by Abdul Ilah Albayaty

In Iraq, Obama has chosen the continuation of criminal social engineering. Only a rupture from the political process can save Iraq and its people

While all observers, the UN, international institutions and organisations, Arab and international parties and movements, and Iraqis outside the alliance in power in Iraq, pointed to and alerted the international community, the UN and Arab League members, and international and Arab movements to the tragic situation and condition of Iraqis under occupation, and the collapse of the means of having any normal life or hope of having one in the future if conditions created by the US invasion continued, the Maliki government, supported by the US, the Kurdish leaderships and the pro-Iranian sectarian parties, maintained its policies of generalised repression, generalised corruption, generalised falsification of facts and generalised lies as justifications.

The initial plan of destroying Iraq and dividing it into three entities by depending on an alliance between separatist Kurds, Iranian religious fascists, and behind-the-scenes Israeli secret service activities was in its own right criminal social engineering, contrary to all obligations of the occupation under international law. As the Iraqi army, and with it the Iraqi people, resisted the occupation, the occupation and its allies engaged in genocidal actions that were disastrous not only for Iraqis but for the US, Iraq’s neighbouring countries, the international economy and international relations, norms and standards.

What is called the “political process” was designed to achieve this division of Iraq. But all those who know the politics in the region have understood from the beginning that destroying the Arab-Muslim identity of Iraq and dividing it into Shia, Sunni and Kurd was a mirage towards which the US has been running, and that the outcome would be US failure. Running towards this mirage led to seven years of perpetual death, destruction and terror for Iraq, and seven years of failure of the US in battling the Iraqi people and its resistance. A haemorrhage for Iraq in blood, and for the US in money. The US won nothing but shame, a financial crisis, the unjustifiable death of its sons, unpardonable aggression and the collapse of its image, and a general distrust of its values and policies.

Yes, the US succeeded in destroying Iraq, but succeeding in building a new Iraq based on three semi-independent entities is an impossible task that US think tanks created for themselves and for Israel. Iraq is unbreakable. The Iraqi people, identity, interest and will, and the geopolitical reality of the region do not permit the division of Iraq. After seven years of failure, instead of negotiating with the resistance and the anti-occupation forces that stood outside the US-instigated political process to establish peace and conditions for withdrawal, and to render Iraq to its people so that Iraqis rebuild their country and their society and life, the Obama administration decided to revive the failed political process via faux elections.

With Obama, the US — the first responsible for the tragic situation in Iraq — presented Iraqi elections as the remedy to problems it created and has sustained. In reality, the rules governing the political process, the repression and the marginalisation of all opponents to it, in addition to the forced deportation of most of the middle class outside the country, made the elections a mere drama whose aim is for the political process to reproduce itself so the US can prolong its control of Iraq while exculpating the US from its responsibility for the tragic situation in Iraq. One day of elections has nothing to do with the tormented everyday life of Iraqis.

For the US, the Maliki government’s signature on the Status of Forces Agreement and oil contracts freed them from caring about who is in power in Iraq, how they govern, and what for, so long as they continue to fulfil their own plan. As all such agreements are legally null and void, despite rhetorical declarations of the withdrawal of combat forces the US plans to keep up to 50,000 troops stationed in Iraq along with thousands of special forces and more than 100,000 mercenaries operating under their command. The US will also have at its disposal forces inside the political process, guided by thieves, warlords, and stooges, insuring that no force against the US can exist without being immediately eliminated by others or directly by the remaining US units or its special forces. The forces in the political process are, for the US, welcome to fight each other freely, but all are and must be against building a real unified state for Iraqis or being opposed to the occupation.

There is nothing clearer regarding this strategy than the speech of Ambassador Hill in Washington. All candidates in the last elections, including Allawi, are in agreement. If they differ it is on their share of the cake of power: Iran and its agents refuse to integrate Sunnis in the political process; the Kurds do not want Arabs to unite and want to integrate Kirkuk in their hegemony in the north; Allawi and many with him are fed up of sectarianism and religious fascism but he is with the invasion and with a softer deBaathification; and Maliki wants to be prime minister by election or by force. Apparently the result of the falsified election serves the US plan. The parliament is as divided as before and the future government is and will be as weak as before.

There are two aspects that would endanger and disturb the self-satisfied US plans. While the US did nothing to change the tragic situation in Iraq, giving the dirty job of repression, corruption and lies to its local allies, its allies refuse any change. They use all legal and illegal means and tricks, including assassinations, arrests, deportations and terror, so that power remains in the hands of an alliance of the two Kurdish parties and two Shia parties. The Kurd’s “standby”, Iran’s interventions, renewed sectarian violence, Maliki’s threats of not recognising the results, go in this direction.

The second danger to US plans is the position of the popular resistance and the anti-occupation forces towards the elections. As movements, none presented a list or official candidates, thereby de-legitimising the elections. Neither the Baath Party, nor the Taa’sisee, nor the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq, nor the anti-occupation leftists participated. But they afforded to their supporters full freedom to boycott or to vote according to the local situation. If we analyse the number of votes for each list, and on which theme they won, we can see that the anti-occupation project of a unified Iraq has succeeded to prove it is the first political force in Iraq.

The vote in Kirkuk, Mosul, Diyala, Salaheddin proved that Kurdish expansionist plans don’t have the support of the population concerned. The purely religious parties who yearn for a religious state, despite seven years of using power for their own benefit with the aid of the US, secured less than 2.5 million of 12 million votes. Those who support dividing Iraq into Shia, Sunni and Kurdish entities, meaning the Iraqi National Accord (INA) and the Kurdish Alliance, did not exceed a fifth of the eligible voters. We should mention that the Sadrists — who are part of the INA — present themselves as refusing the division of Iraq.

The number of voters who accept Iranian hegemony over Iraq is very weak. The INA, which is the principal ally of the US, won two million and ninety five thousand votes of the 18 million eligible voters and the 12 million who voted. We could maybe add half of Maliki’s list to them, if Maliki’s list disintegrates. But Maliki, an American creation, presented himself as someone who refuses Iran’s diktat. We will see what will happen to his list now he has lost power.

The situation puts Iraq before a crucial juncture. One possibility is that the Iraqi people experience another four bloody years after the seven last blood-soaked ones. The second possibility is that by respecting the Iraqi will, Iraqis will get some rest and enough security to start building a secular and unified state again. The vote proved that no salvation will come from inside the political process and that the armed resistance, which is the legal Iraqi army, in addition to those who boycotted, those who voted for Allawi and other lists who desire change and a secular state, the refugees, mostly middle class professionals, the non-separatist Kurds outside the governing parties, the Turkmen, the poor who voted for Sadrists, the Christians, the Yazidis, all honest intellectuals of Iraq, represent a public for a government of salvation that can rebuild a democratic independent and unified Iraq. It is the duty of the UN, the Arab League, Iraq’s neighbours and Iraqi progressists to facilitate its birth.

When Iraqis struggle for peace, stability and democracy by resisting and searching for a way to rebuild their sovereign state based on equal citizenship, they defend the interests of Iraq’s neighbours, including Iran, all the Arab world, all peoples, countries and forces that wish to end wars and violence, and end Western hegemony in international affairs, whose first victim is always the Third World, and end relations based on force and exploitation. Iraq is the forefront battle for a better world.

Abdul Ilah Albayaty is an Iraqi political analyst and member of the Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal.