The
Deadly Lie Of Democracy In Iraq: The Electoral Proceedings
With Religious Fervor
22 November 2010By Ahmed Habib
"It has been almost a million
months since Iraqis ran to the polls, to fill holes in
their souls with bloodstained ballots. Hundreds of
candidates dressed up as maggots colored the liberal
lining in occupied skies, and perpetuated the lies
that there is democracy. Hypocrisy of the highest
order, politicians blaming their failure on porous
borders, while blindly following American orders on
everything from defense to education. The death of a
nation, systematic assassination and relentless
dehumanization of millions of people. The burning of
mosques, schools, hospitals and steeples for crumbs of
rotten bread. Iraq is dead, shot in the heart and
stabbed in the head." -- Excerpt from a new spoken
word piece entitled, "Unfinished Letters from Iraq."
Prior to the parliamentary elections in Iraq on 7
March of this year, all the major political factions
running in the country's nationwide elections declared
the entire affair to be corrupt and not representative
of the people's will. They were preemptively cooking
an excuse for any unwanted results that might emerge
out of the charade. Independent reports corroborated
their suggestions with testimonies of fake
registration forms and leaky ballot boxes. However,
the elections went through, and the results were
applauded by other fake democracies around the world.
Since then a constipated coalition-building process
has left Iraq with no government for more than eight
months.
In spite of the satirical sadness of it all, the
liberal media, and Iraq's desperate population,
continue to hold on to the electoral proceedings with
religious fervor. From outside Iraq, those who
politically organized the occupation see the elections
as justification for their complicity in mass murder.
Meanwhile those inside the country try to cope with
the immense loss of life by pinning their misguided
hopes on the empty promises of one politician or the
other.
The inaccuracy of the results and the subsequent drama
only tell part of the story. An elections process
cleverly diverts all attention from the colossal
incompetency of the government, and spins the tall
tale of a young, fledgling born-again country instead.
The reality is that democracy in Iraq does not exist
beyond the show business of sham elections.
In the absence of food, electricity, water, education,
health, safety and dignity, the vote exists merely as
a tool to stretch the life expectancy of the
occupation and ironically works to quell any
grassroots movements that would build genuine
democratic institutions in the country. Students,
workers, community organizations, women, single
mothers, the disabled, orphans, the poor and all other
marginalized sectors of society continue to watch
democracy from a painful distance while bearing the
brunt of its epic failures.
Historically, the emergence of a sovereign,
self-sustained, secular, progressive, economically
powerful country in the region was a worrisome
possibility for an oil-hungry United States, obsessed
with growing Soviet expansionism in the post-Second
World War era. As such, the last forty years have
witnessed a program of pillaging and exploitation that
has eaten its way through some of the most fertile
land in the world.
Under Saddam Hussein's Baath party, civil society in
Iraq was destroyed, personal freedoms exterminated and
the majority of the country's resources were wasted on
a paranoid dictatorship and an American proxy war with
Iran. Under the sanctions, Iraq's infrastructure was
annihilated, millions of people were killed and theft
and corruption took a stronghold in the mismanagement
of the country's affairs. Since the occupation,
millions more have had their lives destroyed, the
greatest systematic extortion of a country's resources
successfully executed and the language of sectarianism
has choked the aspirations of many generations to
come. Throughout this time, America also unleashed the
most violent warfare in the history of mankind.
The elections are just another part of this death
sentence issued to Iraq.
In 1963, the CIA-backed coup that deposed the
populist, left-leaning government of Brigadier General
Abdul Karim Qassim, and eventually brought Saddam's
Baath party to power, seems like it just happened
yesterday. During the bloody hijack, lists of
progressive activists were provided to Baathist
henchmen by the US to be murdered in campuses and
other public spaces. One of the men toting a gun,
terrorizing the University of Baghdad, was none other
than the esteemed Dr. Ayad Allawi himself, one of the
main contestants in the recent Iraqi elections. He is
the leader of the Iraqi National Movement (al-Iraqiya),
the political party which won the greatest number of
seats.
His rival, Nouri al-Maliki, is secretary general of
the Islamic Dawa (Preaching) Party, which was
established by a collection of clerics in the 1960s to
build an Islamic state in Iraq. Although it was not
secular like its Baathist counterpart, it also saw
socialism as its main enemy. From its inception, al-Maliki's
party enjoyed an incestuous relationship with the
Islamic Revolution in Iran, and lived under its
protection throughout the entirety of Saddam's regime.
Both the party's history and sectarian outlook make it
a perfect complement to the complete destruction of
Iraq, and thus has enjoyed great success in occupied
Iraq. Currently, the Dawa Party operates under the
guise of the State of Law Coalition which received the
second greatest number of seats in the 2010 elections.
Both parties are self-avowed friends of the US and
employ a strategy of completely burning Iraq so they
can rebuild it according to their own perverted,
US-endorsed visions of democracy. While Allawi prefers
a nationalist-leaning, neoliberal death for the
country, al-Maliki intends to bury Baghdad and other
cities under the rubble of sectarian strife. In both
cases, tyranny, corruption and mass murder are
required elements to complete the task. To that end,
the US is ecstatic, and is satisfied with playing a
role of a divisive dictator from a distance.
From al-Maliki and Allawi, one can also get a sense of
the entire Iraqi political spectrum that is killing
its way to power. Different variations of religious
fundamentalism, ultranationalism, hyperactive
capitalism and incompetency define democracy in the
country. And despite their differences in delivery,
the outcome is still the same: greater suffering for
the people of Iraq. Al-Sadr, al-Chalabi, Talibani, al-Dulaimi,
al-Hakim, al-Alousi and al-Jaafari are just some of
the crooks that have terrorized Iraq for the better
part of the last decade.
The solution to Iraq's woes goes beyond its borders,
stretching from the impoverished streets of Cairo,
over the apartheid wall in Palestine and all the way
to the coalition killing fields near Kabul. Without an
internationalist and radical awakening in the fields
and factories of Iraq, the people will continue to be
victims to the vote. Without a concerted central
effort to rebuild the country's infrastructure, Iraqis
will continue to live in near-apocalyptic conditions,
waiting hopelessly for their imminent death. Without
control of the country's resources, Iraq will operate
infinitely as a one-stop shop for vultures vying for
easy profits.
One could argue that choosing a government is a
necessary precursor for all these things to take
place, but the mechanisms that govern Iraq are far
away from the hands of the government. Elected
officials are nothing more than glorified pimps that
are holding down Iraq's head while it is being
violated by dozens of dollar-driven demons. In the
absence of a progressive, radical, grassroots
political program, the death of Iraq will continue to
evolve from one election booth to the next.
Ahmed Habib is a Toronto-based Iraqi writer,
living too far away from Baghdad. He can be reached at
shakomako A T gmail D O T com.
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EsinIslam.Com
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