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The Bush
administration's hopes for Iraq rest heavily on
whether Iraqis can shape their political future
through elections, but it could be difficult for
them to vote on Jan. 30, as now planned.
Analysts who have studied the Iraqi elections
process cite worsening violence, logistical problems
as mundane as printing and distributing ballots on
time, and the fear that many of the nation's potent
Sunni Muslim minority will boycott the polls,
undermining the legitimacy of the vote.
Iraqis, with U.S. help, "would have to greatly
accelerate security improvements and technical
preparations" to hold elections on time, says Daniel
Serwer, director of Peace and Stability Operations
at the U.S. Institute of Peace, an independent, U.S.
taxpayer-funded organization in Washington that
promotes conflict resolution. "What you've got here
is a very tight schedule that would be difficult to
meet even under ideal circumstances. It's just not
clear if it can physically be done."
Larry Diamond, a democracy expert at Stanford
University who served in Iraq for three months this
year with the U.S.-led civil administration, says
elections might be postponed if there is a
likelihood of a massive boycott by Sunni Muslims.
Otherwise, he says Iraqis will be "asking
themselves, what do we gain by having elections in
which a whole sector of the country might be
disenfranchised?"
On Sunday, Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission
set the nation's voting for Jan. 30, the day before
an elections deadline set by a United Nations
resolution last June.
"Our very credibility is really on the line," Iraqi
Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told CNN on Monday.
"We have to meet this deadline."
Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said he was
confident that only a small minority of Sunnis would
boycott the elections.
"The forces of darkness and terrorism will not
benefit from this democratic experience and will
fight it," Allawi told the Associated Press. "But we
are determined that this experiment succeeds."
The elections are for a 275-member assembly that
will choose a new transitional government.
Most importantly, the assembly will write a
constitution that will determine the powers of the
central government and the country's main ethnic
regions: Kurdish, Arab Sunni and Arab Shiite.
Iraq has never had free elections for its leaders;
it was ruled by a British-backed monarchy for the
first half of the 20th century and then by Sunni
dictatorships. Saddam Hussein, who took power in
1979, staged elections that he invariably won.
Elections crucial
The Bush administration sees elections as crucial to
justifying the U.S.-led invasion and as a way to
tamp down violence and lay the groundwork to begin
withdrawing U.S. troops. Installing a democracy in
Iraq, Bush has said, would also help reduce hatred
of the United States in the region, where many blame
Washington for propping up dictatorial regimes.
"The Iraqi people, like the people of Afghanistan
before them, are embracing a democratic future, even
in the face of threats and intimidation," Bush said
in his weekly radio address Nov. 13. He said the
elections would be "held on schedule in January."
The obstacles to a January vote are daunting,
however. Among them:
Security
Iraq's ongoing violence could make campaigning or
voting death-defying acts. Insurgent attacks have
intensified in areas where Sunni Muslim Arabs
predominate, largely in the Sunni Triangle north and
west of Baghdad. Though Sunni Arabs represent just
20% of Iraq's population of 26 million, they have
historically dominated the majority Shiites and
ruled Iraq. They comprise most of the insurgents now
fighting U.S. and Iraqi government forces.
The U.S. assault on Fallujah this month was meant to
destroy the insurgency's base. But rebel leaders
appear to have escaped, and violence has escalated
in other Sunni cities and towns.
While most Iraqi officials seem determined to keep
to the Jan. 30 election schedule, the violence is
bad enough that Iraq's representative to the U.N.
won't rule out a delay to get better control of the
insurgency. "We cannot exclude that possibility, but
we cannot at the same time start signaling right now
that this is going to happen," Samir Sumaidaie told
Reuters on Monday. "This would give comfort to the
terrorists."
A Sunni group responsible for many attacks,
kidnappings and beheadings of foreign hostages
warned Iraqis last week not to vote and politicians
not to run, essentially saying they would be killed
if they did. A statement from the Ansar al-Sunnah
Army said that anyone who participated would be
considered "an infidel and an apostate seeking to
rule in defiance of God's orders and in compliance
with the will of the Americans, the crusaders, their
allies and their apostate agents."
Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington, says that although the fighting in
Fallujah led to the death or capture of hundreds of
insurgents, it will probably make it easier to
recruit more fighters.
