October 27, 2005
The result of the October 15 referendum in Iraq endorsing the
draft constitution will only deepen the catastrophe caused by
Washington’s attempt to establish a pro-US client state in
the country. According to the Iraqi Electoral Commission, 63 percent
of registered voters, or some 10 million people, cast a ballot,
with 79 percent supporting the constitution and 21 percent voting
no. The breakdown of the figures, however, shows a population
that has been bitterly divided along sectarian and ethnic lines
by the Bush administration’s policies since the 2003 invasion.
The referendum itself was completely contrived. The Iraqi people
had no say in the draft constitution, which was drawn up behind
closed doors by pro-occupation parties and US officials, or in
what questions would be asked on the referendum. If a free and
fair vote had been taken on whether US troops should leave Iraq,
the answer would have been a resounding yes. A recent survey by
the British Ministry of Defence found 82 percent of Iraqis—from
all backgrounds—"strongly oppose" the occupation.
Instead Iraqis were asked to vote on a constitution that creates
the mechanisms for the transformation of the Iraqi state into
a decentralised federation of "regions", with the key
oil-producing areas in the north and south in the hands of the
Kurdish nationalist and Shiite fundamentalist parties that have
worked with the US occupation. It obliges all future Iraqi governments
to re-organise the economy, including the currently state-owned
oil industry, on free market principles. Authority over the development
of Iraq’s considerable untapped oil reserves, which will
be contracted to private companies, is stripped from the Baghdad
government and handed over to the regional states.
The beneficiaries of the plunder will be transnational energy
conglomerates and a narrow layer of the Kurdish and Shiite elite.
The predominantly Sunni Arab population in Iraq’s central
and western provinces faces being marginalised in a resource-poor
region. They will be ruled over, however, by a central government
controlled by Kurdish and sectarian Shiite parties, whose main
concern will be to suppress opposition to the neo-colonial exploitation
of the country.
Sunni Arab bitterness toward the constitution found sharpest
expression in two majority Sunni provinces where the anti-occupation
insurgency has strong support and US repression of the civilian
population has been intense. In Salah al Din province, the no
vote was 81.75 percent, with large turnouts in rebellious cities
such as Tikrit and Samarra. In the western province of Anbar,
where the US military has slaughtered or detained thousands of
Sunnis in cities such as Fallujah, Ramadi and Qaim, 97 percent
voted no.
In four provinces where the population is a diverse mix of
Iraq’s various communities, the outcome was a dangerous polarisation
that can only intensify the sectarian conflicts that have been
developing since the 2003 invasion.
In Baghdad, where the insurgency is most active, the vote was
77.7 percent for and 22.3 against, with the no vote concentrated
in Sunni suburbs of the capital. In Tamin province, where the
city of Kirkuk has already been the scene of bloody clashes between
Kurdish militias with Sunni and Turkomen groups, the result was
62.9 percent yes and 37.1 percent no. In Diyala province, with
its mixed Sunni-Shiite capital of Baquba, the vote was 51.2 percent
for and 48.8 percent against.
In 12 provinces with a majority Kurdish or Shiite population,
where the pro-occupation parties argued that the sectarian constitution
was essential to improving the conditions of life for the common
people, the yes vote ranged between 95 to 99 percent.
Across the Shiite south, however, growing distrust of the governing
Shia parties—Da’awa and the Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)—saw the voter turnout
fall markedly compared with the election in January. The government
of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari formed earlier this year
repudiated its election pledge to demand a timetable for the withdrawal
of foreign occupation troops as soon as it took up office in Baghdad.
The suspiciously high yes vote of over 90 percent in southern
cities like Amara, Samawa and Diwaniyah, where there is considerable
Shiite animosity toward the occupation and the governing parties,
led to immediate accusations of vote rigging.
The greatest controversy, however, surrounds the official count
in the northern province of Ninewa, where the majority of people
in the capital Mosul are Sunni Arab, Turkomen or other ethnic
minorities opposed to the constitution. After a 10-day delay,
the no vote was declared to be 55 percent, against a yes vote
of 45 percent.
Sunni political leaders responded to the result with allegations
of blatant fraud. Saleh Mutlaq, one of the most public Sunni critics
of the constitution, told journalists: "It [the result] is
clearly a forgery. No respectful forger would produce such an
obvious fake that could be seen through so easily." Calling
for a recount of the vote in Mosul, Mutlaq declared: "There
was a fraud everywhere, but it is Mosul that matters because it
was pivotal to defeating this unacceptable constitution."
