Iraq Elections: What's Changed? posted by Richard Seymour

Peshmerga and Badr Corps interfere with voting. Dead Men Vote. United Iraqi Alliance claims victory.

Baghdad Burning wrote some while back that many secular voters might back Iyad Allawi's list, despite his backing the atrocities in Fallujah, because "He who sees death, is content with a fever." I doubt the vote for Allawi will be very much more significant than it was in January. The LA Times indicates that Allawi has not done very well at all.

One thing that has changed however is the alignment within the Shi'ite voting bloc. It appears that the Sadrists did better than any other partner in the UIA coalition, and that the SCIRI did rather badly. (See Cole's caveats on this). Also, of course, the Sunni Arab voters who had largely boycotted the vote last time round voted in very large numbers this time. Adnan al-Dulaimi of the National Concord Front, an Islamist group, thanked the resistance for protecting voting booths, as they had during the constitutional referendum. He also indicated his willingness to join in a coalition with Shi'ites, Kurds, or indeed anyone who will reject "communal dispensations". The other major winner from the elections is Salih Mutlak, a secular Arab nationalist who has been doing the rounds on television denouncing the occupation.

There is an awful lot of talk, and rather too much of it, from Bush and his apologists to indicate that the US thinks the vote will now start to swing things its way. Sunnis (and, one might add, Sadrists) embracing 'the democratic process' is allegedly going to staunch the flow of violence, isolate the evildoers and allow the US to begin withdrawing troops. We've got to hear the last of this stupidity soon. The US resisted having any kind of elections to begin with, only ceding them when the SCIRI threatened to join the armed insurrection. Now that there have been elections, the US candidate has been creamed twice. The only question for the US is just how adamantly against the occupation the government is likely to be, how easily it can be bought off, how much they can temporise, how quickly their vast bases can be built and protected. For this much is transparent: the US has no intention of withdrawing. It may well wish to make some reduction in the open presence of troops in Iraqi towns and cities, diminish the exposure of soldiers to enemy fire and generally retreat to its bases. There may be some draw down in the numbers come March 2006. But then again, perhaps not. Either way, this will not be the beginning of the end of US troops in Iraq.

Nor, to tarry with the negative, do these elections signify the end of the resistance, armed or unarmed. There has been a clear shift in tactics by the resistance, which started well before the elections. I don't know whether suicide bombings will end as such - initially, much of this aspect of the resistance was driven by advice from Hamas, not by the Salafis. But there is a dual politico-military approach emerging. The new strategy is, as Juan Cole points out, much more like Irish Republicanism's bullet and the ballot box strategy than a farewell to arms. It is reported, in fact, that the nationalist resistance is about to "announce a Front for the Iraqi Resistance", to be led by a Consultative Council with the aim of ending attacks on civilians and expelling the occupiers. The Iraqi National Foundation Congress is, I am told, moving to fulfill its name and become a political front for all anti-occupation forces. The occupiers really aren't entitled to their unworldly confidence.

In other election news: The Democrats will not take a position on Iraq in 2006. The major opposition party not taking a stance the most important foreign policy decision taken by the incumbent government - I don't think there is a word for just how gutless, venal and pathetic this is.