The Real Electoral Crisis in Iraq
For those of us who are comparatists by profession, we are I think to a person sensitive to what I might call the transference fallacy. This is the glib and unthoughtful effort to transfer of a set of lessons learned in one place into another without stopping to consider whether the lessons drawn are really the right ones given the different contexts, indeed without thinking about the contexts of all. I accuse the popular media and most policy experts of doing precisely this with Iraq as concerns the current electoral crisis.
The crisis, for those unaware, is that some hardline Sunnis, and some Shi'a (it is about a 50-50 split, conveniently ignored in the telling of the story elsewhere) have been excluded from the upcoming election, most notably Sunni hardliner Saleh Mutlaq, which has been disconcerting enough for the US to send Joe Biden out to mediate. (From my time in Baghdad, if I learned one thing, it's that the US will delay the Second Coming of Christ if necessary to get this election off, successfully, so they can start their major withdrawals. Any threat to the timetable or legitimacy of the election is taken very seriously, and this is precisely such a threat.)
Now if you are a journalist, meaning a reasonably intelligent person with some knowledge of the place but no more than 15 minutes to think about it before putting pen to paper, you might end up embracing the fallacy as follows:
In Iran, or Afghanistan, indeed generally, the reason you exclude candidates is because they might end up beating you. They are a threat to your victory, so you have to move them aside. This is also an attempt at electoral exclusion. Therefore, Saleh Mutlaq and his party, and Bolani and his party, are secularists who might end up beating Maliki and so Maliki is trying to move them out of the picture, so they don't weaken him.
The problem is, you'd have to be living in some sort of cave to think that the dominant parties after the next election are going to be anything but Shi'a middle Islamist. Mutlaq himself, the so called patriot of this tale, is actually a hardline borderline bigot, a man who has had the temerity to describe a vast number of his countrymen as being more loyal to Iran than Iraq, whose party members have referred to Kurds as locusts, and whose base of support is therefore the Sunni heartland, and if he's lucky give him 15% of the urban secular Shi'a vote. He is no electoral threat, Allawi his partner is no electoral threat, they will be a loud and perhaps annoying party in the upcoming legislative session, but really, the idea that Maliki is scared of him is silly. He can't touch Maliki's base and honestly Maliki can't reach his either. Ban Mutlaq or leave him, he won't get those votes.
So the model is wrong, Mutlaq is despised by overwhelming majorities of Kurds and Shi'a, he isn't going to win anything. But then why exclude him, earn America's concern, Sunni wrath and the rest of it? Why not let him run like the Chinese let democratic advocates run in HK so long as their minority status is assured as surely it is here?
The reason, simply enough, is that Maliki will lose votes if he tries to relent. Not to Saleh Mutlaq, that's silly. To the INA, the other Shi'a party. The reality is that the Shi'a by and large, the base, the religious core that dominate the Shi'a, are deeply, fundamentally, viscerally anti-Ba'ath, and former members of the party make them sick. Mutlaq's efforts to woo the former Ba'athists back, promising to be their vehicle, has offended the base. So at some point, a move was made to exclude the guy, one couched in the language of law by the way (making overt political interventions theoretically off limits, but as I mentioned two posts ago, America isn't so concerned about the rule of law when its interests are threatened). At that point, Sunni ire was raised, but so was Shi'a rage, less reported in the Western news though prevalent in Iraqi media. The Shia don't want him around, and there are two coalitions vying for the Shia vote, the INA and Maliki's Rule of Law. If Maliki backs down, the INA is going to use it to the last day, "Maliki, friend of the Ba'ath and friend of Saleh Mutlaq" their outlets will say. He's not scared of Mutlaq, he's scared of looking like a friend of Mutlaq, which would be electoral disaster for him. He cannot do that, and if the New York Times wants Maliki to ignore the constituency and do it anyway, well then frankly democratizing the place wasn't the way to go. You can't call for elections and then get upset when people who aren't liberals don't vote liberal and their officials don't act liberal. What the hell did you expect?
What's the REAL lesson we then learn from this? That Iraq's Shi'a and Sunni communities remain bitterly divided over the form of the state and the exercise of power within it. One leans to soft federalism and wants harsh justice for all Ba'athis of the past, stringing them to the lamposts if you can, banning them from politics if you cannot, and that includes people who left the party in the 70's. Sort of like banning LA from the playoffs because they stole the Dodgers fifty years ago. The other is quite enamored of the former Ba'ath and more or less seeks a return to their rule, (and implicitly Sunni resurgence within it). Not in terms of the disaster of Saddam, Saddam's Ba'ath predecessor is more the model, a strong and when necessary brutal central government that keeps people (ie other groups) in line.
