The end of the beginning (IRAQ)

WITH a cheerfulness that months of bombs and bullets had largely banished, shopkeeper Ahmad Saleh held up his ink-stained forefinger and smiled.

"Yes, of course I voted," he said, pointing to the bruise-like splotch of purple across his nail. "Everybody in my neighbourhood was afraid, but I persuaded them - in the end five families came to vote along with me."

Across much of Iraq last week, the stain of indelible ink used to mark voters’ fingers as they entered the polling stations became an unlikely new status symbol.

In a land where standing is traditionally accorded to guns, land or money, the simple act of ticking a ballot paper engendered a long-deprived sense of self-respect.

"We triumphed over terror and broke the barrier of fear inside us," said Shaki Shaker, a Baghdadi Christian. "There is this strange kind of joy in the hearts of many of us. It’s like we are leading normal lives again."

As he spoke, the lack of explosions or gunfire in the background seemed to confirm his words. Even Iraq’s insurgents, who have been gaining momentum for nearly a year, seemed somewhat thrown off kilter by the collective act of mass defiance which saw millions go to polls.

In Baghdad, the chorus of car bombs and mortars which greet nearly every waking morning were notably absent. And the release of a farcical insurgent ‘kidnap’ video, in which a purported US ‘soldier’ hostage turned out to be just a GI Joe doll, for once made the militants the butt of jokes rather than curses.

Yet as the ink on millions of defiant fingers began to gradually wear off, so did the brief sense of euphoria that last week’s relatively trouble-free polls induced.

By Friday, the insurgent violence that the huge pre-election security clampdown short-circuited was back with a vengeance, claiming the lives of at least 30 people and the kidnap of an Italian journalist.

With it also dawned the slow realisation that having cast their ballots, Iraqis will have to live with the government it produces - a step that remains an even bigger leap into the unknown than the election was.

Officially, the new 275-member assembly will be an all-inclusive beast, giving each party, creed and religious confession a voice according to its share of the votes.

But in the cafes and souks of Baghdad, an innately suspicious and conspiratorially-minded public already fears that it will be anything but. Early polling results showing strongly in favour of the Iraqi Unity list, the party representing a block of Shi’ite religious groups, are prompting renewed talk once again of an Iranian-style theocracy.

And with Sunni turnout in the elections low, confidence that the new government will have any legitimacy over the vast swathes of the country who did not vote for it is limited. One of the first voices of dissent among last week’s chorus of cautious optimism came from within the Um Al Qura mosque, a gaudy Saddam-built temple in west Baghdad with minarets in the shape of Kalashnikov barrels.

It is home to the Council of Muslim Scholars, an organisation of senior Sunni clerics that is one of the few to have an active political dialogue with the Iraqi insurgency.

Previously, they had urged their worshippers to boycott the elections largely on the grounds that it was too dangerous for people in their heartlands to campaign. But in their first post-election comments on Wednesday, they said that only the withdrawal of foreign troops would now make them back any future polls.

A spokesman said: "We believe that the new government and the national assembly will never have enough authorisation to control the country. We promise that we will never take part in any election that will be held while US forces are here."

Unlike their Shia equivalent, whose word is effectively law, Sunni clerics speak only for a limited section of their religious constituency. But in linking their stance to the withdrawal of American troops - unlikely in the immediate future - the prospect of a much longer-term disenfranchisement of Sunni Muslims now beckons.

In the eyes of Sharif Ali bin Hussein, the British-educated banker whose party hopes to revive the Iraqi monarchy, it is a stubbornness bordering on political suicide. Prior to the elections, his Constitutional Monarchy Party, an eclectic alliance of Sunnis and Shias, devoted much time to persuading more militant Sunni elements to enter the campaign. But most, he says, were already convinced that a massively stepped-up insurgent campaign would prevent the vote going ahead.

"At New Year we talked with them and they said ‘the elections will not take place; wait and see what will happen from about January 20 onwards’. In their world view the elections were already rigged, and I think they thought they could achieve power somehow by disrupting them.

"We said they were just handing government to people that they perceive as their opponents. Tell us how that works? But now the insurgency has been shown to be incapable of disrupting the elections and some of that Sunni leadership has lost a lot of moral authority."

For Iraq’s Shi’ite politicians, the political vacuum left by the Sunnis now heralds a new worry - a majority of such landslide proportions that it threatens any notion of representative government . To that end, the Iraqi Unity List, the block of Shi’ite parties endorsed by Iraq’s most senior Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, went on the offensive last week to dispel visions of a state run by mullahs. "Ayatollah Sistani has said all along that he doesn’t want to see clerics in any government positions, even as local administrators," said Hussein Shahristani, a former nuclear scientist who is one the Iraqi Unity List’s leaders.

