Elections in 2005, Civil War in 2006?

Posted by Scott Ritter at 12:00 AM on January 3, 2006.

Having been asked by AlterNet to start blogging, I have wrestled with how to structure the material I will submit. I have been given a wide remit covering not just Iraq and the Middle East, but national security and foreign policy as well. Rather than fall back on familiar ground, and write an essay about Iraq, I took a step back to evaluate where I thought the United States was heading from a national security perspective in 2006. I found myself coming back to Iraq as the central issue around which all others either revolve, or evolve. I believe that this will remain the primary theme for the United States in 2006, just as it was (with some intervention from Mother Nature) in 2005.

With the advent of a New Year, the buzz term being bandied about throughout America by politicians and media pundits regarding Iraq is "Democracy." The year 2005 witnessed three "historic" elections in Iraq, the accumulated result of which is ostensibly a new, democratic Iraq capable not only of self-governance, but also self-defense, thereby reducing the burden imposed on the US military in the aftermath of the March 2003 invasion which toppled the distinctly non-democratic government of Saddam Hussein, and the subsequent occupation which oversaw Iraq's dark slide into chaos and anarchy.

The democratic process that transpired in 2005 was in and of itself a by-product of this chaos and anarchy. The January 2005 election of an interim governmental authority responsible for raising a national assembly whose job it was to draft a new Iraqi Constitution was a slip-shod affair, the timing of which was driven by American political imperative as opposed to representing the will and desire of an Iraqi electorate. In fact, the most telling outcome of that election was that while Iraq had a mass of people who were brave enough to face down terrorist attacks to make their way to the polling places to cast a vote, Iraq did not have an informed and organized electorate capable of defining and declaring core values upon which they selected candidates for national representative government.

What the January 2005 elections in Iraq showed more than anything is that an election does not certify a democracy; only a democracy can certify an election, and Iraq is, after 30 some-odd years of totalitarian rule, certifiably not prepared to organize itself and function as a free and democratic state run on principles of secular rule of law and human rights agreed upon by the majority of the Iraqi people. By rushing the January elections, the Bush administration initiated a process which was prone to abuse, something no amount of covert electioneering on the part of the Department of Defense and the CIA could prevent.

In post-Saddam Iraq there are three groups capable of organizing themselves to the extent that they can effectively participate in national-based elections. The first is the Ba'ath party of Saddam Hussein, outlawed in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and driven underground. Thus banned from overt participation, the Ba'athists have formed their own distinctly non-democratic coalition of secular Saddam loyalists, Sunni Islamists and tribalists who resist not only the US-led occupation of Iraq, but also any form of Iraqi government imposed on Iraq by the occupation.

When Paul Bremer signed into law his dictate that banned the Ba'ath Party, he forgot the age-old notion that the enemy has a vote. In this case the enemy was the two-million plus members of the Ba'ath party who were suddenly disenfranchised from any legitimate role in determining the future of Iraq. When combined with the Sunni Islamists and tribalists, the Ba'ath-led coalition comprises a constituency of nearly five million people, a number that while incapable of seizing the reigns of power through an election process based upon majority rule, can and will disrupt any process which it has been frozen out of either through the tyranny of foreign occupation or the tyranny of a non-Sunni majority.

The second group in Iraq capable of immediate political organization is the Kurdish Union, specifically the majority Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the minority Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The reality of the union is that it is born of political convenience, given that as recently as 1997 these two factions were engaged in a full-scale civil war with one another. The one thing that unites them is not a free and democratic Iraq, but rather an independent Kurdistan, something that was certified in the January 2005 national election when the Kurds held their own referendum on independence, something over 90 percent of the Kurds in Iraq voted in favor of. The principle focus of the Kurds since that time has been to solidify their hold on the territory they call Kurdistan, and to improve their position politically, militarily and economically.

Militarily the Kurds pushed as many Kurdish men through American-sponsored (and paid for) military training, forming numerous military battalions whose allegiance is not to Iraq, but rather Iraqi Kurdistan. And economically the Kurds have been actively involved in driving out non-Kurdish peoples from the area around the city of Kirkuk, home to one of the most important oil fields in Iraq, and as such the key to any economic self-determination on the part of an independent Kurdistan. The Kurds comprise some 20 percent of the Iraqi population, and were active and enthusiastic participants in the "democratic" elections of 2005. But the vision of Iraq they voted for had a distinctly pure Kurdish flavor, and as such only served to further deepen the fractures in Iraq that have emerged from the post-Saddam period.

The third and final political organization capable of operating on a national level is the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI. An Iranian-funded and backed organization whose roots lie in the Shi'a Islamist resistance to Saddam Hussein's rule, SCIRI has positioned itself as the single most influential group inside Iraq today. Recognizing the leverage they enjoy in any "democratic" process based on one person, one vote (the Shi'a of Iraq comprise more than 60 percent of the population), SCIRI has outmaneuvered its political opponents within the Iraqi Shi'a community (or, when that failed, bullied and intimidated them through the use of its military arm, the Badr Militia) to emerge as the dominant power behind the scenes in Iraq today.

