Iraq Seeks Its Political Self

The media are calling the Iraqi elections for Shiite parties they claim have close ties to Iran. Were it not for the fact that the impeccably honest John Burns is one of those journos, I’d dismiss it as the media’s best effort to find a dark side. The results are not even in yet, and I have seen reports elsewhere that suggest that the plurality party (no party appears headed for an outright majority) has a strong secular component. In fact, it is a rare event indeed when people voluntarily deliver themselves to dictatorship at the polls. There are many possible permutations of coalition, division, and recombination that are likely before we see that.

Interestingly, this is where the Sunnis come in. Having seen Shiite parties gain power, they are now rueing their decision to sit out the elections and have been alarmed into taking part in the political process.

Influential Sunni Arab leaders of a boycott of last Sunday’s elections expressed a new willingness Friday to engage the coming Iraqi government and play a role in writing the constitution, in what may represent a strategic shift in thinking among mainstream anti-occupation groups.

The signs remain tentative, and even advocates of such change suggest that much will depend on the posture the new government takes toward the insurgency and the removal of former Baath Party officials from state institutions. But in statements and interviews, some Sunni leaders said the sectarian tension that surged ahead of the vote had forced them to rethink their stance.

The insurgents “made fools of us,” said Mahmoud Ghasoub, a businessman in Baiji, a restive northern town. “They voted to disrupt the elections but failed. Now we have lost both tracks. We did not vote, nor did they disrupt the elections.”

It’s also amusing that the same people who once told us that “secular” Saddam and “Islamist” bin Laden would never dream of cooperating would now have us believe the far unlikelier proposition that Arabs, with their long history of distrust and hatred of Persians, would surrender themselves to the rule of mullahs who are detested even in their own country. The fact that there were no large-scale desertions of Shiite Arab troops during the Iran-Iraq War, even under Saddam, is a good illustration of this.

Of course, the Shiite parties might want to enshrine Islamic principles in the new constitution. Well, I wouldn’t want my constitution to have that, but then again, it’s their country, which is supposed to the point of this exercise, isn’t it? As long as the system is flexible to the will of the people, that’s not necessarily incompatible with democracy.

Finally, the elections appear to have been a watershed for Iraqis who never quite believed that the Americans would let them vote:

The newfound self-respect that [Iraq’s National Security Advisor] believes the election conferred on ordinary Iraqis seems to have had an immediate impact on their view of the United States. Suddenly empowered with the vote, Iraqis no longer seem to view America as all-powerful, or themselves as unable to affect events. A result has been a suddenly more accepting view of the United States.

The realism among Iraqis was evident on election day itself. Amid the euphoria of voting, America, which had almost always been the first topic of conversation, was suddenly evanescent, unmentioned in a score of interviews unless a reporter raised it first. And when Iraqis did talk of America, it was with a reasonableness and patience that had seemed missing, a willingness to balance good with bad, to give credit where it is due.

“America will be good if it completes what it came here to do, to bring us democracy, and then it goes home,” [one Iraqi man] said. “The main thing now is that they keep their promises, and leave. Personally, I believe they will do it.”

The new mood appears to have continued since election day. The calls by candidates for a timetable for American military withdrawal have died away. Even a group of Sunni politicians decided last week that they would take part in the drafting of Iraq’s new constitution without insisting on a timetable.

Getting Iraqis to take charge of their own affairs, whether by fighting insurgents or taking over government ministries, has been the goal of American leaders here since the fall of Saddam Hussein. After 22 months of trying to persuade the Iraqis to stand on their own, while doing everything for them, the Americans may be finding that Iraqis, now fully sovereign, don’t want them to go home so soon after all.

The sense of self-responsibilty may be the most encouraging sign of all. That is what will make it possible for us to leave.