According to Western diplomats in Baghdad, the denials that Iraq will become a new Iran have the ring of truth. Iraq’s Shi’ites are ethnic Arabs, they point out, while their Iranian neighbours are ethnic Persians - a difference which proved more enduring than their shared religion during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war.

And while many leading Iraqi Shias have spent time in exile in Iran, their experiences of theocratic rule have convinced them that politics should be kept out of the mosque. One British diplomat said: "Most of these people have seen for themselves that theocratic government does not work. They have no wish to implement it here anyway, quite apart from the fact that it would not be popular with other sections of society."

Non-Shi’ite Iraqis are more sceptical. Despite a steady rhetoric from senior Shi’ite politicians about the importance of including Sunni leaders in the new government, few believe that this will mean much beyond a few figurehead posts.

They also point out that the real brokering of political influence lies not in jobs right at the top of government but throughout civil society, the thousands of posts as junior ministers, police chiefs, local governors and so on.

Already many branches of government ministries and the Army have become "balkanised" by Shi’ite political groups such as the Dawa Party, making it difficult for non-members to get jobs. And after 30 years of systematic discrimination by Saddam in favour of his fellow Sunnis, nobody is optimistic that anti-discrimination laws will be listened to much.

Secular Iraqis also suspect the Shi’ite religious parties have a much longer-term game in mind, one in which curbs on the rights of women, and religious tinkering in government will only begin after the watchful US presence ends.

"The Shi’ite Islamists are not stupid people," said Dr Ghanem Saleh, a senior figure in the Omar Party, a new political grouping made up partly of exiles from the Saddam-era Iraqi opposition movement in Britain. "They will establish rule step by step, just as they did in Iran. Right now they are happy to accept secular figures in government, but they are gradually preparing the country for an Islamic state."

Saleh parries charges of paranoia by citing British-controlled Basra, where, in the absence of other civic institutions, Shi’ite Islamic groups now dominate the local councils, police and military.

Their control of the local security forces, he points out, rarely extends to cracking down on militants who attack women for not wearing veils and shopkeepers for selling alcohol. "Even in Baghdad it is happening - it used to be modern city with people out dancing all night but now it is very different. An Islamic government doesn’t need to carry out these attacks themselves - it just makes no effort to stop its supporters doing them."

Even so, few Iraqis have time for the speculation that the elections could pave the way for civil war by dramatically altering the balance of power between Sunni and Shia.

While Saddam might have given jobs to cronies from his own Sunni tribes, they say he ruled mainly just in the name of himself, and, by extension, the country. After three decades of his highly personalised nationalism, most Iraqis are conditioned to seeing themselves as Iraqis first, and Shias, Sunnis, Arabs or Kurds second.

Nonetheless, in choosing who will eventually lead them after the elections, the 275-member assembly that must eventually elect a prime minister will still bear in mind religious and ethnic sensibilities.

Predicting who will get the top job is not easy, given the extensive horse-trading already going on among the different parties and interest groups involved. But a few front-runners have already emerged, mostly Shias drawn from the more secular end of the Iraqi Unity List.

Arguably top of the list is Ibrahim al Jaafari, a trained doctor and former exile in Britain who is currently vice-president. English-speaking and highly educated, he is to many the ‘acceptable face’ of Shia Islam - a man who favours Islam as the source of inspiration for government, but only in the same way that Christian teachings did so for the British or American states.

"Islam is different from country to country," he said. "It is true that some countries stop women from attending schools and others do not let women drive. For me that would be a problem. My wife is a surgeon, she cuts open abdomens, and I would never stop her doing surgery."

A rival in his own camp is finance minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution In Iraq, which represents the more explicitly doctrinal end of the Iraqi Unity List. An economist, he sees a pragmatic value in getting disaffected Sunnis into a Shi’ite-dominated parliament and re-integrating ex-Ba’athists into the army and administration.

"There are more Shi’ite Ba’athists than Sunni Ba’athists, so the de-Ba’athification process doesn’t only affect the Sunnis," he said. However, he warns that Sunnis will have to accept the new balance of power post-Saddam: "We don’t want to allow the old regime to anchor itself in the new regime. Iraq has a new image - democracy and federalism."