Now that you know the problem, imagine trying to solve THAT by early March. You can't, all you might be able to do is paper over the problem, delay it for another day, something Iraqi officials have become deft at over the past half decade. But solving it? Impossible.
Haider
The crisis, for those unaware, is that some hardline Sunnis, and some Shi'a (it is about a 50-50 split, conveniently ignored in the telling of the story elsewhere) have been excluded from the upcoming election, most notably Sunni hardliner Saleh Mutlaq, which has been disconcerting enough for the US to send Joe Biden out to mediate. (From my time in Baghdad, if I learned one thing, it's that the US will delay the Second Coming of Christ if necessary to get this election off, successfully, so they can start their major withdrawals. Any threat to the timetable or legitimacy of the election is taken very seriously, and this is precisely such a threat.)
Now if you are a journalist, meaning a reasonably intelligent person with some knowledge of the place but no more than 15 minutes to think about it before putting pen to paper, you might end up embracing the fallacy as follows:
In Iran, or Afghanistan, indeed generally, the reason you exclude candidates is because they might end up beating you. They are a threat to your victory, so you have to move them aside. This is also an attempt at electoral exclusion. Therefore, Saleh Mutlaq and his party, and Bolani and his party, are secularists who might end up beating Maliki and so Maliki is trying to move them out of the picture, so they don't weaken him.
The problem is, you'd have to be living in some sort of cave to think that the dominant parties after the next election are going to be anything but Shi'a middle Islamist. Mutlaq himself, the so called patriot of this tale, is actually a hardline borderline bigot, a man who has had the temerity to describe a vast number of his countrymen as being more loyal to Iran than Iraq, whose party members have referred to Kurds as locusts, and whose base of support is therefore the Sunni heartland, and if he's lucky give him 15% of the urban secular Shi'a vote. He is no electoral threat, Allawi his partner is no electoral threat, they will be a loud and perhaps annoying party in the upcoming legislative session, but really, the idea that Maliki is scared of him is silly. He can't touch Maliki's base and honestly Maliki can't reach his either. Ban Mutlaq or leave him, he won't get those votes.
So the model is wrong, Mutlaq is despised by overwhelming majorities of Kurds and Shi'a, he isn't going to win anything. But then why exclude him, earn America's concern, Sunni wrath and the rest of it? Why not let him run like the Chinese let democratic advocates run in HK so long as their minority status is assured as surely it is here?
The reason, simply enough, is that Maliki will lose votes if he tries to relent. Not to Saleh Mutlaq, that's silly. To the INA, the other Shi'a party. The reality is that the Shi'a by and large, the base, the religious core that dominate the Shi'a, are deeply, fundamentally, viscerally anti-Ba'ath, and former members of the party make them sick. Mutlaq's efforts to woo the former Ba'athists back, promising to be their vehicle, has offended the base. So at some point, a move was made to exclude the guy, one couched in the language of law by the way (making overt political interventions theoretically off limits, but as I mentioned two posts ago, America isn't so concerned about the rule of law when its interests are threatened). At that point, Sunni ire was raised, but so was Shi'a rage, less reported in the Western news though prevalent in Iraqi media. The Shia don't want him around, and there are two coalitions vying for the Shia vote, the INA and Maliki's Rule of Law. If Maliki backs down, the INA is going to use it to the last day, "Maliki, friend of the Ba'ath and friend of Saleh Mutlaq" their outlets will say. He's not scared of Mutlaq, he's scared of looking like a friend of Mutlaq, which would be electoral disaster for him. He cannot do that, and if the New York Times wants Maliki to ignore the constituency and do it anyway, well then frankly democratizing the place wasn't the way to go. You can't call for elections and then get upset when people who aren't liberals don't vote liberal and their officials don't act liberal. What the hell did you expect?
What's the REAL lesson we then learn from this? That Iraq's Shi'a and Sunni communities remain bitterly divided over the form of the state and the exercise of power within it. One leans to soft federalism and wants harsh justice for all Ba'athis of the past, stringing them to the lamposts if you can, banning them from politics if you cannot, and that includes people who left the party in the 70's. Sort of like banning LA from the playoffs because they stole the Dodgers fifty years ago. The other is quite enamored of the former Ba'ath and more or less seeks a return to their rule, (and implicitly Sunni resurgence within it). Not in terms of the disaster of Saddam, Saddam's Ba'ath predecessor is more the model, a strong and when necessary brutal central government that keeps people (ie other groups) in line.
Now that you know the problem, imagine trying to solve THAT by early March. You can't, all you might be able to do is paper over the problem, delay it for another day, something Iraqi officials have become deft at over the past half decade. But solving it? Impossible.
Haider
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