Harry Barnes asks Foreign Secretary about preparations for Iraqi elections

Extract from Commons debate on 29th November

Mr. Harry Barnes (North-East Derbyshire) (Lab): How widely known is the holding of the general election in Iraq among the Iraqi people? A short time ago, it seemed that it was not well known; perhaps people had other things to be bothered and worried about. There might be some indication in terms of the number of people who have registered to vote or are expected to register and in the number of local elections that have already been held to prepare people for a coming general election.

Mr. Straw: My understanding is that there is already a good level of appreciation of the elections and the process. The system of registration is based on the records for food rations. As people go to claim their food rations, they are registered to vote. The usual process of the publication of provisional registers is under way and the independent election commission of Iraq is seeking nominations. Alongside that, there are plans for a proper information campaign to be run by the independent election commission to educate people in Iraq better about the process of elections, which of course they have not enjoyed for getting on for 40 years.

Iraq Elections 'Best Way to Undercut Terrorism'

Report by Jamie Lyons in the Scotsman on 29th November

Elections could be the only way of undercutting terrorism in Iraq, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s special envoy on human rights to the country said today.

Labour MP Ann Clwyd said it would be a mistake to delay January’s planned polls despite ongoing violence.

“There is a conundrum,” she said.

“Without security there can’t be credible elections. But, until there are elections, I think the security situation is unlikely to improve.”

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Ms Clwyd (Cynon Valley) added: “I think the latter argument has been more compelling.

“I think elections in January are the best, and possibly only, way of undercutting support for the terrorists and thereby of improving the security situation in the longer term.”

Ms Clwyd said a large number of Iraqis planned to vote.

The backbencher has consistently argued against the death penalty in Iraq. But she said opinions were now hardening in favour of it.

She said Saddam Hussein had freed murderers and rapists and there was a real fear among Iraqis that he could be “wandering around the streets” in 20 years.

Sama Hadad of the Iraqi Prospect Organisation explains why delaying the elections would be wrong

November 29, 2004

Pachachi, who returned from a five-month stay at his Emirates
residence, convened a meeting with Sunni and Kurdish politicians in
Baghdad, culminating with a joint statement calling for a six-month
delay of the January elections, citing security concerns. However,
these concerns are either disingenuous or flawed:

• Just two days prior, the core Sunni parties had demanded that either
elections be delayed due to security concerns, or the electoral system
is changed from a single-constituency proportional representation
system to that of a first-past-the-post multi-constituency system.
What if any links an electoral system has to the security concerns is
bewildering, but what it reveals is the true motives behind the call
for an elections delay. In a single-constituency proportional
representation system there are virtually no wasted votes and each
list receives the same percentage of seats as votes, while a
multi-constituency first-past-the-post system invariably produces
wasted votes and unfairly skews results - which they hope to benefit
from. If elections are delayed, it is only logical that terrorists
will be emboldened and will drive even harder to ensure they succeed
once again in stalling the democratic process and thus the security
situation will only get worse and not better.

• A delay in elections will not bring in those boycotting the
democratic process. Such groups have clearly stated they will not take
part in any elections whilst foreign troops are in Iraq and troop
presence will not change in six months.

Such a move, most likely stirred up by neighbouring Arab nations
fearful of a budding democracy in their midst, is not gaining any
ground as 42 Shia parties, Sistani, the electoral commission,
President Bush, Negroponte and Senator Lugar have all dismissed any
delay.

The Iraqi Prospect Organisation is a network of young Iraqi men and
women promoting democratic values in Iraq. http://www.iprospect.org.uk

Jane Ashworth analyses the views of a New York Times columnist on the potential consequences of pulling troops out of Iraq

Nicholas D Kristof writing in the New York Times declaims, ‘Heaven protect Iraq from well-meaning Americans. Iraqis are paying a horrendous price for the good intentions of well-meaning conservatives who wanted to liberate them. And now some well-meaning American liberals are seeking a troop withdrawal that would make matters even worse.’

Not sure the conservatives who took the US into war were quite as well meaning as Kristoff seems to want to believe, but lay that aside for a minute and he’s making a good point. ‘Our mistaken invasion has left millions of Iraqis desperately vulnerable, and it would be inhumane to abandon them now. If we stay in Iraq, there is still some hope that Iraqis will come to enjoy security and better lives, but if we pull out we will be condemning Iraqis to anarchy, terrorism and starvation, costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of children over the next decade’

His reasoning is that the public health implications of any future break up of Iraq (an almost certain consequence of premature withdrawal) would boost the already rising rates of acute infant malnutrition. A stable state is needed to halt the decline but, he says, ‘If U.S. troops leave Iraq too soon, the country will simply fall apart. The Kurdish areas in the north may muddle along, unless Turkey intervenes to protect the Turkman minority or to block the emergence of a Kurdish state. The Shiite areas in the south might establish an Iranian-backed theocratic statelet that would establish order. But the middle of the country would erupt in bloody civil war and turn into something like Somalia. What would that mean? If Iraq were to sink to Somalia-level child mortality rates, one result by my calculation would be 203,000 children dying each year. If Iraq were to have maternal mortality rates as bad as Somalia's, that would be 9,900 Iraqi women dying each year in childbirth.’

Not being an epidemiologist, I don’t know if his expectations are on the right track. But he does raise a very practical argument against those who indulge their anti-Americanism and privilege the call for troops out above concerns for the well being of Iraqi people.

Iraqi Prospect Organisation analyses “de-Baathification”

We don’t necessarily endorse this but feel that it merits discussion.

Crushing the insurgency and stabilising Iraq
The need for a brave decision from Washington
By Sama Hadad

Monday, November 23, 2004

Published: openDemocracy

American and new Iraqi forces rapidly occupied the insurgent
stronghold city of Falluja and are almost in complete control. While
the military campaign has been a success the fact there was a need for
Operation Phantom Fury signals a significant failure of policy -
namely that of 're-Ba'athification'.

Following the fall of Saddam, Ayad Allawi, along with his supporters
in Washington, fiercely opposed both de-Baathification, and the
disbanding of the former Saddam army. Because Allawi's Iraqi National
Accord draws its support from former Baathists and the Sunni elite,
his opposition to the de-Baathification policy is understandable.
Whilst American forces had Falluja in a tight grip in April, mounting
international pressure and civilian casualties led Washington to
abandon its year-old de-Baathification policy and to resort to forming
the Falluja Brigade made up of former Baathists. This signaled the
beginning of a wave of appointments of high ranking Baathists to top
security service and government posts - just as Allawi had been
advocating. Their thinking was that appointing former Sunni elite and
Baathists in positions of power would kill two birds with one stone:
make use of their 'expertise' as well as appease the Sunni population.
Falluja was left in the hands of a newly formed Falluja Brigade, under
the command of Jasim Muhammed Salih. To the embarrassment of the CPA,
Salih was removed days after his appointment because opposition
mounted against his past as a chief of staff of one of Saddam's
Republican Guard Brigades and participation in the bloody quelling of
the 1991 uprising. The Falluja Brigade command was then handed to a
former Saddam intelligence officer, Mohammed Abdul Latif. As
insurgency activity unsurprisingly soared once more in Falluja,
coalition forces eventually found the Falluja Brigade to be working
'with them' by day and planning and executing insurgency activity by
night. The Brigade was eventually disbanded in September.

Whilst the mess of the Falluja Brigade symbolises the incompetence of
the 're-Baathification' policy and has served to bring us full circle
back to where we were in April, there have been far more dangerous
repercussions of this policy. Allawi's aggressive re-Baathification of
the government and security services has paved the way for such people
as Amer al-Hashimi to be appointed chief of staff of Iraq's new army.
Al-Hashimi, a Salafi ex-Major General in Saddam's army, was eventually
fired last August as it became apparent he was supplying Salafi
insurgents with intelligence and appointing them to high ranks in the
new army. More worryingly, not only was al-Hashimi replaced by
Mohammed Abdul-Qadr, former Baathist Governor of Mosul and deputy
chief of staff under Saddam, but al-Hashimi himself has since been
appointed an advisor to the Ministry of Defence.

Allawi's policy has also seen the appointment of Talib Al-Lahibi as
commander of the new Iraqi National Guard for the province of Diyala.
Al-Lahibi, a former Saddam officer, was eventually arrested in
September as it came to light he was leading the insurgency in Diyala.
What may prove to be Allawi's most close-to-home re-Baathification
blunder, was his appointment of former Baathist, Yousef Khalaf
Mahmood, as head of security for the Iraqi interim cabinet - an
individual who would never have been appointed to such a post under
de-Baathification. Mahmood was arrested at the end of October after it
transpired he was working with the insurgents and had supplied them
with the names and addresses of every government official and
ministerial staff. Six staff and their family members have already
been murdered in their homes. Such a grave mistake will serve to keep
insurgents busy for months to come. And so, the very people Iraq is
relying upon to help its rebuilding and democratisation are now
sitting ducks.

Thanks to the active reinstatement of Sunni elite and former
Baathists, leadership of the new Iraqi security forces is once again
Sunni-dominated, as it had been the four decades under Saddam. The
weeks and months have proved that not only are high ranking Sunnis
exacerbating Iraq's insecurity, but even low ranking Sunnis cannot be
relied upon to carry out their duties - in one Iraqi unit alone in
Operation Phantom Fury, some 100 Sunni soldiers chose to desert their
posts en route to Falluja. So it's not a surprise that we find
ourselves in the position we are in and one thing is certain - relying
on the same pillars of power as Saddam did will ensure continued
infiltrations, desertions and insurgency.

Most commentators and political advisors are now correctly identifying
the need for a political solution to couple the current military
operation in Falluja. However, they seem to have learnt nothing from
the past, as they are now advocating the same policy that was adopted
six months ago: calling for increased Sunni and 'clean' Baathist
representation in order to somehow appease the Sunni population.
Washington needs to be brave enough to discard Allawi's policy of
re-Baathification and Sunni-dominance and advocate what reality on the
ground has pointed to time and time again: de-Baathification coupled
with Shia-dominance in the leadership of the new security forces is
the only long-term option to crushing the insurgency and moving Iraq
towards democracy.

