracy” last month to
describe the flagrant resort to bribery, intimidation and sectarian,
tribal or ethnic appeals that marked the efforts of Iraqi politicians
to win popular support. This reality, which the US occupation has
created, will determine the make-up of the next Iraqi government. It
can be stated in advance and without fear of contradiction that it
will be an unstable pro-US puppet regime, riven by communalist
tensions that could lurch into open civil war.

Four coalitions are likely to win the bulk of the seats in parliament.

* The current prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, contested the election
at the head of the State of Law bloc, which is made up of his own
Shiite fundamentalist Da’wa party and a section of the Sunni Arab
“Awakening” movement in Anbar. The Awakening refers to the process
during 2007 in which insurgent commanders convinced some 100,000
predominantly Sunni fighters to cease fighting and in return received
lucrative US pay-offs. The rank-and-file insurgents received a US-paid
stipend and a guarantee from the occupation forces and Maliki that
they would stop the slaughter of Sunni civilians by US-backed Shiite
death squads in the Iraqi military.

Maliki has sought to create a base of support within the bloated
600,000-strong security apparatus and among those sections of the
population who simply want stability to rebuild their shattered lives.
He has projected himself as a “strongman” who is prepared to suppress
any opposition. In 2008, Maliki ordered major operations against those
elements of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia in Basra, Amarah and Baghdad
that had refused to obey the orders of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to lay
down their arms and collaborate with the occupation. Maliki has also
sought to whip up anti-Kurdish Arab nationalism, by opposing a
constitutionally required referendum in the oil-rich province of
Kirkuk on whether to affiliate with the autonomous Kurdish Regional
Government (KRG) in the country’s north.

* The main Shiite religious parties, the Islamic Supreme Council of
Iraq (ISCI) and the political movement of Moqtada al-Sadr, stood as
part of the United Iraqi Alliance coalition (UIA). The alliance is
expected to win a significant proportion of the seats in the majority
Shiite provinces of the country’s south and the working class Shiite
districts of Baghdad, such as Sadr City. The UIA has indicated it is
prepared to enter into coalition with Maliki’s State of Law, as long
as Maliki is not the prime minister. Throughout the election campaign,
its rivals have repeatedly labelled the UIA as a puppet of the Iranian
regime. Moqtada al-Sadr fueled the accusations by making a
pre-election appeal for support from a press conference in Tehran.

Statements by US officials have left little doubt that Washington is
hoping to see a considerable weakening of the UIA in the Iraqi
parliament. The alliance has waged a campaign focused on whipping up
sectarian Shiite fears of a political resurgence by elements
associated with the former, Sunni-dominated Baathist regime of Saddam
Hussein. A UIA-controlled body, the Justice and Accountability Board,
successfully banned hundreds of Sunni and secular candidates from
standing in the election on the grounds they supported or had promoted
Baathist ideology.

* The bloc with the greatest sympathy from the Obama administration
appears to be the Iraqiya coalition headed by former prime minister
Iyad Allawi and current vice-president Tariq al-Hashemi. Iraqiya
campaigned as a secular and nationalist opposition to both State of
Law and the more overtly Shiite fundamentalist UIA. Allawi is a tried
and tested servant of US imperialism. He was intimately involved with
the Bush administration in plotting the US invasion of Iraq and was
installed as the head of the first government created by the
occupation regime in 2004.

Iraqiya and Maliki’s State of Law vied for support from similar social
layers—the security forces and the middle class, both Shiite and
Sunni. It has made numerous condemnations of the UIA as an Iranian
front and painted Maliki’s government as incompetent and sectarian.
Nevertheless, there has been considerable speculation that Iraqiya
will seek to form a coalition government with State of Law but with
Allawi as the prime minister.

* The main Kurdish parties again stood as a bloc, the Kurdish
Alliance. They were challenged by a break-away grouping, the Movement
for Change, which according to polling could win as many as 10 of the
43 national parliamentary seats elected in the Kurdish region. As in
the previous parliaments, the Kurdish bloc will be seeking to function
as kingmaker, delivering office to whichever of the larger Arab-based
factions is prepared to give the best terms.

Depending on the result, the formation of a new government could be
protracted. After the December 2005 election, it took close to six
months for the Shiite coalition to install Maliki as prime minister
and parcel out control of state ministries to various allies, the
Kurdish bloc and token Sunni representatives. In 2010, the process
could be even more volatile, as it is likely that two or three
combinations may be able to get a parliamentary majority and form a
government.

The primary function of the next government will be to continue to
legitimise the US claim that Iraq is now a sovereign state. It will
nominally preside over the withdrawal of US combat troops in August
and the “end” of the occupation at the end of 2011, when the remaining
US forces are supposed to leave. In reality, the US plan is for an
indefinite presence in the country. The “Strategic Framework” between
Iraq and the US, which was drafted in the final months of the Bush
administration and endorsed by Obama, dictates that there will be a
“long term relationship in economic, diplomatic, cultural and security
fields”. The US military will not be leaving its major bases at places
like Balad, Al Asad and Tallil.

The overall American strategy, and the real motive for the 2003
invasion, continues to be to dominate the Middle East and its energy
resources in order to dictate terms to the United States’s European
and Asian rivals. Whatever its final composition, the next Iraqi
government will remain a pawn in a broader game of great power rivalries.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/iraq-m08.shtml

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