Iraq and Afghanistan

It is hard to believe that the elections are actually going to occur — and that they could be a reasonable success in spite of everything. Today’s paper reports on the decision of Iraq’s interim government, in spite of the objections of the Americans and the United Nations, to allow voting by Iraqis living outside the country. Because there is such a large Diaspora, this has been insisted on by the leading Shiite parties as well as Ayatollah Sistani himself. The Kurds also pushed for it. So even though they do not yet have a budget for what could be an expensive operation, it is apparently going to happen. The Afghans had expatriate voting in their last election, as did East Timor under the supervision of the UN. Certainly the Americans have it. So the Iraqis must feel they have a right. The paper says expatriate voting will more than ever infuriate the Sunni Arabs, because they have a relatively small number of expatriates. I wonder if this is really true. They were the wealthiest group prior to the invasion and the better off generally find their way out of troubled countries more easily than the poor. It should be encouraging to the Americans to note that the expatriates tend to be more secular than the people in the country. Although registration through the food distribution system got off to a shaky start, the process seems now to be up and running, at least in some areas.

Meanwhile Juan Cole reports that although the Association of Muslim Scholars, a group closely allied to the insurgency, has urged its followers to boycott the election, the Iraqi Islamic Party has been handing out pamphlets at Sunni Arab mosques pointing out the obvious, that is, if they do not vote they will end up essentially powerless in a new state. Several small Sunni parties are joining together in a coalition to fight the elections. Allawi’s Iraqi National Accord, a secular party essentially (since Allawi is a Shi’a) may also join with them. There are reports that the two main Kurdish parties will also join to make a coalition that could garner 35% of the vote. All these moves indicate a real feeling among many Iraqis that even though no one can stop the killing, the election can be held and that it can have a meaning for them. In the long run, this may be the best chance we all have to pacify the country. It is hard for outsiders listening to the daily blood letting to believe in all this, but there it is. Whether the planned attack on Falluja could help or harm progress toward elections remains unclear.