Sama Hadad is the spokeswoman for the Iraqi Prospect Organisation, a
pro-democracy group based in Baghdad and London.

LFIQ Joint President urges other political parties to follow LFIQ lead

Extract from Commons debate on the Queen’s Speech by Harry Barnes MP

The Queen's Speech says that the "Government will continue to support the Government of Iraq to provide stability and security and ensure that elections can be held in January."

I am one of those who opposed the invasion, but I realise that once the invasion had taken place, new sets of circumstances began to be created. I would have preferred to give assistance and encouragement to the considerable forces of opposition in Iraq at different stages who wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein and change the system. When people struggle within their own system, they develop organisations and arrangements that are part of the transformation and have the potential to build a democratic society. That was not done. Such organisations—clandestine bodies—existed, but the invasion still took place.

We must now look to the development of a democratic Iraq, with civic provisions in a new framework. We must argue against unacceptable military action and try to prevent its worst excesses, but we must realise that terrorism cannot be allowed to rule the roost; it must be contained and people must be defended in order to build democratic provisions and arrangements.

There are considerable forces in Iraq that look towards those things—women's organisations, youth organisations, ex-prisoners organisations, community groups, trade unions and bodies such as the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, which has 200,000 members in 14 organisations—in a setting of 50%, unemployment, massive problems and difficulties about which forms of privatisation will take place. Will it be a rip-off, as it was when the regime changed in the Soviet Union? There are worries about those issues, but there are forces for a better and improved Iraq.

Democracy is not just about voting in a ballot; it is about civil liberties, organisations and people's rights and freedoms to press their corner and get involved. I am joint president, with Ann Clwyd of Labour Friends of Iraq, and I am keen that other political parties should establish similar groups.
Our joint presidency is symbolic, as Ann supported what she would call a liberation, but which I call an invasion, while I opposed it, so it shows that people can come together on specific items and work in current circumstances to try to determine a way forward and whom they should assist.

Yasser Alaskary & Sama Hadad of the Iraqi Prospect Organisation examine “Iraq's Security Riddle”

There is growing evidence that the core of the insurgency is almost purely Baathist:

1. The Fallujah experience

Prior to the operation in Fallujah, it was generally believed that the majority of the insurgent leadership were foreign Arab Salafi extremists. However, this is now in question. Arab Salafi extremists, like those associated with the militant Abo Musab Al-Zarqawi, explicitly seek out 'martyrdom' as their victory. On the other hand, Baathists have no interest in being killed and every interest in defeating the new Iraqi government and wearing out the US-led coalition into withdrawal. The sheer ease with which US and Iraqi forces overran Fallujah indicates that most insurgents had left the city. Such a move is not characteristic of Salafi extremists who would have relished a final battle against their perceived enemy. It is, however, characteristic of a Baathist-led insurgency that does not want to face the US at its time of choosing but would rather slip away and attack at a time of their choosing.

2. Baathists were not defeated

Policy makers would do well to remember that whilst the Baathist regime lost the war, it was never defeated. The core of the Baath Party, who made up the dozens of security organizations and local networks trusted by Saddam Hussein, were concentrated in central Iraq. While Saddam's regime threw thousands of foot-soldiers to the south to slow down the advancement of the coalition, the Baathists never fought once the coalition reached central Iraq. In the city of Ramadi, a bastion for the Baath Party, not a single bullet was fired - the Baathists simply melted away amongst the civilian population. The failure of the coalition governments to recognize this danger has allowed these Baathists to lead the insurgency: planning, organizing, and coordinating terrorist activity while using the same 'Islamic' propaganda as Saddam did to lure in militants to carry out the suicide bombings and their other dirty work.

3. The Kurdish phenomenon

Furthermore, every Iraqi city has suffered numerous suicide bombings, explosions and terrorist acts, except for those located in the former Kurdish safe-haven. A foreign terrorist does not have any preference as to where he carries out his attack as he is foreign to all regions of Iraq - so why then is there such a geographic phenomenon? Some argue that this is because the foreign terrorists cannot find any sanctuary in the former safe-haven region, but this is a flawed assumption. There are Salafi Kurdish groups based in these regions and they would be more than willing to provide automatic shelter and help to their ideological brothers. In contrast, external Arab terrorist are very unlikely to find any sanctuary in many Shia cities yet such cities have not been spared from insurgent activity. Therefore, the presumption that the insurgency is at its core made up of foreign Arab Salafi extremists cannot explain the discrepancy between the former Kurdish safe-haven and the rest of Iraq.

However, this phenomenon can be easily explained if we assume the insurgency is Baathist at its core. The Baath regime of Saddam have been excluded from the Kurdish safe-haven since 1991, they no longer have a working knowledge of the area, they lack the Baath network which exists in the rest of Iraq, and are therefore unable to carry out any operations in this region.
Policy Strategy

With the evidence pointing to a Baathist-led insurgency, most likely comprising of former members of Saddam's security services and local Baathist leaders concentrated in what is called the Sunni triangle (which would be more appropriately named the Baathist triangle), there must be a clear strategy to finally defeat the Baathists if security is to be restored. This can be done by:

1. Stopping the process of re-Baathification. Why it should come as a surprise that the new Iraqi security forces continue to be 'infiltrated' when Baathists are actively recruited and reinstated in top-level positions is staggering. Building Iraq's security around the people who wish to destroy it is sheer stupidity and dangerously incompetent. Furthermore, this process has only served to alienate those who suffered under the Baath regime, especially amongst the Shia and Kurds, and has done nothing to pacify or appease non-Baathist Sunnis.

2. Actively rounding up any 'former' Baathists associated with Saddam's security forces and local Baathist ring-leaders. For the first few months after the war, when most Baathists had fled their neighbourhoods and were in hiding, the security situation was remarkably calm. When they found they were not being hunted, they grew in confidence and began to launch attacks. There has been a sustained upsurge in terrorist activity since then, dramatically increasing after re-Baathification was launched in the summer. We should have them on the run, not giving them the freedom and time to plan and organize more terror. They should be living in fear of being arrested, not inflicting fear on the people of Iraq.

3. Reinvigorate the process of de-Baathification. The Baath Party has not been defeated by the war as many of its key members are still in positions of power, helping their 'comrades' on the outside (see the IPO's November 1, 2004 analysis for examples of this).

Before an enemy can be defeated, it must be identified. The US-led coalition and the Interim Iraqi Government can continue to convince themselves that the insurgency is not Baathist at its core; they can continue with the failed process of re-Baathification. However, the Fallujah phenomenon will be repeated again and again and Iraq's security will spiral even more out of control and ultimately innocent Iraqis will pay the price.

You can find this page online at: http://www.iprospect.org.uk/na19nov.html

The Jubilee Iraq network (www.jubileeiraq.org)

Jubilee Iraq is a network of groups and individuals (business people, lawyers, economists, politicians, aid workers and others) working to ensure that the Iraqi people - emerging from decades of war, oppression and sanctions - are not unjustly forced to pay Saddam's bills.

The debts which Saddam owes cannot be legitimately passed on to the Iraqi people without assessment by an arbitration tribunal employing the doctrine of odious debts to assess whether the Iraqi people benefited from these loans.

In the case of the reparations, Jubilee Iraq sympathises with the losses of individuals, companies and nations as a result of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.

However the Iraqi people (distinct from the regime) were not responsible for these losses and they also suffered, in fact to a far greater extent, as a result of that invasion and Saddam's rule over twenty five years.

We launched on 28th March 2003 in London and now have volunteers spread across many countries and a growing network of supporters. We were inspired, in part, by the international Jubilee movement.

IRAN-IRAQ WAR: FINANCING SADDAM

When Saddam Hussein consolidated his control of Iraq on 11 July 1979, the country had cash reserves of $36bn and no long term foreign debt. Just over a year later, in September 1980, Saddam invaded Iran. The war lasted eight years and cost around a million lives. Part of Saddam’s legacy is huge borrowing during the war which today is threatening to keep the Iraqi people enslaved and impoverished.

Debt enabled vast unprecedented military spending to constitute up to three quarters of Iraq’s GDP.[1] Between 1981-85 oil revenues were just $48.4bn, while military spending was two and half times higher at $120bn.[2] Taking 1982 as an example, military imports were $6.4bn and non-military imports were $21.5bn while export earnings were just $10bn, leaving a trade deficit of $17.9bn.

This huge imbalance between earnings and expenditure was possible precisely because many countries made loans and exported goods, including weapons systems, on credit. Because of the Islamic revolution in Iran both Western and Soviet countries supported Iraq, as did most Arab states. Saddam had plenty of willing creditors and the end of the war the US Export-Import Bank estimated that Iraq owed $27bn to Western countries and $50bn to the Gulf states.

DEBT CRISIS SPARKS ANOTHER WAR

As Iraq emerged from the war and attempted to rebuild it faced a serious financial crisis due to a low oil price and annual debt services obligations of around $3bn. By mid-1990, Iraq had an inflation rate of 40% and only enough cash reserves for three months of imports.

On 17 July Saddam accused Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates of conspiring with the United States to cheat on oil production quotas and keep the price low. As the situation escalated, Egyptian President Husni Mubarak and Saudi King Fahd arranged a meeting between Kuwaiti and Iraqi officials, in Jeddah on 31 July, to find a peaceful solution. The Iraqi representative, Izzat Ibrahim Ad-Duri, walked out, complaining of Kuwaiti reluctance to forgive Saddam's debt to Kuwait.[3]

According to King Hussein of Jordan (now deceased), the Al-Saud (Saudi Arabia) and al-Sabah (Kuwait) families agreed, in a closed door meeting before the conference, to forgive their debt claims and give $10bn to help repay the rest of Saddam’s debt. But on 30 July Kuwait’s foreign minister, Sheikh Sabeh Ahmed al-Jaber al-Sabah, the Emir’s brother, ridiculed the Iraqi army to Jordanian diplomats and said, "If they don't like it, let them occupy our territory ... we are going to bring in the Americans."[4] At Jeddah the next day, he announced to Ad-Duri that Kuwait was only offering $500m (instead of $10bn). Two days later Iraq invaded.

