Feb 15: Amir Taheri wrote an outstanding analysis of the Iraqi election results for the Times UK. Taheri deconstructs the predictions of doom, contrasting that with the actual outcome:
a) no civil war
b) no Khomeinist theocracy
c) no excluded Sunni – they won 49 seats in relation to the 42 seats indicated purely by population
But the politics of new Iraq is not about sectarian differences. Religious and ethnic identities were used in this election, but this was in an absence of political organisations that could not take shape under Saddam Hussein’s despotic regimes. The Shia-led and Kurdish lists, the two main winners, could theoretically form a coalition and control the transition and the writing of a new constitution. But we are not dealing with monolithic groups. The two lists are alliances that include many different ideologies — nationalist, liberal, Islamist, far Left, socialist and social democrat. My instinct is that the new assembly will be organised on the basis of political programmes rather than sectarian and/or ethnic identities with Arab nationalist, Islamists and liberals-conservatives blocs forming…
The Arab despots and their friends in the West make a meal of the cliché that democracy cannot be imposed by force. But what happened in Iraq was not imposing democracy by force. The US-led alliance used force to remove impediments to democracy. The people of Iraq became the co-liberators of their country, first by not opposing the US-led coalition and then by risking their lives to set their nation on a new path in the face of vicious terrorism.
It is time to see what is happening in Iraq on its own merits, not in the context of an irrational hatred of the United States and George W. Bush. Like it or not, President Bush has got one thing right: give any nation a chance to choose democracy and it will.
Taheri always merits a careful read – this is good work.
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