Rigging the Game?
The failure to pass a provincial election law is not the only dark cloud on the election front. On Dr. iRack's recent Iraq voyage, many U.S. commanders, coalition officials, and Iraqis expressed growing concerns that the "Powers That Be" (Dawa, ISCI, the IIP, PUK, and KDP) will use their monopoly on official power--including their dominance of governors, provincial councils, and the Iraqi Security forces--to tilt the provincial elections in their favor against the "Powers That Aren't" (the Sadrists, Awakening groups, independents, and secularists). This is problematic since the entire goal of the elections is to co-opt the latter into the political process, and, by giving them a stake in the system and peaceful means of sharing power, help solidify the security gains from the surge.
In this context, a pair of stories by Charles Levinson in the USA Today are troubling. Both point to worrying signs that the ISF may be involved in voter intimidation during the voter registration period. According to one:
Iraqi security forces loyal to the Shiite-led government are raiding voter registration centers and taking other steps to discourage participation in upcoming elections, says the head of Iraq's voting regulatory agency. . . .In discussions with commanders and diplomats in Baghdad, it was not clear to Dr. iRack that our military and Embassy have a plan to help ensure that the elections (whenever they occur) are both safe and fair (indeed, the tendency of our military, in particular, is to think largely in terms of the former). This has to change.
"There are people who don't want these elections and the security forces are collaborating with these people in some places," said Faraj al-Haydari, the commission's chairman.Opposition politicians such as Ali Hatem, a leader of a group of former insurgents known as the Sunni Awakening, accuse ruling parties of trying to sabotage the elections because they fear losing power.
Among recent incidents:
•Iraqi Army troops raided a registration center in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City and demanded a list of names and addresses of voters, al-Haydari said.
The area is the heart of support for anti-government Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The incident was confirmed by Iraqi Gen. Aiden Qader, the ministry of interior official responsible for election security.
Similar tactics have repeatedly occurred at another registration center in the Sunni-dominated city of Mada'in east of Baghdad, according to Mohammad al-Qinani, president of the Ayn Election Monitoring Network. His non-profit organization monitors 152 registration centers around the country.
•Iraqi troops have either removed, or allowed others to destroy, a large percentage of the 2 million posters distributed nationwide to publicize the registration effort, al-Haydari said.
"We put up posters next to (security) checkpoints and the next day they're gone," he said. "The people don't know that they're supposed to register." Col. Jerry O'Hara, a U.S. military spokesman, said forces were aware of fewer than five incidents at 565 registration centers since they opened July 15.
(For more examples, see here.)
14 comments:
Visser seems to agree with you; or you seem to agree with him:
the Iraq that is being built by reliance on the PTB simply isn’t a sustainable one. Because it is based on appetite for power and extreme opportunism alone, it cannot survive except through the application of brute force and the use of material power: concrete walls (as seen in Baghdad), bribes to political enemies (particularly prominent among the Sunni tribes), and authoritarian handling of internal opponents (such as the Sadrists). When Washington’s ability and willingness to finance these kinds of measures come to an end, the only way forward will be increased authoritarianism or increased reliance on regional patrons.
Maliki and the SIIC have been trying to get as much power as possible before the elections.
The ruling parties will control the election committees in each province.
There was also a report that Maliki has control over the Iraqi Red Crescent and has been appointing officials to that group to get out the vote for him.
The SIIC has its own social welfare groups and has been building mosques throughout the south to gain support.
There have been various other reports about such actions.
The USA Today report is just the latest in a series of actions to maintain the ruling parties' positions.
The way its looking, whenever the provincial elections happen it'll be the SIIC, not Maliki that will come out the big winner. They'll probably keep their current provinces and add Basra. Maliki is trying his best to get the loyalty of the armed forces, and tribes, and play himself as a nationalist, but he simply doesn't have much of a party aparatus behind him, especially since Jafaari walked away with half of the Dawa recently.
Right now, there are no alternative parties to SICI, Fadhila and Dawa (the UIA/555 crowd) in the south.
I've read that the provincial elections will be open list, which could lead to some interesting provincial coalitions, some of which have been forming for the last 2 years, or it could lead to a crowd of individual candidates, none of whom will get enough support to defeat the SICI/Dawa/Fadila machines.