The subsequent events: the occupation of Kuwait, the Gulf War and 13 years of sanctions not only devastated Iraq but also increased the already critical foreign debt overhang. Firstly no debt was serviced during the sanctions period, resulting in a build up of interest and arrears. The total effect of this is not yet clear, but has probably resulted, on average, in a doubling or tripling of debt claims. On top of this loan debt, Iraq was landed with an immense reparations bill. The exact amount of this bill is not yet decided because the UN Compensation Commission, which began work in 1991, has not yet completed its assessment of claims. About two thirds of the $351bn claims have been settled at $46bn, of which $18.5bn has been paid from the Oil for Food fund. UN Security Council resolution 1483 (22nd May) provided for the continuation of reparation payments, using 5% of Iraqi oil revenues, after the end of the Oil for Food program.

SCALE OF THE DEBTS TODAY

Saddam’s Iraq was one of the few countries which did not report its debt statistics to the World Bank Debtor Reporting System, so there are no collated figures currently available. No documents from the Iraqi ministry of Finance have yet emerged, and may have been lost in the recent chaos.

The creditor countries, although now demanding repayment, have taken some time to come up with figures for their own claims. This may be partly because of the secrecy of some of the loans, and partly because, after thirteen years of sanctions during which the debt was not serviced, they had written off any expectations of repayment. The Paris Club, which is a cartel of major creditors including all the G8 countries, finally published tables of its claims on 10th July, 3 months after the fall of Baghdad. However it was not able to give the total claims with interest and arrears, but only the principal value of the debt claims ($21bn). The IMF was expected to report in mid-July on non-Paris Club debt, but this has not yet emerged.

Jubilee Iraq has collated all the figures in the public domain and estimates that the total debt is within the range $95-153bn. This excludes outstanding reparations claims, which will probably settle at around $50bn when the UNCC completes its assessment at the end of this year.

If one compares the total of debt and reparations (around $200bn) to Iraq’s GDP ($32bn in 2000) and export earnings ($15bn in 2002) then it becomes clear that Iraq is the world’s most heavily indebted country by a wide margin. Moreover, it is a country with urgent relief and reconstruction needs (estimates range from $100-600bn). Although loan debt is not yet being serviced, ongoing reparation payments are diverting critical funds from humanitarian relief. On 8 April, the very day that Kofi Annan received a mandate to use the Oil for Food fund to meet emergency needs, and as the UN launched a flash appeal to fund relief, $870m was paid from Oil for Food to Kuwait, Britain and others. More recently, on 23 June, the UN called for $259m to meet a shortfall in humanitarian relief, while the UNCC simultaneously announced that it expected to take a further $600m from Iraq this year. The contradiction in these announcements is very clear; giving with one hand and taking with the other.
[see debts today for more info]

ODIOUS DEBT

Past experience suggests that relying on the altruism of creditors is unlikely to provide a solution to Iraq’s debt crisis. The G8 have still only delivered a third of the $100bn debt relief which, responding to the Jubilee 2000 campaign, they promised to 41 poor countries at the 1999 Cologne summit. Even this was conditional on those counties submitting to extensive and damaging IMF economic liberalisation programs. Recently the US Congress rejected $300m in debt relief for the Congo, a country which has also undergone years of dictatorship and war.

The solution to this problem comes from an unexpected source, Alexander
Sack, a Russian legal expert working in Paris in the 1920s. Sack codified into the legal doctrine of “dettes odieuses” a concept which had been applied a number of times over the previous forty years and which arguably has roots in Aristotle. In 1883 Mexico repudiated debts that had been contracted by the Habsburg Emperor Maximilian to suppress an uprising and maintain his sovereignty over Mexico; in 1898, after the American-Spanish war, the US repudiated Cuban debts contracted by Spain; in 1923 a tribunal ruled against Britain in a dispute over loans made to Costa Rica’s former dictator Federico Tinoco.

Odious debts, are the “personal” debts of a particular regime. They are contracted without the consent of the people and are not spent in their interests. The vast majority of Saddam’s debts fall clearly within this category since he presided over a period in which the Iraqi people were decimated and impoverished while huge sums were pilfered by the Ba’ath leadership and spent on the military and state oppression. All the creditors were well aware of what was happening with loans they were providing.
[see odious debt for more info]

APPYLING THE DOCTRINE: AN ARBITRATION TRIBUNAL

Aside from debt campaigners and Iraqis from across the political spectrum, support for applying the odious debt doctrine has come from unexpected sources. The billionaire George Soros has said that it would “send a signal to the financial markets that it's dangerous to deal with oppressive regimes” and the Chairman of CSFB investment bank David Mulford has proposed an international commission that would “disallow debt used for state security or military aggression. Only loans for verifiable economic purposes should be collectable.”[5] Unusally, neocon think-tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the Centre for Contemporary Conflict have published reports almost identical to those from Oxfam and WDM.

The fairest way to apply odious debts would be through an international arbitration tribunal. There is plenty of international precedent and case law to construct such a tribunal which would be composed, in equal parts, of Iraqi, creditor and neutral jurists. Any creditors that wish to claim repayment from the Iraqi people for loans made to Saddam would submit an argument to the tribunal demonstrating that the loans were beneficial. The tribunal would debate and rule in public on each claim and agree repayment terms for any legitimate debt. This process would dramatically reduce Iraq’s debt, set a clear precedent for other countries which have inherited debt from dictators and discourage creditors from financing the Saddams of the future.

[see tribunal for more info]
[1] Sinan al Shabibi (1997) Prospects for Iraq’s Economy
[2} Wajeeh Elali (2000) Dealing with Iraq’s Foreign Indebtedness
[3] Report to US Congress (1992) Conduct of the Persian Gulf War
[4] The Village Voice (5/3/1991) Interview with King Hussein
[5] Financial Times (22/6/2003) Iraqi debt, like war, divides the west

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister speaks out

In today’s Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk), Barham Salih emphasises the importance of the elections in the new year: “These elections, in which the Iraqi people will decide not just who will govern them but how they are governed, show the country is emerging from this nightmare. They should be supported by all who wish Iraq well. What do those who claim to have the best interests of Iraq at heart fear from elections?”

Communist leader murdered by “resistance”

The Labour Friends of Iraq sends its condolences to the Iraqi Communist Party on the murder of their leading colleague and member of the interim National Assembly.

Iraqi Communist Party's Central Committee Mourns the Loss of Leading Member Comrade Wadhah Hassan Abdul Amir

The Central Committee of the Iraqi Communist Party has mourned with deepest sorrow its enormous loss with the death of Comrade Wadhah Hassan Abdul Amir (Saadoun), the member of its Politburo, and also a member of the Interim National Assembly, who was martyred on 13th November 2004, along with two of his comrades, while travelling from Baghdad to Kirkuk. Their car was attacked by a criminal gang of murderers and remnants of the ousted dictatorship.

A statement issued by the party said that martyrdom of comrade Saadoun constitutes "a grave loss which would be difficult to replace".

The comrade was "an example of pure and genuine patriotism, full of love for the people and homeland ... He was a fully dedicated communist, who committed his life for the cause of the oppressed and toilers, and for the ideals of justice and socialism, devoting all his abilities and potential for its triumph".
Comrade Saadoun joined the party in his early youth, embarking along a path of relentless struggle, full of courage and sacrifice, along with its members. After joining the Partisan Movement of the Party and armed struggle against the bloody dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, he emerged as a courageous leader through battles fought in the mountains and valleys of Kurdistan. This feat won him the admiration and affection of the people of Kurdistan.

During that period and afterwards, he was actively involved in the Party's clandestine work against the hated regime, thus deserving additional wrath and hatred by the Security and Intelligence apparatus of the dictatorship. He was targeted and pursued by agents of these instruments of repression and terror, with the aim of capturing and physically liquidating him.

After the collapse of Saddam's regime, the late comrade devoted all his potential for the process of rebuilding the Party, consolidating its organisations in the new conditions so as to enable it to continue its march forward. These qualities, as well as other personal merits, meant that he emerged, at a relatively young age, as a leading cadre who was then elected to the Party leadership.

The Central Committee statement also mourned the martyrdom of two courageous comrades, Nawzad Tawfiq Tawfiq and Hasib Mustafa Hassan, who were accompanying comrade Saadoun; conveying its deepest condolences to their families, comrades and friends.

Iraqi CP's Central Committee strongly denounced the cowardly criminals who are shedding the blood of patriots and innocent citizens, and reiterated the Party's determination to continue the fight alongside the Iraqi people in their just battle for freedom, democracy, justice and progress.
-------------------------------------------------
www.iraqcp.org

The battle for democracy

Gary Kent, Director of Labour Friends of Iraq, outlines his views of the political situation in an article in the Yorkshire Post

All the Iraqis I know were exiled by Saddam Hussein, as were four million people. They detested Saddam’s murderous regime, which was modelled on Stalin and Hitler. The victims ran into the millions. My Iraqi friends also opposed the war because they feared the impact on their loved ones and country. They thought that Iraqis should overthrow Saddam.

But now that Saddam has gone, they are enthusiastic to rebuild their country. And the United Nations has endorsed a process which aims to give Iraq its first democratically elected government in the new year. It will decide whether foreign troops stay or go.

Withdrawing the troops before the elections would create a security vacuum which would murder democracy and probably balkanise Iraq. And it would betray Iraqi democrats because a whole new Grassroots Iraq has emerged. out of the ruins of a one-party state.