SCIRI has been careful not to appear as the face of any government serving the interests of an unpopular occupier. While SCIRI has not supported any insurgency against the US-led occupation, it has been supportive of the spreading of anti-American sentiment in Iraq. Some 80 percent of the Shi'a in Iraq today want the American occupiers out of Iraq -- at least after SCIRI has ensconced itself as the dominant political force in Iraq, using American military power as a vehicle to suppress all opposition. SCIRI has taken control of the most important ministries in Iraq, either directly or through proxy. Like the Kurds, SCIRI has pushed hundreds of thousands of Shi'a men loyal to the Badr Militia through American-sponsored military training.

And while the failings of interim governance can be blamed on secular Shi'a like Iyad Allawi, or non-SCIRI Shi'a like Ibrahim Jafari, SCIRI operated behind the scenes to take control of the formulation of Iraq's new constitution (through the October 2005 referendum vote) and the new Iraqi government based upon that constitution (through the December 2005 election). Most Iraqis, when casting their votes in December, were ill informed about the reality of the internal political dynamic that they were participating in, and in effect certifying through their participation. America's rush to create a free and democratic Iraq has, in the end, created the exact opposite. We simply replaced one form of tyranny (the secular dictatorship of Saddam Hussein) with another (the theocratic dictatorship of SCIRI).

The new SCIRI government has certified rape, murder, torture and brutality as legitimate tools of governance (simply ask the women of Basra and Baghdad what it means to live under theocratic Shari'a law, or what "tools" of law enforcement the Badr Militia uses in bringing 'justice' to those who oppose their brand of dictatorial rule). SCIRI has used the tools of democracy (i.e., an open election) to produce a distinctly un-democratic result. This won't be the first time in history that such an abuse has taken place -- there were free elections in Weimar Germany in the 1930's. And once certified as legitimate, tyrants have a way of using elections as a vehicle of certifying their hold on power (witness Stalin and Saddam Hussein).

The year 2005 may have been the year of democratic elections in Iraq, but history will judge it as the year that set the foundation for large-scale civil war in Iraq. No amount of papering over of the deep and serious fractures that exist in post-Saddam Iraq can cover up the reality that Iraq today is a failed nation state. In Iraq we find not only Sunni versus Shi'a and Arab versus Kurd, but Sunni versus Sunni (secular versus Islamist), Kurd versus Kurd (a renewal of the old KDP-PUK rivalry), and Shi'a versus Shi'a (the Iranian-backed SCIRI versus the home-grown Iraqi Shi'a movement led by Mokhtar al-Sadr). Iraq today is a tinderbox waiting for a spark to set it off. Until now the presence of American troops has served as a fire brigade of sorts, extinguishing flames before they could explode out of control. But in doing so, the Americans have allowed for the accumulation of massive amounts of "fuel" in the form of resentment and greed and political ambition which will produce a fire storm that no American force, whatever the size, can extinguish.

I recently spoke with an American Army battalion commander recently returned from Iraq. His unit had been responsible for securing a particularly difficult region of Iraq, making conditions conducive for the conduct of elections. The elections were held (in January), but in making them possible, the battalion in question lost over 30 dead (and scores more wounded). The commander, a Lieutenant Colonel, was understandably defensive about the mission he and his men had been given, and was loath to accept any criticism of a process that had cost him so dearly. I asked him what he thought his mission had been -- helping orchestrate an election, or fighting a counter-insurgency campaign. "Both" was his answer.

This answer -- from the heart, and well meant -- underscores the tragic futility of the American involvement in Iraq. What 2005 showed more than anything is that the processes involved in forcing elections among an Iraqi electorate ill-prepared to effectively participate in such elections only exacerbates the internal discord that fuels the anti-American insurgency. By helping set up and carry out elections in Iraq, the American battalion commander feeds a system that enhances, not extinguishes, the anti-American insurgency that kills Americans -- over 30 in the case of the Lieutenant Colonel's battalion, over 2,170 and counting overall.

The year 2006 will be the year in which America reaps what it has sown in Iraq. The "democratic government" of the SCIRI theocratic tyranny will serve to finally rupture the tragic nation state we once recognized as Iraq into a cauldron of competing fiefdoms, all of whom will be engaged in a life-or-death civil war that has the characteristics more akin to a wildfire than any known political process. Stuck in the middle will be the armed forces of the United States, powerless to stop the fighting which will erupt around them, and incapable of preventing themselves from getting scorched by the flames of civil conflict they helped fuel and ignite.

The flames that will consume Iraq will not only threaten Americans on the ground in Iraq, but also the territory of Iraq's neighbors. Given the fact that the genesis of American involvement in Iraq had nothing to do with bringing legitimate democratic rule to the Iraqi people, but rather was part of an overall strategy of "regional transformation" which seeks regime change not only in Iraq, but also Iran, Syria and elsewhere, the real danger isn't how the Bush administration will react to the devolving situation inside Iraq, but rather to the instability engendered outside of Iraq. Given the recent war-like rhetoric emanating from the White House regarding Syria and Iran, it doesn't take any stretch of the imagination (although it does boggle the mind) to see where we might be headed vis-à-vis the Middle East in 2006.

But that is the subject of a future essay. Happy New Year.

Scott Ritter served as a Chief UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq from 1991 until his resignation in 1998. He is the author of, most recently, Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (Nation Books, 2005).