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During the weeks
following the December 15, 2005 elections in Iraq
for a four-year parliament, the political future of
that country became increasingly clouded. Confirming
pre-election projections of PINR analysts Erich
Marquardt and Adam Wolfe, preliminary results from
the polls registered a sectarian division of the
vote with the Shi'a-dominated United Iraqi Alliance
taking the largest share, the Kurdish coalition
holding on to its base, and the Sunni Arab Tawafaq
Front and the secular Iraqi National List trailing.
With probable control of at least two-thirds of the
new parliament, the Shi'a-Kurdish alliance that held
power during the period of interim government
preceding the elections was poised to perpetuate its
dominance and opened discussions on apportioning key
cabinet posts, all the while insisting that its aim
was to form a "national unity government," including
all the major groups in Iraqi society.
Meanwhile, an alliance of convenience between the
Sunni Arabs and the secularists disputed the
election results, mounting mass protests, demanding
a new round of elections and threatening a boycott
of parliament and civil disobedience if its demand
was not met.
After the New Year, the Sunni Arabs split, with the
Islamist National Accordance Front joining the Shi'a-Kurdish
negotiations, leaving behind the nationalists and
rejectionists. The secularists were frozen out of
the bargaining.
As political conflict surfaced, civil violence and
disorder spiked up after a pre-election and
immediate post-election lull. Sunni Arab insurgent
activity resumed with attacks on U.S. forces, Iraqi
security forces and the energy infrastructure, and
kidnappings of foreign diplomats.
Violent protests also broke out over the
government's decision to raise fuel prices, which
was taken in response to shortages caused by
insurgent sabotage and intimidation. Most seriously,
the drift toward inter-communal warfare continued
with mass killings of Shi'a and Sunni families, and
assassinations of religious and community leaders.
Washington, which is anxious to draw down its forces
for domestic political reasons, had hoped that the
elections would rebalance power in the divided and
contentious Iraqi political community, giving the
secularists led by former provisional government
Prime Minister Ayad Allawi greater influence and
bringing the Sunni Arabs into the political process,
blunting support for the insurgency. The elections
did not yield Washington's desired results and,
instead, have deepened longstanding divisions.
Iraq as a Failed State
Although public attention in the U.S. has been
focused on the abilities of Iraqi security forces to
take on primary responsibility for quelling the
insurgency, Washington understands that the far more
important requirement for an eventual graceful
withdrawal of U.S. forces is a functioning civil
government in Iraq.
In the wake of the elections, Washington's best-case
scenario is that a broad-based government will
emerge from negotiations among the competing
political forces that would provide Iraq with a
coherent central authority capable of preventing the
country's break-up into a Shi'a state in the south
that would fall into Tehran's sphere of influence, a
Kurdish state in the north that would provoke
resistance from Ankara, and a weak Sunni Arab state
in the center and west that could become a breeding
ground for Islamic revolution and be subject to
Damascus' influence.
Faced with the persistence of the pre-election
configuration of political forces in Iraq,
Washington has been constrained to shift its support
away from the Shi'a and the Kurds, who are
determined to pursue their policies of regional
autonomy, to the Sunni Arabs and the secularists,
who favor a more centralized state.
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad has been
working behind the scenes to pressure the Shi'a-Kurdish
coalition to hold out a hand to its opponents. His
efforts have succeeded in getting the coalition to
pay lip service to a "national unity government."
The slide toward regionalism, if not separation,
goes on, and the will to compromise on key issues --
such as the distribution of oil revenues and the
division of central and regional power -- that would
be necessary to reverse that slide appears to be
nowhere in evidence.
The unwillingness of Iraq's major groups to
compromise, which has marked the country's politics
since the removal of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist
government, has become more severe as the U.S.
intervention nears the end of its third year. The
political class in Washington has failed to confront
the fact that during the intervention Iraq has
progressively taken on the characteristics of a
failed state, the most important of which is the
extreme dispersion of political forces.