Hundreds of new newspapers and dozens of mainly new parties are campaigning around the elections. There are many active women’s groups. Workers have set up free unions to replace the state-run fronts which were part of Saddam’s terror apparatus.

The key union formation is the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), which has soared from a tiny clandestine outfit to 12 affiliates with 200,000 members. They face huge obstacles. Unemployment stands at over 50%. The shattered economy is slowly being rebuilt after decades of being ripped off by Saddam and his sons plus the effects of UN sanctions and the recent military action.

And there is terrible violence, in some key areas like Falluja, by a rag-bag alliance of former Saddam supporters, foreign jihadists and disgruntled men who were all too quickly drummed out of the Iraqi army and police forces.
For so long as the reconstruction is delayed, more people will be tempted to join the resistance. And the more people that are drawn into terrorism, the more the reconstruction will be delayed. But this is the dynamic in the “Sunni Triangle,” not the whole of the country.

One way out of the vicious circle is to develop the organisations which are needed in any healthy democracy and even more in Iraq. Democracy is more than just the right to vote: it is about the right to organise and make decisions that affect our lives.

Iraqi unions are like all unions and argue for better wages and conditions as well as progressive labour laws. But they also provide a non-sectarian forum for discussion and an outlet for political frustrations. The unions are a bulwark against nihilistic terror.

Parts of the “resistance” use terror to strengthen their hand in the elections. Others oppose elections and are doing their utmost to prevent them. This is why they have slaughtered hundreds of Iraqi civilians. From new Iraqi army recruits to children celebrating the opening of a new water treatment plant.

Unfortunately, parts of the British Left think that the key enemy is America and have made a pact with the insurgent devil because their enemy’s enemy is their friend. Some ultra-leftists even tried to attack the IFTU General Secretary at a meeting in London, presumably ignorant of the fact that he was jailed for ten years and tortured under Saddam.

It was entirely honourable to oppose the war and everyone should mourn the continuing loss of life but it is a disgrace to side with those who want to destroy democracy in Iraq.

We have established Labour Friends of Iraq to bring together people who opposed or supported the war but now see that circumstances have changed. The new unity of pro-war and anti-war forces is symbolised by the choice of our Presidents.

One is Ann Clwyd MP, who consistently opposed Saddam since the 1980s and has been appointed as the Prime Minister’s envoy on human rights to Iraq. She knows from her extensive travels in Iraq just what a monster Saddam Hussein was and she is a powerful voice in favour of Iraqi democrats.

Our other President is the North East Derbyshire MP Harry Barnes who did his own national service in Basra in the 1950s and who also always opposed Saddam Hussein. The left rebel consistently opposed the war and joined anti-war marches and platforms. He has no regrets about doing this but has also been a powerful friend of the new Iraqi labour movement and an advocate of support for the IFTU.

The two have united to try to fashion a new “third way” – going beyond increasingly sterile arguments for and against war in favour of solidarity with Grassroots Iraq. It’s not that we don’t mention the war but that the priority is to unite the labour movement here in support of the labour movement in Iraq.

British trade unions, which opposed the invasion, have led the way in aiding brave Iraqi trade unionists. The Fire Brigades Union, for instance, provided much needed fire-fighting equipment to the Iraqi fire brigade. The TUC has launched an Aid Iraq Appeal, raising money for Iraqi trade unionists to rebuild a free and independent trade union movement, and strengthen civil society in Iraq. All the money raised goes to funding trade union organisation in Iraq, without deductions for administration. The money will help Iraqi unions develop their organising and education programmes and buy computers and office equipment. (www.tuc.org.uk)

Iraq has had strong labour traditions. Before the Baathists came to power, a million people joined the May Day march in Baghdad in 1959. Iraq also has proud traditions of secularism and its people want to remain united. Iraq is the cradle of civilisation and its oil wealth could give a decent life to all its citizens, so long repressed and deprived by a fascist-style regime. A democratic Iraq would also help pluralism and freedom flourish throughout the Middle East and maybe rejuvenate the peace process between Palestinians and Israelis.

The stakes are very high. We should help Iraqi democrats rebuild their country.

Defending civilians - exchange between LFIQ President and Prime Minister, Commons 8th November

Mr. Harry Barnes (North-East Derbyshire) (Lab): Is the Prime Minister aware that I utterly condemn, and wish to see countered, terrorism in Iraq not only against the Black Watch but against Iraqi citizens? Four railway workers were murdered on 27 October between Mosul and Baghdad. What measures have been put in place in Falluja to ensure that such people—innocent people who are held hostage, as the Prime Minister himself put it—are not attacked?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend—he was an opponent of the war, but he has taken a very honourable position on these issues all the way through—is right in saying what the dilemma is. The terrorists are trying to cause maximum difficulty, which is why they are taking over places such as hospitals, schools and mosques. That is the reason why the situation in Falluja has not happened before now. I know from my discussions with Prime Minister Allawi and his Government that over the past few months, they have been making every effort to get a peaceful settlement in Falluja. That included making it clear that, provided that Iraqi Government forces came in and took control in Falluja, there would be no need for multinational forces to be in there, and it included ensuring that it was realised that there would be municipal elections in Falluja. The problem that we now have, however, is that unless we take back control of Falluja, ultimately it will be very difficult for ordinary people there to make progress, but we are doing everything that we can to limit civilian casualties in the course of the action that we take, which is why this is being proceeded with in a very careful way. I entirely agree that the important thing is to ensure that the Iraqi people understand that in the end this is not directed at them, but at the people who are preventing them from getting a democratic outcome.

Terrorist murders of Iraqi railway workers

Harry Barnes has tabled the following Early Day Motion in the Commons – EDM 1888. Please ask your MP to sign it too.

That this House notes with horror that four members of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) were murdered in cold blood on the night of Wednesday 27th/Thursday 28th October when their train, which was carrying consumer goods, was attacked by mortar fire on the railway line between Mosul and Baghdad and that the bodies of two train drivers, a guard and a security guard working for Iraqi Railways were mutilated and burnt by terrorists; strongly supports the statement issued by the IFTU Executive Committee which condemns this heinous crime against workers employed by Iraqi Railways and shows clearly that these terrorists are the enemies of all the Iraqi people; notes that they are the same criminals who had attacked and killed Iraqi children in Al-Amel district in Baghdad in early October, and also killed women, men and elderly people in previous acts of terror and sabotage; joins with the IFTU in conveying its heartfelt condolences to the families, friends and comrades of these martyrs, Kasim Shahin, train driver, Maithem Shaker Obeid, train driver, Ahmed Ibrahim, train controller and Zeyad Tariq, railway security guard; and endorses the IFTU view that the blood of our martyred workers will not go in vain and their call to the Iraqi Government and security authorities to take legal measures to bring the murderers to justice, and to ensure the safety of Iraqi railway workers and all workers, in defence of their homeland, people and working class.

Comment by Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister

We note the view of the Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Hamid al-Bayati "Using force that kills civilians on a large scale is a mistake. The logic of occupation must end."

The 2002 Arab Human Development Report: Implications for Democracy

Sami E. Baroudi, associate professor at the Lebanese American University, discusses the Arab Human Development Report 2002: Creating Opportunities for Future Generations (New York: United Nations Publication, 2002 produced by United Nations Development Programme and Arab Human Fund for Economic and Social Development .

Baroudi notes the reports conclusions and assesses the ongoing reaction it has provoked in Arab countries and in the West. He also provides a link to download the entire 170-page document.
(http://www.mepc.org/public_asp/journal_vol11/0403_baroudi.asp).

The Report was the first to cover the Arab region as a whole. Baroudi notes it made ‘some very strong assertions about the status of women, the knowledge deficit, the need for good governance or democracy, and the inexorable link between development and individual freedoms’. Its critics faulted the Report ‘for giving prominence to issues of knowledge acquisition and individual freedoms in the measurement of human development, and for not stressing the role of international factors (mainly Western political and economic dominance and the prescriptions of the World Bank and IMF) in causing underdevelopment (and in particular poverty) in the Third World’. Baroudi argues that the ‘intensity of the criticisms levelled at the Report, however, reveals that a major segment of the Arab intelligentsia has (to be gracious) ambivalent attitudes toward individual liberties, democracy, free access to information and gender equality. Such attitudes are clearly a hindrance to the development of liberal-democratic institutions and practices’.

The 2002 Arab Human Development Report: Implications for Democracy

Sami E. Baroudi

Dr. Baroudi is an associate professor of political science at the Lebanese American University and a Fulbright fellow and visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at Villanova University. For a printable pdf version of this article, click here.

The Arab Human Development Report for 20021 (hereafter AHDR or Report) is an impressive 170-page document (the English version) that provides detailed description and critical evaluation of the economic, demographic, social and political conditions in the Arab region. Emphasizing the fact that all of its authors are Arab, the Report claims to provide an insider's look at the problems of development in the region.2 The Report covers all the traditional areas of interest to the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), such as economic growth, income distribution, demographic trends, poverty, access to education and health care, and infant mortality. The Report's novelty, however, stems primarily from at least six factors.

To start with, this is the first UNDP report on the Arab region as a whole. This implies U.N. recognition of the many common (political, economic and social) features of the countries of the region, as well as an endorsement of Arab efforts towards heightened economic cooperation and eventual integration. While the Report is mindful of the disparities among Arab countries (as well as within each country) it stresses the many similarities in the conditions they face.3 Furthermore, the Report is inspired by a certain pan-Arab spirit that stresses Arab economic integration as one chief instrument for overcoming the problems of underdevelopment and addressing the challenges posed by globalization.

