Finding faults with the free vote even democracy and freedom is found wanting and shunned... Robert Dreyfuss, author of ‘Devil’s Game’new article..
Iran the big winner in Iraqi elections, says expert
By Khalid Hasan
WASHINGTON: Iran has won a scintillating victory in the December 15 elections in Iraq, according to one noted expert.
Robert Dreyfuss, author of ‘Devil’s Game’, a new book that holds the United States the principal architect of Islamist extremism because of its misguided policies, maintains that the “last hope for peace” in Iraq was stomped out with the victory of the Shiite religious coalition, made up of “a fanatical band of fundamentalist Shiite parties backed by Iran, above all to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)”. The coalition would create a “theocratic bastion state in its southern Iraqi fiefdom and use its power in Baghdad to rule what’s left of the Iraqi state by force,” he predicts. He finds no “silver lining” in the situation, nor a chance for peace talks among Iraq’s factions, or international mediation. There is no centrist force that can bridge the factional or sectarian divides, he says. The next step, he predicts, is civil war.
Dreyfuss calls the likely next prime minister, Adel Abdel Mahdi, “a smooth-talking SCIRI thug”. His boss, Abdel Aziz Hakim of SCIRI, he points out, is the former commander of the Badr Brigade and a militant cleric who has issued “bloodthirsty calls for a no-holds-barred military solution to the insurgency”. He forecasts that scores of secret torture prisons by the SCIRI-led Iraqi ministry of the interior will proliferate, and SCIRI-led death squads will start going down their lists of targets. “The divisive, sectarian constitution that was rammed down Iraq’s throat in October by the Shiite religious bloc will be preserved intact under the new, permanent government of Iraq led by SCIRI,” he adds.
Dreyfuss believes that the Kurds in northern Iraq will retreat further into their enclave, content to proceed step-by-step towards what they hope will be a breakaway rump state. He says that after the January 31 transitional elections, the Kurds made their deal with the Shiite coalition, winning in exchange two vital points, the first being that Iraq will have a virtually nonexistent central government; the second being that revenues from future Iraqi oil fields will go to those regions, not the state. “All the Kurds want now is to take over Kirkuk, which they will do with force, violence, and ethnic cleansing aimed at Arab residents of the Kirkuk area,” he adds.
Dreyfuss points out that the Sunnis are already charging vote fraud and threatening to boycott or withdraw from the new assembly, while openly predicting that Iraq will now slide into civil war. “There is virtually no combination of political alliances now that can guarantee Sunnis a fair share of power in the new Iraq. Every Sunni leader, from the most militant Baath Party activist to the most conservative Sunni clergyman, knows that a regime led by Hakim’s SCIRI bloc will mean war. As a result, proponents of cooperating with the new government will become fence-sitters, and fence-sitters will join the resistance. The insurgency will continue, and possibly strengthen,” he writes.
The author quotes Wayne White, who led the State Department’s intelligence effort on Iraq until last spring, as saying, “But we’ve lost it.” He thinks there is no mechanism for the Sunnis now to restore a modicum of balance in Iraq, and the Shiite religious parties have no incentive to make significant concessions either to the Sunnis or to the resistances. The centrist elements in Iraq were blown away in the election. The planned-for Arab League peace conference, scheduled for late February or early March, likely won’t happen. Violence will intensify, he fears. “The White House will begin to look ridiculous as it touts Iraq’s scandal-plagued, fraud-ridden election as the birth of democracy, especially as a brutal Shiite theocracy begins to take shape. The continuing resistance will make it impossible for the president to cite progress in the war,” he writes.
Dreyfuss is afraid that some neocons alarmed by Iran’s power and influence would want Washington to take the failed war in Iraq into Iran to clobber those who torment the US occupation in Iraq, while others will find it difficult to put a positive spin on the Bush administration’s Iraq project. “The election disaster means that it is all the more important now for the United States to open direct, public talks with the Iraqi resistance, even if it means defying the Shiite religious-led regime. It is the United States whose 160,000 troops prop up the Shiites in power. Washington can no longer afford to give SCIRI and its junior partner, Al Dawa, veto power over its ability to negotiate a ceasefire with the opposition in order to pull out US forces,” he maintains.
He adds that by staying on in Iraq, the US is strengthening the Shiite religious forces, enabling them to build their militia and to make plans for cleansing Sunnis from majority Shiite areas. “By getting out of Iraq as soon as possible, the United States can at the very least ensure that the Shiites do not grow all-powerful, and it might prevent a further radicalisation of the Sunni-led resistance. When there are no good options, then prudence suggests that it’s time to choose the least bad one,” he concludes. |