The fighting "has almost certainly increased the
slow but steady polarization of Iraqi Sunnis into a
group that feels disgraced and deprived of power and
wealth," Cordesman says.
Sunni boycott
Even before the Fallujah battles, several Sunni
groups vowed to boycott the elections.
A predominantly Sunni group called the Iraqi
National Founding Congress (INFC) issued an open
letter Oct. 27 calling for the "immediate cessation
of all military operations by the occupation forces
and the interim government against Iraqi cities and
towns." Otherwise, the letter said, "the elections
will be regarded as fully invalidated."
Last week, 47 groups ranging from Saddam's old Baath
Party to Islamic fundamentalists organized by the
INFC met in Baghdad and declared that they would not
participate in the vote because of the U.S. attacks
on Fallujah and other Sunni population centers.
A communiqué issued after the meeting said the
January election would not speak for the Iraqi
people because it was "imposed" by the U.S.-backed
interim government.
At a meeting of political parties in the northern
Iraqi resort of Dukan on Nov. 19, Sunni parties
asked for elections to be postponed to give them
more time to prepare, says Nashirwan Mustapha, a
senior official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan,
one of two main Kurdish groups that hosted the
meeting. "Shiites asked for the opposite," he says.
"Nothing was agreed."
In deciding the timing of the elections, Iraqis are
caught between the desires of its main ethnic
groups.
Majority Shiites want elections as soon as possible
because with 60% of the population, they are almost
certain to win. Sunnis, on the other hand, know that
whenever voting takes place, their minority status
will be confirmed.
Logistics
Under a tight schedule worked out by the U.N.,
parties must register by Nov. 30. Candidate lists
must be certified by Iraqi election authorities by
Dec. 6 so that ballots can be printed securely
outside the country, then brought back and
distributed to 28,000 polling places. There also has
to be time for candidates to campaign.
The deadline for voter registration is Dec. 15.
There are 542 registration centers at locations
where Iraqis receive food ration cards. In most
cases, registration will be a matter of verifying
names on food distribution lists, says Carina
Perelli, director of the U.N.'s electoral assistance
division. Registration began Nov. 1 in most of the
country but has been delayed where fighting has been
intense.
An added complication is the decision by the
U.N.-appointed Iraqi electoral commission to allow
Iraqis outside the country to vote. The U.N. advised
against this, Perelli says, because it will add to
the expense and complexity of the election, and it
will be difficult to prevent voter intimidation and
fraud.
No one knows how many Iraqi expatriates there are,
where they are and how many will vote. The
presumption is that many will be inclined to support
secular, pro-Western candidates, but there is no
guarantee. Polls have shown that a plurality of
Iraqis inside the country say they will be inclined
to back candidates favored by Islamic clerics.
"The Iraqis have been ... 'spoken for' up until
now," Perelli said at a briefing at the U.N. "How
they are going to participate, we don't know."
Limited U.N. staff
In contrast to Afghanistan's October elections, for
which the U.N. deployed 266 election workers, there
are only 10 U.N. staffers now in Iraq, a number
expected to increase to 25 in December. U.N.
officials say they don't need as many personnel in
Iraq because Iraqis are more sophisticated than
Afghans.
"Our role is similar to yeast," Kiernan Prendergast,
U.N. undersecretary general for political affairs,
said at the U.N. briefing earlier this month. "The
dough can't rise without the yeast, but you actually
don't need very much of it."
But U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has also made
clear that the lack of security is the biggest
constraint on deploying U.N. staff. While fighting
continues in Afghanistan, the level of violence
there is much lower than it is in Iraq. The world
body has had a minimal presence in Iraq since last
year, following the death of 22 U.N. personnel in a
suicide bombing.
In addition to U.N. advisers, there are a small
number of election experts from nongovernmental
groups such as the International Federation of
Election Systems, which helps organize polling in
nations emerging from conflict. Jarrett Blanc, IFES
project director in Iraq, said in a phone interview
from Baghdad last week that elections can take place
on time "if there is a will to have them."
While elections are a high priority for the Bush
administration, reducing violence is the top issue
for Iraqis. In a late September poll of 2,000 Iraqis
conducted by the International Republican Institute,
a U.S.-funded group that promotes democracy abroad,
34% of respondents said the best way to calm the
country would be to strengthen Iraqi police. Only
22% said holding elections as scheduled would be the
optimal way to stop the attacks.
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