The Vietnam Turnout Was Good as Well
No amount of spin can conceal Iraqis'
hostility to US occupation
By Sami Ramadani
The Guardian (UK)
On September 4 1967
the New York Times published an upbeat story on presidential elections
held by the South Vietnamese puppet regime at the height of the Vietnam
war. Under the heading "US encouraged by Vietnam vote: Officials cite 83%
turnout despite Vietcong terror", the paper reported that the Americans
had been "surprised and heartened" by the size of the turnout "despite a
Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting". A successful election,
it went on, "has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's
policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South
Vietnam". The echoes of this weekend's propaganda about Iraq's elections
are so close as to be uncanny.
With the past few
days' avalanche of spin, you could be forgiven for thinking that on
January 30 2005 the US-led occupation of Iraq ended and the people won
their freedom and democratic rights. This has been a multi-layered
campaign, reminiscent of the pre-war WMD frenzy and fantasies about the
flowers Iraqis were collecting to throw at the invasion forces. How you
could square the words democracy, free and fair with the brutal reality of
occupation, martial law, a US-appointed election commission and secret
candidates has rarely been allowed to get in the way of the hype.
If truth is the first
casualty of war, reliable numbers must be the first casualty of an
occupation-controlled election. The second layer of spin has been designed
to convince us that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis participated. The
initial claim of 72% having voted was quickly downgraded to 57% of those
registered to vote. So what percentage of the adult population is
registered to vote? The Iraqi ambassador in London was unable to enlighten
me. In fact, as UN sources confirm, there has been no registration or
published list of electors - all we are told is that about 14 million
people were entitled to vote.
As for Iraqis abroad,
the up to 4 million strong exiled community (with perhaps a little over 2
million entitled to vote) produced a 280,000 registration figure. Of
those, 265,000 actually voted.
The Iraqi south, more
religious than Baghdad, responded positively to Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani's
position: to call the bluff of the US and vote for a list that was
proclaimed to be hostile to the occupation. Sistani's supporters declared
that voting on Sunday was the first step to kicking out the occupiers. The
months ahead will put these declarations to a severe test. Meanwhile
Moqtada al-Sadr's popular movement, which rejected the elections as a
sham, is likely to make a comeback in its open resistance to the
occupation.
The big vote in
Kurdistan primarily reflects the
Kurdish people's demand for national self-determination. The
US administration has hitherto clamped
down on these pressures. Henry Kissinger's recent proposal to divide Iraq
into three states reflects a major shift among influential figures in the
US who, led by Kissinger as secretary of state, ditched the Kurds in the
70s and brokered a deal between Saddam and the Shah of Iran.
George Bush and Tony
Blair made heroic speeches on Sunday implying that Iraqis had voted to
approve the occupation. Those who insist that the US is desperate for an
exit strategy are misreading its intentions. The facts on the ground,
including the construction of massive military bases in
Iraq,
indicate that the US is digging in
to install and back a long-term puppet regime. For this reason, the US-led
presence will continue, with all that entails in terms of bloodshed and
destruction.
In the run-up to the
poll, much of the western media presented it as a high-noon shootout
between the terrorist Zarqawi and the Iraqi people, with the occupation
forces doing their best to enable the people to defeat the fiendish,
one-legged Jordanian murderer. In reality, Zarqawi-style sectarian
violence is not only condemned by Iraqis across the political spectrum,
including supporters of the resistance, but is widely seen as having had a
blind eye turned to it by the occupation authorities. Such attitudes are
dismissed by outsiders, but the record of John Negroponte, the
US
ambassador in Baghdad, of backing
terror gangs in central America in the 80s has fuelled these fears, as has
Seymour Hirsh's reports on the Pentagon's assassination squads and
enthusiasm for the "Salvador option".
An honest analysis of
the social and political map of Iraq reveals that Iraqis are increasingly
united in their determination to end the occupation. Whether they
participated in or boycotted Sunday's exercise, this political bond will
soon reassert itself - just as it did in Vietnam - despite tactical
differences, and despite the US-led occupation's attempts to dominate
Iraqis by inflaming sectarian and ethnic divisions.
Sami Ramadani was
a political refugee from Saddam Hussein's regime and is a senior lecturer
at London Metropolitan
University.
February 01, 2005
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