Second, the Report brings politics back into the development picture to a far greater extent than earlier UNDP reports. An entire chapter (chapter 7) is devoted to the issue of governance, with many recommendations on how to reform (that is, democratize) Arab political systems in order to enhance their capacities to deal with modern challenges (especially the globalization challenge) and to provide the Arab people with the right institutional milieu to develop politically, economically and intellectually. Chapter 7 provides a rich and sophisticated analysis of political conditions in the Arab region and the impact of politics on development. Perhaps the most interesting contribution of this chapter lies in its discussion of the human-welfare index, which is essentially a measure of the freedoms enjoyed by citizens. The index distinguishes between high, medium and low human-welfare countries. No Arab country achieves high human welfare, while seven Arab countries with about 9 percent of the Arab population enjoy medium welfare. The remaining countries (with more than 90 percent of the Arab population) are characterized by low human welfare. The Report concludes, "If development is understood as ‘a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy' then the challenge of human development, calculated to include variables associated with various forms of instrumental freedom, remains a real one for over 90 percent of the Arab population" (p. 113).

While the terms "democracy" and "democratization" appear infrequently in the Report, there should be no doubt that implementing all or most of the reforms called for in chapter 7 will lead to the emergence of governments that fulfill "democratic" criteria. This should be clear in light of the institutional reforms that the Report calls for to strengthen the powers of legislatures, particularly their oversight function, while ensuring that they are "chosen based on free, honest, efficient and regular elections" (p. 114); recognizing the right of opposition parties to exist; making the executive branch more accountable to the legislative branch and to the people at large; introducing or strengthening mechanisms for ensuring alternation of power; making the judiciary independent of other branches of government; trimming the size of the civil administration and enhancing its productivity; and strengthening the role of local governments. The Report also calls for changing the laws governing the formation of associations to remove from the state the power to ban the formation of NGOs.

Third, the Report is openly critical of the performance of Arab regimes in most of the areas that it covers. It faults those regimes for allowing three interrelated deficits to develop: the freedom, knowledge and gender deficits. Capturing the Report's spirit, Alan Richards speaks of a fourth deficit that the Report highlights; the "democratic deficit."4 The Report's authors rightly argue that enhancing citizens' access to knowledge and combating discrimination against women are important goals for their own sakes as well as for the sake of expanding individual freedoms (and ensuring such freedoms for all members of society.) The Report highlights the inexorable links between individual freedoms and development. Not only is development not possible without the protection of individual freedoms (e.g. freedom of conscience, speech and assembly, as well as economic freedoms), but also the ultimate goal of development is the maximization of individual freedoms. Individual freedoms are thus posited as both means and ends of the development process. This focus on the links between individual freedoms and development should be music to the ears of those who prefer liberal democracy to other forms of government. Nevertheless, as social scientists, the Report's authors should have tried harder to distinguish (at least at an analytical level) between the two concepts of development and individual freedoms. Furthermore, while the Report distinguishes between different types of individual freedoms (p. 19) -- mainly political, economic and social freedoms -- it does not address the inherent contradictions among them.5

Fourth, the Report makes a clear distinction between the concepts of economic growth and development. It views development in a holistic way to include much more than economic growth. The downgrading of the purely economic aspects of development is reflected in the construction of the Alternative Human Development Index (AHDI), which does not include per capita GDP as one of its components. The AHDI (discussed in chapter one) is based on six indicators of development: life expectancy at birth, educational attainment, freedom score, gender empowerment, Internet hosts per capita, and CO2 emissions. As the Report notes, the ranking of the Arab countries deteriorates as we move from the traditional HDI to the AHDI. The authors have a simple explanation for this phenomenon: Arab countries are richer than they are developed.

As we will see below, the replacement of the HDI by the AHDI received considerable criticism from several Arab authors. The Report views development in terms of building, efficiently utilizing and, perhaps most interestingly, "liberating" human capabilities. As chapters 4 and 5 argue, the building of human capabilities requires improving health and environmental conditions and thoroughly reforming the educational system. The effective utilization of human capabilities calls for stimulating economic growth to reduce unemployment and poverty as well as improving access to information, especially via modern means such as the Internet. As for liberating human capabilities, this hinges on implementing the political reforms called for in chapter 7. As mentioned above, the Report is clearly interested in the political dimension of development: political reform is not only presented as a necessary condition for economic and social development, but the establishment of transparent and accountable governments (democratic ones) is treated as one of the fundamental goals of the development process.

Fifth, the Report does not shy away from the sensitive issue of discrimination against women. While the Report praises the achievements of Arab countries in enhancing women's access to education, it remains critical of the status of Arab women. It notes, for example, that the rate of maternal mortality in the region is double that of Latin America and the Caribbean and four times that of East Asia (p. 2). It also notes that "women suffer from unequal citizenship and legal entitlements often found in voting rights and legal codes" (p. 3). The Report is particularly critical of the fact that only a small number of Arab women hold political office in comparison to other regions in the Third World. The inclusion of a Gender Empowerment Measure in the AHDI, and the Report's assertion that development that is not engendered is endangered (p. 2), are clear indications of the importance the Report places on women's empowerment.

Sixth and last, the Report exudes a humanistic spirit that positions the individual at the center of the development process in a manner reminiscent of Renaissance and Enlightenment authors in Europe who placed the individual at the center of the universe. This humanistic spirit (which runs throughout the Report) is quite apparent, especially in the first chapter and in the chapters on education and governance (chapters 3 and 7 respectively.) In chapter one there is a long quote from Development as Freedom by Nobel Prize laureate Amartya Sen on the connection between development and freedom (box 1.4, p. 19). In chapter 3, and in the context of discussing the principles that should guide the reform of the educational system, the Report notes: "The individual should be central to the learning process. Without implying indifference to the community or absence of cooperative behavior, the dignity of the individual should be respected" (p. 55).

Chapter 7 views the protection and expansion of individual freedoms as the ultimate goal of political reform and indeed of the entire development process. I call this spirit humanistic rather than neoliberal (for in neoliberalism there is also quite an emphasis on the unleashing of individual initiative and the protection of individual rights, particularly property rights) because many of the Report's recommendations regarding the need to fight unemployment and poverty and to actively engage the government in the health, women's empowerment and environmental domains run counter to the precepts of neoliberalism. Nevertheless, neoliberals would not take issue with several of the Report's recommendations, particularly with regard to the primary role that the private sector should play in the production process (with the role of government restricted to the regulatory and redistribution spheres), the need for the state to respect property rights (including intellectual-property rights) and the importance of expanding trade and investment links to the global economy.

In brief, the Report neither rejects nor wholeheartedly embraces the precepts of the neoliberal paradigm. But as a document produced by Arab scholars, it represents a growing awareness among at least a small section of the region's intelligentsia of the many failures and the current inadequacy of the étatist or state-led development strategy. That this étatist development model has encouraged the emergence and persistence of authoritarian regimes is also indicated in the Report, although the Report does not dwell on the links between authoritarianism in the political realm and state-led growth in the economic realm.

REACTIONS TO THE REPORT

Being the first UNDP Report to cover the Arab region as a whole -- and making some very strong assertions about the status of women, the knowledge deficit, the need for good governance or democracy, and the inexorable link between development and individual freedoms -- the AHDR triggered strong, and on the whole negative, reactions in the Arab world. This hostile reaction can be contrasted to the far more positive reception it received from Western academicians, policy makers and journalists, who approvingly quoted sections of the Report.6

One of the strongest Arab critics of the Report is the Palestinian author Munir Shafic, who questions the validity of the AHDI, arguing that it is not necessarily a better measure of development than the more conventional HDI.7 Shafic quotes the renowned Egyptian economist Galal Amin (another critic of the Report), who questioned the validity of giving equal weight to all six components of the AHDI, as well as the existence of a causal link between such components and development. Shafic notes that the only reason behind employing the AHDI was to bring down the ranking of Arab countries to the lowest possible level. Galal Amin makes the same accusation.8 Shafic also takes issue with the AHDR's contention that the freedom, knowledge and gender deficits are causes of underdevelopment. He points to countries that achieved remarkable development under authoritarian regimes (e.g. the East Asian Tigers and China). He also notes that the empowerment of women in the West came as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution (development) and was not a cause of it. George Corm, a Christian intellectual who served as Lebanon's finance minister 1998-2000, also questions the existence of any linkage between development and democracy.9 He argues that the issue of individual freedom, while important in itself, should be separated from that of development. He further notes that an equitable distribution of income should take precedence over granting economic freedoms.

It is clear that there is a fundamental difference here between Amin, Corm and Shafic and the authors of the AHDR regarding what development means. Amin, Corm and Shafic still view development in the more traditional sense of economic growth, probably accompanied by a better distribution of income, but they are not sensitive to the political dimensions of development (e.g., that without individual freedoms and good governance -- or democracy -- there is no development).

A more moderate critic is Ahmad Baalbaki, who also faults the Report for giving prominence to issues of knowledge acquisition and individual freedoms in the measurement of human development, and for not stressing the role of international factors (mainly Western political and economic dominance and the prescriptions of the World Bank and IMF) in causing underdevelopment (and in particular poverty) in the Third World.10 Riyad Tabbara, Lebanon's former ambassador to the United States, who currently heads a research center, has strongly criticized the methodology of the Report and its findings. His criticisms focus on the validity of the AHDR as a measure of development and the selective use of statistics in the Report to portray a gloomy picture of human conditions in the Arab region. Tabbara further warns that the Report would play into the hands of Western media to further tarnish the image of Arab and Muslim societies, following the events of September 11, and could be used by Western governments to impose change from outside in the name of democracy or good governance.11 Clovis Maksoud, the Arab League's former representative at the United Nations, and a member of the AHDR's advisory board, responded in detail to the criticisms of Tabbara, noting that political change must come from inside, because it is in the interest of the Arab people, regardless of the West's position towards democracy and individual freedoms.12

Mounir Khawaja, professor at the American University of Beirut, observes that the AHDR emphasizes the negative aspects of development in the Arab countries over the positive ones.13 He further accuses the Report's authors of painting a bleak picture of the development situation by deliberately excluding per capita GDP from their AHDI, while including other indicators on which they knew the Arab region was going to score low. According to Khawaja, the AHDR assumed that Arab countries had the freedom to choose their development policies; those choices were, however, framed by the prevalent international environment, he noted. Similar to Tabbara, who argued that the Report was that of activists rather than academics, he concluded that the AHDR was a political report rather than an academic or scientific one.

