By Reidar Visser (www.historiae.org)
7 August 2008
Yesterday’s failure of the Iraqi parliament to pass the provincial elections law before the summer recess may well end up being blamed on Sadrists and other “recalcitrants” who refused to give up their principles and adopt a more “businesslike” attitude. Or, alternatively, as an AP headline puts it today, “Iraqi election bill falls to ethnic rivalry”. However, quite apart from issues related to Islamic radicalism or ethnic identities, first and foremost the parliamentary deliberations of the elections law exposed some of the fundamental weaknesses and contradictions of Pax Americana in Iraq.
It may be useful to briefly recapitulate why there was a desire for provincial elections in Iraq in the first place, and which forces tried to resist this pressure. On the one hand, there was a broad alliance of parties that pushed the elections agenda forward, and insisted on the insertion of a timeline in the legislation that was adopted in February this year. This group featured cross-sectarian cooperation and participation by secularists as well as Islamists, with the key parties being the Sadrists (Shiite Islamist), Fadila (Shiite Islamist), Tawafuq (Sunni Islamist), al-Hiwar al-Watani (Iraqi nationalist, mostly Sunni) and Iraqiyya (nationalist, secular-leaning). Those who opposed the prospect of early elections were primarily the Kurdish parties and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI, Shiite Islamist), with some support from the Daawa party of Iraqi premier Nuri al-Maliki. The opponents of the elections – who had everything to lose because they gained power in the controversial January 2005 local elections which many Sunni and Shiite parties boycotted – tried to scotch the law by using the presidential veto, but finally changed their position after a visit to Baghdad by US vice president Dick Cheney in March.