A combination of factors, including the failure to
restore public services and to get the oil industry
running effectively, the persistence of the
insurgency, and high levels of unemployment, have
led to the devolution of power to local leaders
based in traditional clans, religious figures,
criminal gangs, and narrow political factions, some
of which deploy militia, that partially overlap with
one another and split the major groups from within,
except -- for the moment -- the Kurds.
The greatest shortcoming of the intervention has
been its failure to nurture a coherent Iraqi
political class. In its absence, loose and divergent
coalitions have emerged that mask the underlying
dispersion of power, which was the primary cause of
the protracted negotiations that were necessary to
form the interim government and that are likely to
be repeated before the new constitutional government
is put in place.
The hallmark of a failed state, political dispersion
severely weakens the ability to compromise because
it impairs the capacity of leaders on the national
stage to discipline hard line factions among their
constituents and encourages a chronic battle for
influence within coalitions over the distribution of
political spoils and a struggle for prestige. The
problem is exacerbated when -- as in Iraq -- leaders
do not have sufficient resources to reward
cooperation. That 60 separate parties were involved
in the coalition protesting the elections is an
indicator of Iraq's political dispersion. The Shi'a
are similarly factionalized and appear to be unified
only because they are determined to hold on to and,
if possible, expand their regional autonomy and
control over petroleum resources.
The mobilization deficit that follows from political
dispersion will make it difficult to achieve
governability in post-election Iraq. Initial Shi'a-Kurdish
talks on the composition of a new government
produced no more than "an agreement on principles."
The Kurds are standing firm in their aim of
restoring their supremacy in the oil-rich city of
Kirkuk, from which Kurds were expelled under Saddam
Hussein's rule and which was left out of the Kurdish
provinces, and are pressuring the Shi'a alliance to
meet their demands. Any concession to the Kurdish
position would be a probable deal breaker for the
Sunni Arabs.
The decision of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accordance
Front to open talks with Kurdish leader Massoud
Barzani in early January 2006 was a sign that the
dominant coalition is reaching out and that the more
moderate Sunni Arab faction is willing to brave hard
line opposition within its community and to pursue a
dual-track strategy of negotiation and continued
protest against the legitimacy of the elections,
which -- after Khalilzad's successful pressure --
will be reviewed by independent assessors from the
International Mission for Iraqi Elections, delaying
the release of final tallies and opening the
possibility of local and provincial re-runs.
After being welcomed by Barzani, the Iraqi
Accordance Front sat down with the Shi'a Alliance.
The loose Shi'a bloc was constrained to reach out to
the Sunni Arabs by the forces of anti-occupation
cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who demanded that Allawi's
secularist faction be frozen out of the
negotiations. Unlike other Shi'a factions, al-Sadr's
favors a centralized governmental structure, but
will not abide Allawi -- Washington's favorite --
who suppressed al-Sadr's rebellion against the
occupation when Allawi led the provisional
government.
Al-Sadr's influence in the Shi'a bloc underscores
the bloc's fragility. In order to bring some
discipline into its ranks, the Alliance has formed a
steering committee and has exacted pledges from its
members to respect the new constitution and refrain
from violence.
Conclusion
With uncertainty clouding every aspect of Iraq's
political future, mixed signals coming from every
camp and dispersion the order of the day, General
Peter Pace, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of
Staff, has urged Iraqi leaders to form a government
as quickly as possible to avoid the 2005 scenario.
Washington knows that protracted negotiations would
only increase the momentum toward regionalism,
encourage the insurgency, delay rebuilding and leave
the way open for intensified inter-communal
conflict, all of which would herald a failed state.
Yet, there is nothing that Washington can do now to
make up for the mobilization deficit.
If Washington is determined to draw down from Iraq,
its exit is not likely to be graceful. If it judges
that it must maintain its current presence, it will
increasingly be reduced to a bystander, unable to
control the direction of events. Rather than marking
a milestone of Iraq's progress toward political
stability, much less democracy, the aftermath of the
elections shows that they were the opening shot of
an intensified conflict in which all the players
will seek to defend and promote their perceived
vital interests in a spirit of militancy.
Report Drafted By: Dr. Michael A. Weinstein
The Power and Interest News Report (PINR)
www.pinr.com
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