UN-enthusiastic
The New York Sun's Benny Avi wrote on January 27 that U.N. officials criticized U.S. troops for helping "Iraqi officials distribute information on the electoral process to Iraqi citizens" and for encouraging them "to participate in Sunday's vote."
Head of the U.N. Electoral Assistance Division Carina Perelli said in a press conference that the U.N. officials were
asking, begging military commanders precisely not to do that...the Americans were "overenthusiastic" in trying to help out with these elections. We have basically been saying they should try to minimize their participation...
Like the U.N. itself, which stationed a grand total of 22 observers in Baghdad.
In response, a Pentagon spokesman told Avi, "There are 150,000 U.S. troops as of the coalition in Iraq, who are there to do a number of things but primary among them is to help the Iraqis hold their own elections."
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Not a "voter boycott"--"voter supression"
In Baghdad, according to the Financial Times' Neil MacDonald and Awadh al-Taee, nearly 50 percent of the listed voters in the heavily Sunni neighborhood of al-Ameriya turned out to cast their ballots. Across a highway from the district is the headquarters of the Muslims Scholars Association, which had called for a "boycott" of the voting.
Al-Ameriya voters were evidently unswayed by this graffiti message scrawled on the walls of the polling station:
We will kill anyone who goes to the elections. We will kill you for treason and spying.
Interesting definition of "treason." In any case, combining insurgent bravado with faith in democracy, one voter proclaimed to the FT:
I am a suicide voter...We need to have steadfastness as a people...because our country needs a future.
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Occupational benefits
Although it was written last November, this comment by Jordanian columnist Salameh Nematt bears repeating:
It is outrageous and amazing that the first free and general elections in the history of the Arab nation are to take place in January: in Iraq, under the auspices of American occupation, and in Palestine, under the auspices of the Israeli occupation.
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Sadr but wiser
A few months ago, Moqtada al-Sadr issued this fatwa:
The elections aim to separate the Iraqi from his religion. When people vote for politicians, secularists, those who co-operate with the occupation--they will not think of God.
More to the point, they won't think of Moqtada al-Sadr. Which is exactly what happened: yesterday's Wall Street Journal reported that in Mookie's stronghold of Sadr City,
turnout so vastly exceeded expectations that workers had to request more ballot boxes. One polling station planned for an estimated 2,800 voters. By 9:30 a.m., more than 1,000 people already had shown up.
As I observed yesterday, a Shia marjah's elevation in the clerical ranks is largely determined by the number of people who follow his fatwas. One of al-Sadr's aims has been to challenge Sistani's leadership of the Hawza, the Shia's Najaf-based religious authority. The repudiation of his views by the population of his own base is a devastating blow to his prestige and another sign of how firmly Sistani is control of the Shia's clerical leadership.
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Good paramilitaries?
Also from yesterday's Journal, this rather disturbing news, contextualized in an odd way by writer Greg Jaffe:
The Iraqis' enthusiasm for the elections was perhaps best expressed by the homegrown militias--many formed by Iraqis in just the past few weeks--to secure the polls.
One of those groups, which called itself the Defenders of Baghdad Brigade, appeared out of nowhere about a month ago, setting up camps around Baghdad's Martyrs' Monument...U.S. officials supplied them with rifles, ammunition and body armor. Less than three weeks later, they were out on Election Day guarding polling sites.
A second militia from the town of Amarah, a Shiite city in southern Iraq, set up shop in early January in Baghdad's old Defense Ministry...
"These groups just started appearing like mushrooms. In the last month, they have been appearing so quickly that we can barely keep track of them," Lt. Col. Jim Bullion said. "U.S. military officials say they aren't sure what will happen to these groups after the elections."
Whoa, wait a minute. Aren't we in the business disarming militias--rather than equipping them? On whose authority was this done? Who watched these groups? What did they do after the elections with their U.S.-issued guns and ammo--turn them back? I doubt it. We can guess these mushrooming paramilitaries were Shia in orientation--a sign of what could easily happen if alienation takes root among their people and they decide to take up arms. No Iraqi government can ever achieve full security until it monopolizes the use of force. Encouraging paramilitary groups--let along arming them--is not the way to achieve this.
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Oil slick
The U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraqi reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, has issued a damning report accusing the CPA of failing to adequately account for nearly nine billion dollars in oil revenues it gave to Iraqi ministries. For more of this "Oil-for-God-Knows-What" scandal see my earlier post "Crude Business."
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