A no vote by two-thirds of the voters in just three provinces
was all that was required to cause the rejection of the constitution
nationally. According to figures published by the New York
Times, if just 83,283 yes votes in Ninewa had been negative
ballots instead, the constitution would have been defeated.
Mahmood al-Azzawi, a member of the Sunni-based National Dialogue
Council, told Al Jazeeera: "Fraud occurred, especially in
Mosul. It is too big to have any dispute about. Eighty-six percent
of Mosul’s residents voted no and that was according to accurate
statistics made by over 300 independent supervisors in the province."
The Iraqi Islamic Party, one of the few Sunni organisations
that called for a yes vote, issued an official statement declaring
voter fraud had taken place in Ninewa and that the constitution
was illegitimate.
Predicting that Sunnis would otherwise conclude they could
achieve nothing through the US-imposed political process and would
turn toward the insurgency, Saleh Mutlaq warned: "Violence
is not the only solution if politics offers solutions.... But
there is very little hope that we can make any gains in the elections.
I call on the free world, I call on the United Nations, to intervene."
The UN, however, is directly complicit in the continuing US
occupation of Iraq. Far from criticising, let alone opposing the
fraudulent ballot, the UN was instrumental in organising the referendum
and in rubberstamping the outcome as legitimate. UN officials
dismissed allegations of vote rigging as having no bearing on
the result.
Deepening crisis for US-led occupation
In recent years, accusations of electoral fraud in countries
such as Serbia, Georgia, the Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan produced scathing
denunciations from Washington and US backing for the removal of
governments and their replacement with ones more amenable to American
strategic interests.
The allegations in Iraq, however, were greeted with denial
by the Bush administration and its international allies. White
House spokesman Scott McClellan declared the outcome of the referendum
to be evidence of the Iraqi peoples’ "determination
to build a democracy united against extremism and violence".
British foreign secretary Jack Straw welcomed it as an "important
step in the development of a democratic, stable and inclusive
Iraq". Comparable statements were issued from Canberra, Rome,
Tokyo and other capitals that have military forces in Iraq.
The reality, however, is that the ratification of the constitution
will deepen the military and political crisis already confronting
the US-led occupation. Even as the result of the referendum was
being announced, the attempts at self-congratulation in Washington
were overshadowed by the media focus on the US death toll in Iraq
reaching 2,000.
The marginalisation of the Sunni population and other minorities
such as the Turkomen, on top of years of brutal repression, guarantees
that the armed resistance will continue to grow. In a blunt statement
yesterday, Sunni politician Hussein al-Falluji told Reuters: "Our
message to the American administration is clear—get out of
Iraq or set a timetable for withdrawal or the resistance will
keep slaughtering your soldiers until Judgment Day."
Whatever the exact composition of the next Iraqi puppet government
formed in the December 15 elections, to be held under the new
constitution, it will not be accepted as legitimate. To keep it
in power, US imperialism will be driven into more atrocities against
Iraqi civilians to suppress support for the insurgency. There
are mounting allegations that the occupation forces are relying
on Shiite and Kurdish death squads to terrorise the Sunni population,
dragging the country closer to a fratricidal civil war.
Already, over 50 percent of Americans oppose the war and support
for the Bush administration has plummeted to less than 37 percent.
The stench of fraud that hangs over the October 15 ballot can
only further discredit Bush’s claims that young US soldiers
are killing and dying to bring "democracy" to Iraq.
The content of the constitution, and the manner in which it has
been imposed on the Iraqi people, makes transparent that the agenda
behind the 2003 invasion was not "weapons of mass destruction"
or "liberation", but to seize control of Iraq’s
oil reserves and assert US domination in the Middle East.
To achieve these predatory ambitions, there will not be any
withdrawal of US troops or any let-up in the rate of American
casualties. In recent days, both US spokesman Major General Rick
Lych, and a report by the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, have predicted that more than 100,000 US troops will
be involved in major counter-insurgency operations in Iraq until
well into the next decade.
The essential precondition for the Iraqi people to determine
their own political future is the immediate and unconditional
withdrawal of all US and foreign troops from the country.
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