By Rami Turayhi, Contributor
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.” While there is a great deal of madness enveloping Iraq today, it is increasingly difficult to discern any underlying method of the sort Shakespeare was referring to in the schemes and antics of Iraqi politicians mired in an increasingly bitter campaign season.
With the Iraqi national elections scheduled to take place on March 7 Prime Minister al-Maliki, his allies, and even his staunchest opponents are behaving in what can only be described as a “schizophrenic” manner: candidates calling for boycotts one day are ordering their supporters to vote the next, politicians of all stripes appear to be accusing each other of everything short of high treason, the Ministry of Defense last week made a stunning announcement that it was unilaterally rehiring nearly 20,000 Iraqi army officers once fired for close ties to the previous regime, and the U.S. military is muddling up the nationalist message of the Prime Minister by quietly murmuring under the table that it may not be quite ready to withdraw all of its “combat troops” by August of this year as promised. Out of all this, one might ask: who will emerge the victor, and what will this election mean for the future of Iraq?
In what can only be described as political posturing and perhaps even jest of a most extraordinary character, the relatively secular and Sunni Arab National Dialogue Front leader, Mr. Saleh al-Mutlak, reversed course this past week and insisted—even pounded his first and demanded—that his supporters vote for the secular Allawi-led Iraqiya list of candidates. This of course came only days after the same Mr. al-Mutlak boldly declared that all nationalist-minded Iraqi groups ought to follow his party’s lead and boycott the upcoming vote, as there was little chance that the election results would be representative of the will of the Iraqi people. While it is understandable that Mr. al-Mutlak responded emotionally to the announcement of an earlier ban on his candidacy by the anti-Ba’athist—and some say Iranian-allied—Justice and Accountability Commission, one might be tempted to take a page from the 2004 U.S. elections and label him Iraq’s first official “flip-flopper.”
The irony, of course, is that the purging of grey-haired former Ba’athists like Mr. al-Mutlak by the aforementioned Justice Commission comes only a few weeks before the Iraqi Ministry of Defense’s very recent announcement that 20,000 former military officers—many of them Ba’athists—would be rehired by the Iraqi armed forces. Beyond the logistical nightmare this could ultimately pose, there is an understandable concern by many Iraqis that some of these officers may have participated in anti-government militia and terrorist groups in years prior. The disbanding of these former officers was, after all, a significant factor for many of them in deciding to join the insurgency that wracked Iraq following the toppling of the old regime. Rather than effecting a wholesale and instantaneous reversal of policy, the Prime Minister and his cohorts might think beyond this most recent election cycle to the potential effects that this fundamental shift might have on the Iraqi army and security situation in the long-term.
On top of all this, of course, there are political murmurs surfacing that General Raymond Odierno has asked President Obama to keep at least one “combat” brigade stationed in Iraq past the pull-out date scheduled for this August. For an administration that presumably wants to keep a relatively pro-American government in power in Baghdad, the United States is certainly doing its best by these sorts of utterances to encourage fence-sitting Iraqis to vote decidedly in favor of nationalist, anti-American factions like those under the leadership of the unstable and maddeningly quixotic Muqtada al-Sadr.
If one thing has become abundantly clear over the past few years is that many Iraqis resent the presence of foreign troops and believe—rightly or wrongly—that they are ready to govern Iraq for themselves at this point. The Iraqi government that comes to power after these elections may, of course, decide to take a more pragmatic approach and “request” that some combat-ready U.S. troops stay in the country, particularly in the restive Kirkuk region straddling the Arab-Kurdish divide. Nevertheless, it makes little sense at this juncture—particularly since a new and vulnerable Iraqi government is likely to take shape in the coming months—for the U.S. to even hint at reneging on its commitment to withdraw all combat troops by August. This is, quite simply, an inexplicable and significant tactical error on the part of the U.S. military and administration; discretion should have been preserved at all costs on this front.
Of course, despite the myriad analyses offered today on Iraq, it is difficult to definitively state that one party, faction, or sectarian group will come out the victor in the March elections. A promising sign, however, is that there are so many strong contenders for parliamentary seats this time around. Rather than harboring one powerful Shiite “superblock”, the Iraq of 2010 is home to at least a few major Shiite factions that are running candidates of all political and religious stripes—a far cry from the forced marriage of Shiite parties during the last election. It is not inconceivable that a coalition of relatively secular Shiite groups—including perhaps Mr. al-Maliki’s—will form an alliance with the Kurds, secular Sunnis, or both to form a new governing coalition following the elections. One could even imagine religious Shiite groups making peace with their formerly-rival religious Sunni brethren and forcing out more secular voices from power: an anti-American Shiite-Sunni alliance par excellence—probably the Obama administration’s worst nightmare.
What continues to make observing Iraqi politics such a delight, however, is the inevitable acceptance of the fact that despite all of the analyses and self-indulgent claims of Iraqi political expertise, nobody really knows all that much about the so-called Iraqi “street” that will come out to vote on March 7. Iraqi democracy is today what it once was in many young democracies: vibrant, tumultuous, certainly error-prone, frustrating, inspiring and—most of all—completely up-for-grabs. For Americans accustomed to watching political commentators call elections with 10 percent of the actual votes counted, the Iraqi elections might actually be a great deal more entertaining for political junkies.
The battle for Iraq has just begun, and the first results are in: “too close to call.”
