Iraq election provides
upside, downside
Seattle Post
By ANNE GEARAN
AP DIPLOMATIC WRITER
Monday, February 14, 200
WASHINGTON -- The Iraq elections may bear out that old adage:
Be careful what you wish for. The United States has invested
billions of dollars and nearly 1,500 lives to replace Saddam
Hussein's dictatorship with the beginnings of democracy. But
Iraq's new government isn't likely to be Washington's best
friend.
In election results announced Sunday, clergy-backed Shiites
and independence-minded Kurds did the best. But the Shiites' 48
percent of the vote was not enough to control the legislature,
and leaders are working on a coalition government that could also
reach out to minority Sunnis.
"There's a democratic process in Iraq," State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher said Monday. "It's a democratic process
that's going to require Iraqis from different ethnic groups, from
different parties, from different political views, from different
religious backgrounds to cooperate with each other."
Boucher did not say so, but the United States wants far more
than just an acceptable process.
It wants Iraq to have a secular or mainstream Islamic tilt,
and to turn away from the influence of its next-door neighbor
Iran.
It wants a government friendly to the United States and ready
to stand as a democratic example to other Middle East countries.
It also wants a willing partner for oil production, one that can
help stabilize the world market and safeguard billions in U.S.
investment.
And the Bush administration hopes for enough stability to pull
most U.S. troops out of the country before the 2006 midterm
congressional elections at home.
The ledger of pros and cons for the United States coming out
of the election is still being written, and it is hard to
quantify some of them such as Iraqis' personal liberty and the
right to vote. For the United States, however, the election
results are another reminder that nothing has gone quite as
planned in Iraq.
"The administration is doing a very good job of selling these
elections as a vital step toward success in Iraq and withdrawal
of American troops," said Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the
private Council on Foreign Relations. "I hope so, but history
suggests we shouldn't bet on it."
Without firmer footings for democracy than one election can
provide, "odds are that the place would be taken over either by
people who weren't democrats or were unfriendly to us, or both,"
Gelb said.
There was little talk of establishing a democracy in Iraq, and
much about ridding the world of Saddam and his supposed nuclear,
biological and chemical weaponry when the 2003 U.S.-led invasion
made quick work of Saddam's army and his Baathist government.
The United States and its allies, principally Britain, have
stood in as de facto mayor and sheriff for the nearly two years
since. A resilient and effective insurgency targets U.S. troops
and Iraqi policemen, among others, and basic infrastructure such
as roads, water and electricity are lacking.
The United States points with pride to the fact that Saddam is
gone, as well as a minority-run government that suppressed rival
ethnic groups. The Jan. 30 national elections propelled to power
the groups that suffered most under Saddam, and pushed Sunni
Arabs to the margins for the first time in the country's modern
history.
Without a majority sufficient to command full authority, the
new government will have to build coalitions much as Western
European democracies are accustomed to doing. That's a hopeful
sign that the new government won't be dominated by extremists,
said James B. Steinberg, a deputy national security adviser for
former President Clinton and now director of foreign policy
studies at the Brookings Institution.
"For the United States, the best case is that nobody has a
majority ... and you have more horsetrading that needs to go on,"
Steinberg said. "Horsetrading is exactly what needs to happen in
Iraq so that everybody has a stake in the outcome," he said.
On the other hand, the emerging government has a firm Islamic
religious base and links to Iran's ruling clerics. The interim
prime minister seen as an ally of the United States, Ayad Allawi,
came in third. It is not clear who the next prime minister will
be, but none of the leading candidates is strongly
pro-American.
"The worst case is that on every single list (of winning
candidates) there are people who are not democrats," said Michael
Rubin, a former political adviser to the Coalition Provisional
Authority in Iraq who studies domestic politics in Iraq and its
neighbors for the American Enterprise Institute.
Secular Shiites will be in a political struggle with Islamist
Shiites, and there are worrisome figures in both camps, Rubin
said.
When all is said and done, Rubin predicts the Iraq government
will be an ally, but not one that is a mirror of the United
States or even a particularly close friend.
"We did liberate them and that counts for a lot," Rubin said.
"But basically instead of an England we'll have a France. It will
be a prickly alliance."
EDITOR'S NOTE: Anne Gearan is a diplomatic correspondent for
The Associated Press.
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