Hassan Mneimineh, professor at the Lebanese University, took issue with the AHDR's contention that the Arab region fell well behind other Third World regions in terms of the freedoms enjoyed by its citizens.14 He questioned whether the citizens of countries that toed the U.S. line (such as South Korea) were really freer than Arab citizens. Mneimineh further objected to the way the AHDR gave Jordan and Kuwait (two U.S. allies) the highest scores within the Arab region for the independence of their media.

Saudi author Nouaiman Uthman, who is more balanced in his assesment, also criticized the AHDR for the way it defines poverty, its play on words (using al-tanmiyyah al-insaniyyah rather than al-tarbiyyah al-bashariyyah) and its neglect of the role of religion as a factor influencing the different aspects of the development process.15

Naturally, not all Arab thinkers came out against the Report. The late Edward Said agreed with what the Report had to say about the absence of democracy, persistent discrimination against women, and the lagging behind of the Arab region in the scientific and technological domains.16 Fahmia Sharaf Eddine, a professor at the Lebanese University, praised the Report's methodology and findings; she criticized the Report, however, for not going far enough in recommending how to change current conditions in the Arab world.

Furthermore, a cursory look at the views (expressed in English) of Arab intellectuals residing in the United States reveals a more sympathetic appraisal of the AHDR than the one generally given by Arab intellectuals residing in the region and writing in Arabic.17 One may argue though that Arab authors residing in the West and writing mainly for a Western audience had little or no impact on Arab public opinion, since their views were expressed in venues that did not reach the Arab world. In brief, those intellectuals who spoke (in Arabic) in favor of the Report represented a minority within the Arab intelligentsia.

EXPLAINING THE HOSTILITY

The task at hand is to explain the causes of the negative, even hostile, reaction from Arab thinkers residing in the region to the Report's conclusions and recommendations. First, many Arab intellectuals seem to worry about the consequences of implementing liberal reforms (in the political, civic and economic realms) on the state's ability to retain its commanding position in society. This preference for strong (but not necessarily tyrannical) states remains rampant among Arab intellectuals. Many of them have experienced a certain upward mobility thanks to greater state intervention in the economy and society (e.g., through free education at state universities.) At a more ideological level, a strong state is deemed essential for promoting the "grand causes" (to use John Waterbury's term18) that Arab intellectuals and a broad section of the Arab public continue to believe in: Arab unity, economic and social development (defined rather differently from how the AHDR defines them), the application of the Sharia (for the Islamists) and the struggle against Israel and Western imperialism. A strong state is needed to promote such causes. When adopting a critical posture towards their regimes, Arab intellectuals are far more likely to complain about the failure of safety nets to protect the poor and unemployed, the emergence of crony capitalism (often blamed on privatization), and the inability or unwillingness of Arab regimes to stand up to the United States and Israel than about the lack of individual freedoms and democracy.

Second, Arab intellectuals are apprehensive about how criticism of economic, social and political conditions in the Arab world (especially when such criticisms come from inside the region) can be used by Western governments and the Western media to discredit Arab states and undermine their achievements in the post-independence period. All the above-cited critics of the AHDR share this concern. There are deep-seated reasons that so many Arab intellectuals (and perhaps the majority of Arab populations) mistrust and even fear the West. This is not the place to discuss these reasons. Nevertheless, one may mention a few related factors: (1) the experience with Western imperialism (even in the guise of the mandate system), (2) the establishment of the state of Israel (with British and U.S. backing)19 and the consistent support it has received from the West, (3) U.S. animosity towards Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser20 (still cherished by many Arab intellectuals), (4) the failure of Arab oil-exporting countries to maintain control over the price of oil beyond a brief period in the 1970s, (5) U.S. naval and military presence in the Persian Gulf area since the early 1980s, and (6) the recent U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Despite their many differences, secular Arab nationalists and Islamists are equally apprehensive about Western intentions towards the region. For them, Western governments are either not really democratic or not interested in promoting democratic governments in the Arab and Muslim worlds for a mixture of economic and strategic reasons. The attack on the AHDR was in part a response to the positive way in which it was received in Western circles and hailed in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian and The Economist.21 For Arab thinkers like Amin, Shafic and Tabbara, the AHDR provided ammunition to the West, and the United States in particular, in its assault on the Arab and Muslim parts of the world. Tabbara, for example, pointed out how anti-Arab authors like Thomas Friedman sought to use the Report to legitimize the U.S. war on Iraq or to discredit the Arab struggle against Israel.22 Maksoud ably answers this charge. He argues that it is the duty of Arab intellectuals to identify the political, economic and social problems that the Arab region is reeling under and to recommend solutions to these problems. It is better for the impetus for reform to come from the inside rather than the outside via Western governments and Western-dominated financial institutions like the World Bank and IMF. Maksoud, Nader Fargany (the lead author of the Report) and the few Arab thinkers who contributed editorials in Arabic newspapers in support of the AHDR were, however, clearly in the minority and on the defensive. If the AHDR was intended to provide an insider's view of the problems of development, freedom and democracy in the Arab World, this view was not shared by the majority of Arab thinkers residing in the region.

THE AHDR, THE WEST AND DEMOCRACY

The AHDR achieved one minimal objective. It succeeded in triggering a debate about the meaning and dimensions of human development, particularly the relationship between democracy and development. The intensity of the criticisms leveled at the Report, however, reveals that a major segment of the Arab intelligentsia has (to be gracious) ambivalent attitudes toward individual liberties, democracy, free access to information and gender equality. Such attitudes are clearly a hindrance to the development of liberal-democratic institutions and practices.

As for the Arab citizens (the ones that the Report was supposed to help), I am doubtful that the Report's authors were able to reach them. The Report did not draw the attention of broad segments of the Arab public. The debate about it, while intense, was over in a few months. Furthermore, the Arab media (including those free of state control) devoted far less attention to the Report than they did to the Palestinian intifada, Iraq and the U.S. anti-terror campaign. It has been more than a year since the Report's appearance (a second AHDR was released in October 2003), and there have been no apparent efforts on the part of Arab governments to implement any of its recommendations, or any pressures from below on Arab governments to do so.

Most Arab citizens seem to worry more about events in Palestine and Iraq, and their own survival under tough and uncertain economic conditions, than they do about democracy, freedoms, Internet access and gender empowerment. Democratic attitudes and practices are not likely to flourish under conditions of political and economic uncertainty and in states and societies that feel besieged by more powerful forces. As The Economist points out, in the Arab world the emphasis is much more on national liberation, as currently represented by the struggle of the Palestinians against Israeli occupation (and perhaps in the struggle of the Iraqis against U.S. occupation) than on individual liberty.23

Neither has U.S. policy, especially in the aftermath of September 11, helped the cause of democracy in the region. As Alan Richards points out:
. . . [T]he main result of the post-9/11 policy shifts has been to ensure that any authoritarian who resolutely pursued violent enemies of the United States could depend upon U.S. support. Such an environment only strengthens hardliners within authoritarian regimes, giving them fewer reasons than before to seek accommodation with opposition elements.24

But it was not just the United States. The West as a whole did not act to promote democracy in the Arab region. In the words of Chris Patten:
Given the support the West has extended to oppressive Arab regimes, it is understandable that all this talk of democratization arouses suspicion on the so-called Arab street. For too long, Western countries have followed the path of expediency in the Middle East, propping up pro-Western strongmen for fear that what might replace them would be substantially worse.25

Patten's views are shared by the great majority of Arab and Muslim thinkers, who are quite dubious about Western claims regarding the promotion of democracy in the Arab and Muslim world. Muqtedar Khan, for instance, writes, "Many [Muslims and Arabs] remain skeptical as well as cynical, since democracy in the Middle East was never in the U.S. interest in the past, and a democratic Middle East may make the pursuit of narrowly conceived U.S. interests in the region more difficult."26

Jordan's foreign minister, Marwan Muashar, warns that U.S. ramblings about "rearranging the region" are weakening the hands of reformers who seek democratic change by making them look like they are "doing America's bidding."27

In conclusion, and despite a few positive signs coming from Jordan, Morocco and the small Gulf states, the prospects for democracy in the Arab region do not seem to be particularly bright. The cause of democracy is hindered by at least three main factors. First, regimes in pivotal Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt are extremely reluctant to democratize out of fear of losing power. For authoritarian and not-so-popular regimes, losing power is tantamount to losing political relevance and even risking the loss of life (or at least property acquired during years in power) for members of the regime and their families.

Second, and as the hostile reactions to the AHDR reveal, the Arab intelligentsia (in both its secular and Islamic wings) has not been won over to the cause of democracy, particularly its liberal variant. To put it succinctly, opinion shapers in the region are not sending clear and consistent messages to the Arab populations in favor of democracy and individual freedoms.

Finally, the whole debate over democracy seems to generate only limited interest in the so-called Arab street. What the struggling Arab masses seem to aspire to is not liberal democracy, but the success of the Palestinians in ridding themselves of Israeli occupation (while making as few concessions as possible to the Jewish state); the restoration of Iraq as a strong, united and independent (but not necessarily democratic) state; the end of U.S. hegemony over the region; and the building of just domestic orders in which the state acquires an Islamic character (by basing its laws on the Islamic Sharia), while reaffirming its role as protector (against external enemies) and provider for the less fortunate.

Finally, the United States and the West, in general, do not seem to be overly troubled by the lack of democracy in the Arab region.28 But, even if they were, given prevailing attitudes about the West (and the United States in particular), it is not likely that Western pressure would aid the cause of democracy. On the contrary, it might backfire.

