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December 15, 2005

If the Kurds are skeptics, what should we be?

In a couple of interesting pieces carried on KurdishMedia.com we get an inside look past the PR machine in the White House.

We vote, then we throw you out points out what skeptics have been saying about Iraq, and a few things that I've not heard before.

A former prime minister, Iyad Allawi - widely known in Baghdad as "Saddam without a moustache" - saying on the record that human rights in President George W Bush's Iraq are worse than they were under Saddam.

The favorite Anglo-American election candidate supposedly capable of pulling it all off is once again Allawi - a truculent secular Shi'ite who was once a Ba'athist (he has kept the good connections) before he became anti-Saddam and a US intelligence asset. The White House may forget it, but Iraqis don't; Allawi gave the go-ahead for the American leveling of Fallujah and the American bombing of holy Najaf in 2004.

But perhaps most telling is the polling figures cited:

Recent polls have revealed that at least half of the Iraqi population is still not convinced of the merits of Western-style democracy, at least the White House-promoted version.

Half believe that the occupiers should have never set foot in Mesopotamia. Sixty percent think that they turned the country into an even bigger disaster than it was after the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the first Gulf war in 1991 and 12 years of United Nations sanctions. And two thirds of the population wants the occupiers out. Half the people polled by the BBC said Iraq needed a strong leader (a "Saddam without a moustache"?) And only 28% said democracy was a priority.

The other piece is even more interesting because it's forward looking rather than assessing what has been.

What to expect in Iraq after the December 15 elections lays out in highly pessimistic terms what the future for Iraq looks like.

As Iraq prepares to elect its first permanent, post-Saddam Hussein government on December 15, 2005, the political class is preparing for the regionalization, and potential fracturing, of the state. Sectarian violence, a constitution that favors federalism over the functioning of the state, and pressures on the U.S. to begin withdrawing military forces are colluding together to ensure Iraq's fragmented future will not come without violent dispute.

The Kurdish north looks to be the most likely region to secede, mostly because of it's oil reserves and vastly less chaotic civilian situation.

Last year, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (K.D.P.), which controls a portion of the Kurdish region in the north, signed a deal with Norway's DNO ASA to drill for oil near Zakho. On uncertain legal ground, drilling for the project began on December 9, 2005. The central government reacted with surprise and indignation as it claimed the K.D.P. did not consult with Baghdad before signing the deal.

The Kurds claim that all new oil projects fall under the jurisdiction of the regional government in which the project will exist. Baghdad points to a clause in the constitution that says the regional governments must act in consultation with the central government when signing any new oil deals. The Kurdish region will not share any proceeds from the new project with the central government, as the constitution does not appear to require it to do so.

The sectarian violence bedeviling the Iraqi Arabs is getting worse. And not all of it is due to insurgents.

Iraq is more dangerous now for Iraqis than it was two years ago. According to Kanan Makiya in the New York Times, the Iraqi daily casualty rate was 26 in early 2004; by the fall of 2005, it had reached 64. Most of this increase can be contributed to sectarian violence as Sunni Arab insurgents attack the Shi'a population, and Shi'a militias respond in kind. Even the transitional government's forces appear to be contributing to the sectarian violence. For instance, an Interior Ministry-run prison was raided in November 2005, and 173 prisoners were discovered, most of whom had been tortured. The prisoners were primarily Sunni Arabs. The Interior Ministry is run by Bayan Jabr, a former Badr Corps commander.

But hey... let's debate whether an evergreen tree covered with tinsel and ornaments is a "holiday" tree or a "Christmas" tree.

Posted by Kevin at December 15, 2005 01:08 PM