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Iraqi Elections : Violence & Polarization

Iraqis headed to vote for parliament on Wednesday in the first nationwide elections since the last U.S. troops left the country in December 2011. Nine thousand candidates are vying for 328 seats, largely running on sectarian lines. Incumbent prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, is expected to secure a third term in political deals made after the vote, but he faces mounting criticisms (WSJ) that he runs an authoritarian government, stokes sectarian tensions, and has exacerbated the country’s insecurity while bearing responsibility for abuses by Iraqi security forces (NYT). Back-to-back bombs attributed to Sunni insurgents seeking to undermine the elections killed twenty-four near Baghdad on Tuesday; they were the latest in a surge of violence that killed nearly nine thousand civilians last year, making it the country’s bloodiest since the peak of the sectarian civil war in 2007.

The jihadist group Islamist State in Iraq and Greater Syria remains in control of swaths of territory in Anbar province (AP), and amid insurgent threats, voter turnout was reportedly low in Sunni parts of the country (Reuters).

Analysis

“As Iraq readies for general elections at the end of this month, sectarian tensions hang over the country, just as in elections past. But this time, there is a twist: despite the population’s deep divides, Iraqi politics have refused to play by the old sectarian rules. In fact, most long-standing ethno-sectarian parties have fractured and, in some cases, key political issues are starting to cut across religious identities. As a result, the election will likely have no clear winner, and only the subsequent struggle to form a new cabinet will reveal which way Iraq is really headed in the coming years,” writes Reidar Visser in Foreign Affairs.

“The United States has lost much influence in Iraq, but it must still use whatever strings it has to encourage a return to inclusive politics. The United States is still Baghdad’s largest partner in terms of arms sales and maintenance, and major U.S. oil companies also still have a significant role in Iraq’s energy sector. After the withdrawal of 2011, Washington dealt with Maliki, legitimately, as the constitutionally elected leader of Iraq, although several officials criticized his increasingly divisive policies. And as al-Qa’ida regained ground in Iraq in 2013 and 2014, Washington and Baghdad have increased cooperation to face that threat. While the United States must await the results of the April 30 elections and cannot ignore the real threats from resurgent terror groups, it must also recognize that Iraq is on a path to disintegration,” writes Paul Salem for the Middle East Institute.

“The [Falluja] crisis has rescued Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s chances in the parliamentary elections, which, until ISIL entered the picture, appeared grim. His second term is widely considered a disaster: over the past year, the rising tempo of violence across the country, abuses by the security services, massive floods in the capital and the government’s mismanagement of Sunni protests damaged his credibility as a national leader among both Sunnis and Shiites. To save his prospects, he took a page out of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s playbook by exaggerating – and thereby exacerbating – the threat Falluja poses to national stability. It offered more than a diversion: it was an opportunity to shift the terms of debate, rally Shiites against alleged terrorists, divide and neutralise Sunnis, redeem the army’s image as defender of state and nation and lobby the international community – with an often myopic focus on jihadi terrorism – for support,” writes the International Crisis Group in a new report.