1 United Nations Development Programme and Arab Human Fund for Economic and Social Development, Arab Human Development Report 2002: Creating Opportunities for Future Generations (New York: United Nations Publication, 2002).
2 In an interview with Al-Hayat (London), Rima Khalaf Huanidi, director of the Arab Regional Bureau of the UNDP, notes that the Report "was written by Arabs for Arabs." United Nations Information Center (UNIC), Beirut. Press Review: Special Issue on UNDP Arab Human Development Report, July 5, 2002.
3 See also the remarks of Rima Khalaf Huaidi, Gulf News, October 29, 2002.
4 Alan Richards, "Modernity and Economic Development," Middle East Policy, Vol. X, No. 3, Fall 2003, p. 67.
5 On how economic freedom can undermine political and civil freedoms, see, in particular, Sylvia Chan, Liberalism, Democracy and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), especially chapter 2, "Decomposing Liberal-democracy," pp. 39-56.
6 For works by academics and policy makers, see mainly Richards and Chris Patten, "How Not To Spread Democracy." Foreign Policy, September/October2003, pp. 40-46.
7 Al-Hayat, October 4, 2002, p. 10.
8 Al-Safir, November 7, 2002, p. 19.
9 Al-Nahar (Beirut), August 16, 2002, p. 13.
10 Al-Safir, December 11, 2002, p. 17.
11 Al-Hayat, November 10, 2002, p. 10.
12 Al-Hayat, December 30, 2002, p. 12.
13 Al-Safir, September 25, 2002, p.7.
14 Al-Safir, January 22, 2003, p. 19.
15 Al-Hayat, November 11, 2002, p.10.
16 Al-Hayat, August 19, 2002, p. 9.
17 See, for example, the views expressed by UCLA Law professor, Khaled Abou El Fadl, and president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Ziad Asali, during their appearance on "Hardball with Chris Mathews" (9:00 PM ET) CNBC, July 2, 2002 (CNBC News Transcripts).
18 Quoted in Richards, p. 69.
19 See, for example, Ussama Makdissi, "Anti-Americanism in the Arab World: An Interpretation of a Brief History," Journal of American History, Vol. 89, Issue 2; online at http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/89.2/makdissi.html.
20 Ibid.
21 See, for example, Barbara Crossette, "Study Warns of Stagnation in Arab Societies," The New York Times, July 2, 2002, p. A11. Karen DeYoung, "Arab Report Cites Development Obstacles; Study Blames Poor Education, Political Repression, Treatment of Women," The Washington Post, July 2, 2002, p. A10; Richard N. Haass, "The Goal Becomes Muslim Democracy; A Priority Shift in Washington," The International Herald Tribune, December 11, 2002, p. 4; "The Arab World Takes a Hard Look at Itself," The Washington Post, July 14, 2002, p. B3; and "Special Report: Arab Development," The Economist, July 6, 2002, pp. 24-28. Critics of the AHDR (such as Riyad Tabbara) pointed in particular to the Special Report in The Economist and to Thomas Friedman's editorials in The New York Times to point out how the AHDR was being exploited by Western media to tarnish the image of the Arabs and of Islam.
22 Thomas Friedman notes that the United States should "make it clear that it was going into Iraq, not just to disarm Iraq but empower Iraq's people to implement the Arab Human Development Report . . . ." The New York Times, October 23, 2002, p. A23. In another editorial, Friedman argues that one should only read the AHDR to "understand the milieu that produced bin Ladensim, and will reproduce it if nothing changes . . . ." The New York Times, July 3, 2002, p. A23. An editorial in The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio) argues that the AHDR shows that the causes of Arab underdevelopment are internal. It goes on to note that Arab governments try to blame their problems on the West and Israel. "Blaming Israel also perpetuates another self-destructive notion…. that Arab problems are caused by outsiders. Destroy or drive them out and all will be right in the Arab world, goes this flawed reasoning." The Columbus Dispatch, August 19, 2002, p. A6. According to another editorial, "If you wonder why Arab states are the way they are, read the Arab Human Development Report," The Dallas Morning News, July 6, 2002. To provide one last example of how the AHDR was used by certain commentators in the United States, Jack Kemp stresses the Report's findings with regard to the "freedoms deficit" to criticize Muslim societies for their treatment of their Christian minorities. He claims: "The Egyptian Christian Copt minority is persecuted by the government, and hundreds have been massacred by Islamist groups since 1988," The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 10, 2002, p. B5.
23 The Economist, July 6, 2002, p. 26. Writing a few months after the AHDR came out, and prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, David Hirst noted: "[In Cairo] the preoccupation with the two things that seem most fateful for the future -- the Israeli-Palestinian struggle and U.S. plans for a possible war against Iraq -- is overwhelming." "One Year on: The Arab Perspective: ‘America wants to wage war on all of us': Regime Change Seen as New Term for Old Enemy," The Guardian, September 6, 2002, p. 4.
24 Richards, p. 70.
25 Patten, p. 43.
26 Muqtedar Khan, "Prospects for Muslim Democracy," Middle East Policy, Vol. X, No. 3, Fall 2003, pp. 79-89.
27 The New York Times, April 26, 2003, p. A19.
28 President George W. Bush, however, made several references to the need to democratize the governments of the region including governments (like Egypt and Saudi Arabia) that have been close U.S. allies. See, for example, President Bush's speech before the National Endowment for Democracy on November 6, 2003. The New York Times, November 7, 2003, pp. A1&16. It remains to be seen whether the administration will combine words with deeds.

Labour Friends of Iraq model motion on Military Action and Falluja

This CLP is alarmed that military action against the terrorists in Falluja and other towns will result in large scale loss of civilian life.

The aerial bombardment of a built-up civilian area will drive ordinary Iraqis towards the men of violence.

We implore the Labour government to exercise all its influence to prevent these casualties and to pursue all political and humanitarian channels to resolve the crisis.

We urge the Labour Government to do all it can to support the UN process that envisages a democratic sovereign Iraq and to support all democratic forces within Iraq, including the newly emerging trade union movement.

This CLP recognises that a flourishing democracy and civil society in Iraq will powerfully undermine the terrorists.

The great liberal betrayal by Nick Cohen - full text

New Statesman
Monday 1st November 2004

The left, in the form of the Stop the War Coalition, has fallen out even with Iraqi comrades who opposed the war. Why? Because those comrades don't see hostage-takers and decapitators as resistance fighters.

The British anti-war movement is falling apart, but for a reason that the most cynical observer of the left in the 20th century could never have imagined. The left, or at least that section of it which always manages to get the whip hand, has swerved to the right - to the far right, in fact - and is actively supporting theocrats and fascists: the oppressors of racial minorities, secularists, women, gays and trade unionists.

It is the last item on this list that has proved too poisonous for the democrats in the Stop the War Coalition to swallow. Mick Rix, former general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers' union, has resigned from the coalition and condemned its "stupid and wild accusations" against Iraqi trade unionists. The public sector union Unison is threatening to sever all links after Subji al-Mashadani of the Iraqi Federation of Workers' Trade Unions (IFTU) was screamed down at the recent European Social Forum. "The people who harassed the IFTU general secretary and prevented the meeting from taking place have no interest in genuine debate or the peaceful, democratic future of the people of Iraq," Unison said.

Pro- and anti-war Labour MPs have signed a Commons motion put down by the (anti-war) Harry Barnes in mid-October, which denounced "a scurrilous statement" that "would strongly imply support for the so-called resistance and thereby acquiesce in the murders of more people such as Ken Bigley, as well as hundreds of ordinary Iraqis". The Stop the War Coalition statement in question reaffirmed its "call for an end to the occupation, the return of all British troops in Iraq to this country" and recognised "once more the legitimacy of the struggle of Iraqis, by whatever means they find necessary, to secure such ends". The organisers of the march through London on 17 October in the name of peace were now supporting the hostage-takers and decapitators, the jihadis and the Ba'athists, in whatever acts of terror they thought necessary to stop elections taking place. You could write a book on the reasons for the left's rightwards charge - now I come to think of it, I have: Pretty Straight Guys, available in all good bookshops - but the point to keep in mind is that the crossing of the line from opposing Bush/Blair to outright support for everything the decent left has stood against has been on the cards since the beginning of the Iraq crisis.

The Stop the War Coalition is dominated by the Socialist Workers Party, the most unscrupulous and unprincipled of the far-left sects. When the SWP takes over a cause, agendas are rigged, meetings are packed, and debate is suffocated. Everyone with experience of the left knows that the SWP is a totalitarian organisation both in theory and in practice, but they rarely say so in public, and nor do the liberal media. Yet the anti-war movement marked a new low, even by the standards of the SWP's grim record. The supposedly Marxist party allied itself with the Muslim Association of Britain, which supports sharia law, with all its difficulties with democracy, women and homosexuals. The unlovely couple then claimed to represent the millions who opposed the war, and those who marched under the slogan "Not in my name" did not go out of their way to contradict them.

Naturally, no criticisms of Saddam Hussein and no alliances with his victims could be permitted. George Galloway, who had saluted the tyrant's "courage, strength and indefatigability", became the movement's leader. Since then, we have had gay rights campaigners being surrounded by howling Trots and radical vicars when they tried to speak up for persecuted Palestinian homosexuals, and the former left-winger Ken Livingstone embracing a far-right Islamic cleric who has supported wife- beating, queer-bashing and the murder of Jewish civilians.

What has been disorientating from the start has been the ease with which the opponents of Saddam's 22 years in power have been forgotten. They were victims of a state that was authentically fascist, to use that abused word correctly for once. It was fascist not only because the founders of the Ba'ath Party were inspired by Nazi Germany, but because Iraq had the classic fascist programme of the worship of the great leader, the unprovoked wars of aggression, the genocidal campaigns against impure ethnic minorities, and the suppression of every autonomous element in society, including free trade unions.

While the blanking out of men and women who shared the liberal left's values was understandable before the war - the good reasons for stopping George Bush and Tony Blair had the regrettable but inevitable effect of crowding out the bad - the persistence of denial afterwards has been inexcusable and truly sinister.

