The Elections in Iraq: Juan Cole

Interviewed by Eric Black
The Star Tribune

Sunday 11 December 2005

Juan Cole is a professor of modern Mideast history at the University of Michigan, an expert on Shiism and jihadism, and a prolific writer and commentator on Iraq. His blog, "Informed Comment"specializes among other things in giving English language readers access to how events in Iraq are being reported in the Arabic language media.

What He Thought Before the War:

He believed Saddam could be legally removed by the UN under its convention against genocide, but when the U.S. invaded without UN authorization, he considered it an illegal war.
The signficance of the Dec. 15 election:

It's a pretty significant event. It will determine the shape of the Iraqi govt for the next four years. That's important because after several temporary leaders, Iraq might have a prime minister who will have time to actually grow into the job.

The election will settle some important questions that are in the air right now about the future direction of Iraq. For example, was the big victory in January by the Shiite religious parties the product of a particular momentary political configuration that has passed? If the Shia list has big decline from January, it would indicate that. If they win again, it will tell us that this is really where the majority of Iraqis' heads are at.

How He Expects the Election to Come Out:

My own best guess is that the UIA (the Shiite religious coalition) will do very well. And the hopes I'm hearing from others that the secular tickets will do better than before will not work out. If you just look at the number of seats allocated to the eight southern provinces, where the UIA will get almost all of the seats, they'll be well on their way. And the UIA will also get a reasonable share of the seats from the Baghdad province.

The Ayad Allawi ticket [Iraqi National List] is the one people are hoping will demonstrate a big surge in secular support. I'm skeptical. Allawi gets all his votes from the educated middle classes of Baghdad and Basra. Those are the kind of people that talk to Western journalists, which probably makes them look more numerous than they are.

The real problem with Allawi in a lot of voters' eyes is that he represents the ex-Baathists. He was a Baath Party member himself and he's running partly against the de-Baathification laws.

In Janury, Allawi got 14 percent of the vote. And that was when he was the sitting prime minister and he was on TV all the time as the prime minister. Could he improve up to 20 percent of the vote this week? It's possible, but I doubt it. He could actually do worse than last time because he no longer has the advantages of incumbency.

Everyone is talking about a big Sunni turnout. But there are still Baathists in the Sunni areas trying to make trouble for people who are participating in the election So the Sunni turnout will obviously be much bigger than in January, but I expect it will still be lower than the turnout among Kurds and Shiites.

The Kurds I expect will come down from the 75 seats they have now. They got more seats last time because of the Sunni boycott and because the votes were counted on a nationwide basis. This time, most of the seats are apportioned by province and the Kurds don't really get any votes outside of the northern provinces and the area around Kirkuk.

So I think the UIA has a reasonable shot at coming out with an absolute majority on its own. If they miss that, I don't think it will be by much. I'm thinking that the Kurds will come down about 20 seats and the Sunni tickets will get most of those and Allawi will do about the same as he did last time.

The Kind of Government You Might Get from an Outcome Like That:

One possibility is that the Shia religious parties and the Sunni religious parties will form a pan-Islamic coalition. The Kurds wouldn't be happy about that but a coalition like that would have a chance of dealing with the guerrilla movement and bring them in from the cold.

Since the Kurds are the group most friendly to the United States, a coalition like that would very critical of the United States. And since it would be dominated by the Shiite parties, it will have warm relations with Tehran.

Any way you cut it, the new government is going to want to negotiate a significant reduction in American troop presence and influence. Moqtada al-Sadr, who has always demanded a quick withdrawal of the U.S. troops, will have 30 of his people on the UIA slate. There are a lot of rumors that Ayatollah Sistani will issue a fatwa demanding a strict timetable, and that would have a big effect.

The Best- and Worst-Case Scenarios for the US

Some people in the Bush administration wanted this to end with a friendly government in Baghdad that would welcome or tolerate long-term U.S. military bases. It's clear they're not going to get that.

The best they can hope for now is a weak parliamentary government, with a strong Islamist tinge to it that might have some people in it who are U.S. clients and will listen to some kind of special pleadings for U.S. interests in matters of oil and construction contracts.

The worst-case scenario is much more frightening.Under most scenarios, the insurgency goes on, perhaps for 10 more years. If the Americans aren't very careful about how they leave, we could end up with a hot civil war that could turn into a regional war. If it is an all-out war between Shia and Sunni you could have Iran coming in on one side and Saudi Arabia on the other. You have guys involved here who have already pioneered oil pipeline sabotage as a tool of guerrilla war. So that scenario would put 20 percent of the world's petroleum production at risk of being taken off the market.