Hussein Shahristani, the former nuclear scientist, is another contender. During Saddam’s time he thwarted the Iraqi dictator’s nuclear ambitions, ending up being jailed and tortured for refusing to work on an atom bomb. But while his reputation as a man of principle is impeccable, his lack of previous experience of government office could make him a risky candidate for the top job straightaway.

Finally, there is Ayad Allawi, the British and American-backed serving prime minister appointed to run the country’s interim government in June. Although his own Iraqi List party is tipped only take around a 20% share of the votes, his personal popularity ratings are high. As a result, even a government dominated by Iraqi Unity List figures might still choose him as prime minister, rather than risking an untried figure from its own ranks.

Allawi’s popularity is based on the ultimate backhanded compliment - his tough line on security reminds Iraqis of his predecessor Saddam. Yet in a country dominated by successive political demons over the years, being the "devil you know" might be the best asset any politician can have.

Iraq’s delicate journey to democracy is underway, but the country is only at the end of the beginning. While the insurgents may be on the back foot, they have not gone away. The country’s long-term future- in particular the threat of an imposed theocracy - remains a real risk.

Equally, however, the effect of last Sunday’s historic election is already clear. It has resulted in horse-trading, grandstanding and double-bluffing; in debates about how to protect the rights of the minority from the power of the majority. These are arguments any western democracy would recognise; they are the meat and drink of everyday electoral politics.

Some of the things believed by the media astound me. First they buy the assertion that Iraq is Viet Nam.

A couple of things are very different. There are no safe areas of Iraq that are off limits to our troops. Much of North Vietnam was off limits for much of the war.

There is no Soviet Union sending in ships full of armaments for the insurgents as their was for Charlie in NAM.

We aren not playing for a negotiated exit strategy.. as both LBJ and Nixon did in Nam. We are playing for total victory. That is a big difference.

Finally as more and more Iraqi forces are trained, the terrorists will find they have no safe haven. Iraqi forces will not be as polite as American forces. Just yesterday the Iraqi military released video of top level insurgents they have captured. The video shows the formerly murderous insurgents begging for forgiveness. Watching insurgent leaders begging for their lives is not a way for them to inspire their underlings to fight to the death.

Finally the Sunnis now know that there will be a Shiite lead government, police, and army. Their attempts to destory the election failed.

Going forward they have two choices. Resist and get treated by the Shiites and Kurds the way Sunnis treaed the Shiites and Kurds for 30 years, or make nice and be part of a new Iraq.

Iraqis, be they Sunnis, Kurds or Shiites, are not stupid. Thye bluff and posture but they are nots stupid. The Sunnis know for certain that we are not going to let them take over the government by force. The Shiites and Kurds are not going to let the Sunnis destory their nation.

The Sunnis face two possibilies.. Participate in the government and try to have us help them protect their rights, or continue to support terrorsts and end up being persecuted for the next 30 years. We are not too far from the Sunnis taking care of the insurgents themselves.

I think we will look back in a year or two and know this first election was not the end of the beginning but was in fact was the beginning of the end. It will be for us.. if not for other nations a happy ending.

"...a couple of things are different..."

we conservatives keep on responding to this 'vietnam quagmire" tripe by defending the differences - as if a logical response that tries to reason with our opponents will convince those who continually cry out the kind of lies that make us stand against them in the first place. And it sounds like so much apology, because we continue to allow these vermin leftists to define the issue.

IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT THE DIFFERENCES ARE!!! This is IRRELEVANT to the enemies of this country. And I shout this out not to you in particular, CT, but to all of us who continue doing this. What matters to these vermin is the similarity between the two.

There is ONE THING in which VIETNAM is the SAME as IRAQ... and that is in the Left's desire to use all the power, propaganda, media and lies at their disposal to see America DEFEATED in IRAQ as in VIETNAM. Not a military defeat - we were, after all, never defeated on the southeast asian fields of battle. The results the left desires is deeper than that; they wish to defeat our WILL to victory, because if they can accomplish this, then we will abandon the Iraqis as we did the Vietnamese in 1975.

The similarity is in their desire for the same outcome - to see America lessened; to make this "last, best hope of mankind" (Lincoln) be shrouded by enough self-doubt that we would betray our dedication to freedom. Because if they succeed; if they can sway us away from the fight, then millions, BILLIONS of men and women on Earth will see their own hope for freedom lessened.

This is why they repeat the Vietnam meme - they do not want America victorious; instead defeated through the insidious self-doubt that can destroy from within.

And this is why I will forever stand against the left to the moment (and beyond, if the Good Lord wills it...) I draw my last breath.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

CGVet58

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.