It will be most interesting in Diyala and north Babil, where the Sunnis will come back to the ballot box to try to turf out the Shia councilmembers now in office.
I think I've arrived at the long-awaited metric for victory in Iraq. When Iraqi incumbent parties and individuals are voted out in large numbers, and they go - peacefully and quietly - and their successors do not immediately persecute them, we have won in Iraq. . . I'm not sure I see that happening at this point.
Regards,
Matt
Matt,
Lol, and Amen. ;)
Admin note - you've got some kaka (looks like slightly messed up java script) on the top of the main page.
Dr. iRack:
Come on, you* know that bureaucracies - and what is the military if not one - can do one thing, and one thing only (if that). For the military, one might define that one thing as "Providing security." Should we expect any different from the military (I'm open to debate here).
* I'm thinking of Van Evera, Snyder, Posen, and the early post-Waltzian defensive realists (whom I am guessing you've surely read, if not studied under). They - rightly or wrongly - portray militaries as organizations with rather predetermined interests. Indeed, you could say that the clash over FM 3-24 - as witnessed on this very blog (where are you Mr. Gentile, especially with General Mattis's rebuke of EBO?) - is testimony to the difficulty of redefining those interests.
So once more: should we/can we expect the US military to assess and conduct elections such that they not only are violence-free, but procedurally (and outcome-wise?) proper?
Anon
I am sorry Dr. iRack, despite your best efforts at propaganda, McCain is still going to win.
"Powers that be" - what a stupid term! What genius came up with that one?
Anon said:
"They - rightly or wrongly - portray militaries as organizations with rather predetermined interests. Indeed, you could say that the clash over FM 3-24 - as witnessed on this very blog (where are you Mr. Gentile, especially with General Mattis's rebuke of EBO?) - is testimony to the difficulty of redefining those interests."
Please, if you would, clarify your point regarding my position on FM 3-24 and General Mattis's critique of EBO.
I thought Mattis's piece was brilliant and spot-on. Clearly, he is one of our finest generals. One could argue that FM 3-24 has in fact become like the EBO that General Mattis critiques. In that FM 3-24 has come to be seen as a recipe for success if simply its precepts are followed. Moreover the precepts contained in it are narrowly defined in theory and history and produce a dogmatic approach to conceiving solutions to problems of coin throughout the world. Since FM 3-24 is essentially Galula on steroids and determines what the center of gravity is in ANY coin--the people and their protection--this in turn prescribes a derivative operational and tactical approach requiring large numbers of combat soldiers on the ground in effect doing nation-building. The similarity between EBO and FM 3-24 is that their end result is to remove friction, chance, and chaos from the nature of war.
On a different point, thanks to DocIrack for being one of the few who recently returned from an Iraq visit for providing candid and critical assessments of what he saw on the ground.
gg
For those who aren't taken to killing the messenger with gobs of "ad-hominem", you might read a post at Juan Cole's about another one, Colin Kahl, that recently returned from Iraq.
Mr. Gentile:
1) I predicted that you would concur with General Mattis's critique.
2) The nature of the debate - to me - illustrates the difficulty militaries have in defining their interests and doctrine, or changing it. The US military published FM 3-24, and you among others have criticized it. The US chose to adopt and discard EBO, and the latter action required the action of a 4-star.
3) I suppose I am contradicting myself to a degree (hence any confusion?). On the one hand, I am noting the argument that militaries have large, a priori interests (thus the string of quotations I rattled off). On the other hand, I am noting that militaries' conceptions of how to fight can and do become contested (by you with respect to FM 3-24, and by Mattis with respect to EBO), and that your participation on this blog is part of this process of contestation.
Hopefully I'm making more sense now. Am I?
Regards
Anon 1:14 AM
Isn't this GG's money quote?
The similarity between EBO and FM 3-24 is that their end result is to remove friction, chance, and chaos from the nature of war.
As a bureaucracy, wouldn't this be on e of the military's overarching priorities--to remove chance and the requirement for improvisation, and replace it with a one-size-fits-all paradigm and accompanying set of procedures that can be fed bottom-down, keeping a neat chain of command, allowing for standardized metrics of success and failure, standardized forms for noting these metrics, etc.
Heck, I meant "top-down," not "bottom-down." I really have to start using the Preview feature.
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