Iraqi Elections Only Made Matters Worse
From the There's Still No Good News Department:
The heady, hopeful days surrounding the election seem more distant with each early-morning explosion that rouses Baghdad with the reliability of an alarm clock...
...When the ballots were collected, about 58 percent of eligible voters had made it to the polls. The majority Shiites and the Kurds were by far the biggest vote-getters. Sunnis were left with almost no political representation, renewed U.S. military offensives in their territories and a humiliating reversal of fortune. Insurgent leaders immediately seized on the Sunni disenfranchisement to stir up sectarian emotions.
The heady, hopeful days surrounding the election seem more distant with each early-morning explosion that rouses Baghdad with the reliability of an alarm clock...
...When the ballots were collected, about 58 percent of eligible voters had made it to the polls. The majority Shiites and the Kurds were by far the biggest vote-getters. Sunnis were left with almost no political representation, renewed U.S. military offensives in their territories and a humiliating reversal of fortune. Insurgent leaders immediately seized on the Sunni disenfranchisement to stir up sectarian emotions.
posted by Management at 2:10 AM
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Elections may have made things worse, not better
Today's topic: Building democracy in Iraq
By Hannah Allam
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two weeks of intense insurgent violence have made it crystal clear that Iraq's parliamentary elections, hailed in late January as a triumph for democracy, haven't helped to heal the country's deep divisions. They may have made them worse.
The historic election sheared off a thin facade of wartime national unity and reinforced ethnic and sectarian tensions that have plagued Iraq for centuries. Iraqis immediately began playing the roles the election results delivered to them: victorious Shiite Muslim, assertive Kurd, disaffected Sunni Arab. Within those groups lies a mosaic of other splits, especially between secularists and Islamists vying for Iraq's soul.
With little social cohesion, violence has soared, fueled by anger over foreign occupation and religious differences, while a semi-sovereign, disjointed government has taken over with little ability to control or appeal to groups behind the killings. At least 400 Iraqis have died in two weeks. U.S. casualties are also up. According to Icasualties.org, a Web site that tracks Iraq coalition casualties, 46 American service members died under fire in April, and 28 have died so far in May.
The heady, hopeful days surrounding the election seem more distant with each early-morning explosion that rouses Baghdad with the reliability of an alarm clock.
"Elections were a start, but it was a start with flaws," said Rassim al-Awadi of the Iraqi National Accord, the party led by former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. "It has resulted in many mistakes. ... On the good side, nobody can say these people were not elected. But it did categorize us into Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds. Period." It wasn't supposed to have been this way.
The elections, U.S. and Iraqi officials pledged, would empower war-weary citizens to determine their own future after decades of tyranny. Shiite parties were predicted to win, but with enough checks and balances from secularists to keep conservatives' dreams of an Iranian-style theocracy at bay. There would be a national assembly that represented even the most obscure sect -- a multiethnic, multiparty system to teach the rest of the Middle East a lesson.
When the ballots were collected, about 58 percent of eligible voters had made it to the polls. The majority Shiites and the Kurds were by far the biggest vote-getters. Sunnis were left with almost no political representation, renewed U.S. military offensives in their territories and a humiliating reversal of fortune. Insurgent leaders immediately seized on the Sunni disenfranchisement to stir up sectarian emotions.
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