Renegades!

Iraq, 2005

An interesting exercise in journalism has always been the prediction of the future type columns that attempt to see into the next year or years with equal amounts of speculation and insight. This exercise has been largely absent when attempting to see what Iraq might look like after the next election, probably the most significant world development of the coming year.

Let's start with the easy stuff: the Shias are going to come out ahead in the elections, with their parties more or less under the influence or control of Ayatollah Sistani. Sistani, a leader with credibility as the most senior cleric of the Shias, and because of his work negotiating peace in Najaf. He helped nullify the Shia insurgency and has become the most influential Iraqi, outside of Allawi. Some in the press are worried that this will be a disaster because they believe Sistani is under the control of Iran. While sharing a common religion, the Shias have shown that they are Iraqis first on numerous occasions: They were on the front lines of the war on Iran and are seperated by race and physical geography. Of course, the realities of democratic politics also means that Sistani will have to placate his electorate if he wants to be re-elected and that means serving Iraqis, not the Mullahs.

The Kurds, for their part, will be pleased as they finally reach a viable place within the ranks of the ruling elite of the country. With smoothe diplomacy, they will see more autonomy transferred their way as they seek more power for their already semi-independent states. The federal government may seek to strengthen their hold over the areas by slowly incorporating Kurd security forces into the federal forces, and gradually moving more federal institutions into the area to make their presence felt. They might even pull a 'Karzai' by incorporating many of the independence leaders into the fold until they are confident they no longer need their help and simply be rid of them and appoint federal politicians from the Kurd areas when possible.

The Sunnis will be the hardest nut to crack, of course. How do you placate or incorporate them into a government when they are opting out of the elections? One possibility is that while some of the Sunni areas are left out (Fallujah, parts of Mosul), these areas are simply left behind while other areas compete for the largesse of the government. Politicians being politicians, the areas that have effective leadership will roll in cash while areas with little or no economic importance or political representation will be left with nothing at the federal government. For the Sunnis, their former mental association with wealth was supporting the violent autocracy, but under the new regime they will suffer without representation at the federal level. After some time, I predict they will see a correlation between democracy and wealth: areas that play ball at the federal level will get the cash, while those still holding out for some possibility that the Baathists will return and reward their loyalty will suffer. This depends on the ability of the federal government to spend at least some of the cash the US has offered. There needs to be a concerted effort to start spending more and more of the reconstruction funds made available by congress.

Predicting the when and how of the insurgency's end is a fool's game. The minds of the insurgents has to change before anything and former predictions of the end have been unfortunately pie-eyed false horizons. The election will not stop the insurgency, but for the US administration, their will be more deadlines created in the future (the date the new Iraqi administration takes office, etc) that will offer a public relations opportunity to give a definite end date.

International cooperation on Iraq will become key. The UN under Koffi Annan will be involved in the elections, as will some other western nations, opening a door to furthered cooperation. In a preverse form of blackmail, Koffi Annan will be under more pressure to cooperate with the US on Iraq with the implicite understanding that the US will not push the food-for-oil investigation that would see Annan and several other UN insiders who were intensely anti-American be forced in front of an international court. Ironically, it is possible they would have to go before the ICC, the very forum the US has abandoned. If the food-for-oil investigation is not going to force Annan to submit, the US might try to push several other failures of the UN under Annan's watch, such as the massacres in the Congo and Rwanda.

In attempting to save face and in an opportunity to mend relations with the US, the EU may step into the void as they have with Ukraine to offer a seperate and independent version of western democratization. The US and EU can play a form of good cop/bad cop in Iraq, where the EU can be the friendly western power, playing off the poor image of the US to further democratization. The PR message would be something like this "Democracy doesn't have to be Americanization; You can be like us in Europe....Psst: We don't really like the US either".

Whatever happens in 2005 in Iraq, it will begin and end with the elections. The overall success of democracy in Iraq may depend on the ability to secure funds from the US, along with the proper functioning of pork barrell politics. International cooperation by the UN and the EU would also go a long way to smoothing the transition from autocracy to democracy.

posted by Shamrocks! @ 7:16 PM