If you think the sell-out is just a local problem confined to a few creeps on the far left who believe that anyone who kills Americans is a freedom fighter, consider the case of the Liberal Democrats. Charles Kennedy managed to get through his entire speech to the Liberal Democrat party conference without once mentioning the liberals and democrats in Iraq who face kidnap or murder for fighting for the rights that he takes for granted. I can't remember a single occasion when the Lib Dems have taken up the cause of Iraqi democracy. Nor is denial simply a British phenomenon. Iraqis trying to cope with a criminally incompetent American occupation, and working under threat of assassination by Saddam's supporters or religious fundamentalists, have looked across the liberal west for support - and met indifference.

For the past two years, we have had the eerie sight of a left without comrades. On the face of it, the left has not been so strong for decades: millions have marched under its banners, Blair has been wounded, perhaps fatally, and the BBC and the liberal papers are onside for the first time that anyone can remember. But if you ask on whose behalf the left is pouring out its heart - for whom is all this left-wing outrage? - no one can produce a single reputable ally. The Kurdish victims of Saddam's genocidal campaigns were all the rage on the left when Iraq was America's de facto partner. But they became an embarrassment long ago when Saddam invaded Kuwait and became America's enemy, and have been unmentionables ever since they committed the unforgivable crime of supporting the overthrow of a tyrant who sought to exterminate them.

The Iraqi Communist Party won't do. It opposed the war, but worked with the Americans once it was over. For a while, a group called the Worker-Communist Party was fashionable. It opposed the war and the occupation. However, the WCP, too, has wised up and decided it wants nothing to do with the British anti-war movement's alliance with the far right. Recently, it dissociated itself from "left groups like the SWP [which] want to see Moqtada al-Sadr winning the current conflict. This stand has nothing to do with the socialist movement."

Precisely. The story of how the Iraqi trade unions have rammed this point home offers to British trade unionists and anti-war Labour MPs a small glimmer of hope amid the murk. At any leftish meeting on Iraq, you are likely to meet the IFTU's Abdullah Muhsin, who tactfully points out that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, being on the left isn't simply a pose. You are meant to stick by your comrades, or at least give them a fair hearing.

Muhsin describes the history of Iraqi unions, how their members were executed or driven underground by Saddam, while "yellow" unions were established to do the regime's bidding. The federation opposed the war and wants the occupation to end as soon as possible, but has earned the hatred of the anti-war movement because it has the cheek to regard the Ba'athists and the Islamists who want to kill them as the greater enemy, and the IFTU is winning round to its point of view those who are serious about left-wing politics. As Muhsin explained at the Labour Party conference: "There are grave security problems in Iraq, but those causing them are not, as some have wrongly said, 'the resistance'. They are . . . a mixture of [Saddam loyalists] and foreign fighters, who have, for the first time in Iraq's history, imported the terrible weapon of the suicide bomb."

Three conclusions can be drawn from the long struggle to get the British left to accept the obvious:

1) The people who can be relied on to make a stand in hard times won't be found in the broadsheet opinion pages or on Radio 4 chat shows, but in the boring and perennially unfashionable labour movement.

2) The democratic left should never again allow itself to be led by the supporters of totalitarianism.

3) No one who considers himself a democrat, liberal or socialist can continue to associate with the Stop the War Coalition

Commons motions on Iraqi trade unions

EDM 1799

TRADE UNIONS IN IRAQ 25.10.04
John Mann

53 signatures

That this House notes that free trade unionism is a key ingredient of a move from totalitarianism to democracy; welcomes the renewal of free trade unionism in Iraq; and calls on the Government to give assistance and priority to the strengthening of this movement.

As an Amendment to John Mann's proposed Motion (TRADE UNIONS IN IRAQ):

EDM 1799A1

TRADE UNIONS IN IRAQ Amdt. line 4: 03.11.04
Jeremy Corbyn

2 signatures

by encouraging the Iraqi government to ensure all public sector employees enjoy full trade union rights in line with International Labour Organisation conventions.

EDM 1799A1A1

TRADE UNIONS IN IRAQ Amdt. line 3: 04.11.04
Mr Harry Barnes

1 signature

Line 3, at end add 'and as campaigned for by the Iraqi Federation of Iraqi Unions.'

Harry Barnes, Jeremy Corbyn and Peter Hain

Taken from Business Questions on 4th November

Mr. Harry Barnes (North-East Derbyshire) (Lab): Has my right hon. Friend seen the fine early-day motion 1799, on trade unions in Iraq, which is in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann)?

[That this House notes that free trade unionism is a key ingredient of a move from totalitarianism to democracy; welcomes the renewal of free trade unionism in Iraq; and calls on the Government to give assistance and priority to the strengthening of this movement.]

An admirable amendment has been included from my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), with whom I do not always see eye to eye on Iraq. The early-day motion asks the Government to help strengthen the trade union movement in Iraq, while the amendment encourages the applying of pressure on the Iraqi Government to ensure that changes in trade union law are made, in order to allow trade unions to be properly organised within the public sector—a move supported by the International Labour Organisation and the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. May we have a debate on this issue?

Mr. Hain: It would be good to air this issue on the Floor of the House. We are determined to support the creation of a democratic Iraq, not just through elections early next year, but through the other instruments of civil society—especially trade unions—that make a democracy vibrant and possible. The Iraqi people and the Government certainly welcome my hon. Friend's championing of that cause.

Diversity of parties and factions begin forging electoral alliances ahead of January vote in Kirkuk.

This report is taken from the Kurdish Democratic Party website from 28 October 2004 (http://www.lastsuperpower.net/arch/newsitems/nov04/elect). Fareed Asseserd, director of the Kurdistan Centre for Strategic Studies in Kirkuk argues that “All the parties realise that the election is the ideal means for solving Iraq’s complicated problems, and that if the election fails it will be everyone’s loss.”

LFIQ does not endorse any political party. We post many views from Iraq in the interests of debate and discussion.

With Iraq’s national elections just over three months away, political groups in the northern city of Kirkuk are already jostling for power – and eying each other up as potential coalition partners.

Kirkuk is as close to a microcosm of the Iraqi political scene as you can get, with its multiplicity of communities, and a range of political parties – ethnic, religious and secular – to match.

It’s also important in its own right, given its position at the centre of an oil-producing area and the claims and counter claims of Kurds, Turkoman and other groups that the city should belong to them.

Last week, the Higher Election Commission, HEC, announced the opening of an electoral centre which will organise and run the election through a network of 23 local offices across Kirkuk governorate.

The Kirkuk centre is one of the electoral management bodies which the HEC is setting up across Iraq to pave the way for the January 31 ballot, intended to elect a national assembly that will draft a constitution to replace the current transitional law.

Subject to a national referendum scheduled for October next year, the country will move forward to a full parliamentary election, in which up to 450 political groups could take part in the first multi-party race for seats in half a century.

In the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, the January election is being seen as a litmus test for their eventual status – in other words, the extent to which the area known as Iraqi Kurdistan will win some kind of autonomy.

Kirkuk lies just outside the Kurdish provinces that won de facto independence in 1991. While Kurds there hope the city and surrounding governorate would be incorporated into any future autonomous entity, local Arabs and Turkoman are against any change in status.

But as the political party scene unfolds, the battle lines are not quite as clear as this suggests.

The two main Kurdish parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party, KDP, led by Massoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, are likely to form an election bloc in Iraq, according to an announcement made by PUK leader Jalal Talabani.

Some analysts are predicting that the PUK-KDP alliance will be expanded to embrace the Iraqi Communist Party as well as various parties representing the Assyrian Christian minority in Kirkuk.

Both the Assyrians and members of the related Chaldean faith would have an interest in joining such an election block as a way of winning representation in the national assembly. There is a precedent for this, since they are already involved in the ruling coalition in the Kurdish governorates of Arbil, Sulaimaniyah and Dahuk.

Countrywide, the Shia – thought to account 60 per cent of Iraq’s population –constitute a powerful electorate. In Kirkuk province the percentage is lower, and consists largely of parts of the Arab and Turkoman communities. The Shia Turkoman are represented by two groups, the Islamic Union of Iraqi Turkomans and al-Wafaa al-Turkomani, both of which have declared they will join the broad alliance of Shia groups that is likely to contest the election across Iraq.

A coalition centring on the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Muslim Clerics’ Board is emerging as the main vehicle for Iraq’s Sunni Arab constituency. There are signs that this coalition will expand to include non-religious political forces of Sunni background. In Kirkuk, for example, the Arab National Bloc and the Arab National Front – which have wide support among Arabs west of Kirkuk – have decided to join the alliance.

Sources within the Sunni coalition say negotiations are now under way with the Turkoman Front, a group whose nationalist views have created tensions in its relationship with Kurdish forces.

Khudeir Ghalib Kahya, who represents the Turkoman Front on the broader Turkoman Council, says the latter, an umbrella group of parties and individuals, is also considering joining the Sunni alliance. Kahya ruled out any Turkoman coalition with the Kurds.

Turkoman politicians appear conscious of the weight they carry in Kirkuk, given the number of votes they can bring to the table. A few weeks ago, the leader of the Turkmen Eli party, Riyadh Sari Kahya, voiced concern at the lack of clarity on the electoral process, and hinted that his group might mount a boycott if this was not resolved.
Those with a more global view of the election take a more positive view, talking about its value in terms of establishing democratic change and getting political rivals to collaborate rather than fight.

Tahseen Kahya, the chairman of Kirkuk governorate’s assembly, and an ethnic Turkoman, said that whatever the result of the vote, it will set a historical precedent for Iraq and open the way to democratic practices.

Fareed Asseserd, director of the Kurdistan Centre for Strategic Studies in Kirkuk, agreed, saying, “Consensus between competing groups will be the most effective principle in the end.

“All the parties realise that the election is the ideal means for solving Iraq’s complicated problems, and that if the election fails it will be everyone’s loss.”