Doug Lorimer
"Today our coalition is working ... with Iraqis and the United Nations to prepare for a transition to full Iraqi sovereignty by the end of June", US President George Bush dishonestly declared in his January 21 State of the Union address to the US Congress. In reality, US officials are working desperately to preserve their plan to install a pro-US puppet government in Iraq by July 1.
Under a November 15 agreement between the US-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority and the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), the CPA is to appoint the members of 18 regional organising committees.
The organising committees then select delegates to form 18 caucuses, which will then select delegates to a transitional national assembly. The assembly is to select an executive and ministers to whom the CPA will formally hand over "full sovereignty" at the end of June.
This scheme, as the January 24 Boston Globe editorialised, would allow the US occupation authorities "to arrange things so that two-thirds of the delegates selected would be US appointees".
The US plan does not provide for popular elections until December 2005 — a year and a half after the phase dubbed "full sovereignty: end to occupation" in the CPA's leaflet outlining the plan.
End to occupation?
The plan's promise of an "end to occupation" by July 1, is just as fraudulent as its promise of "full sovereignty". At a November 16 media conference in Baghdad, CPA head Paul Bremer explained that after June 30, the presence of US troops in Iraq "will change from an occupation to an invited presence" — "invited" by an Iraqi interim government selected by a national assembly stacked with US appointed delegates!
Since the rejection of the US plan by Iraq's most respected Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani (who called for the CPA to hand over power to an Iraqi interim government selected by direct popular vote), there have been repeated mass protests by Iraqis in favour of a popularly elected interim government.
Then, Sistani hinted at a possible compromise. The January 19 New York Times reported it had been told by a Sistani spokesperson that "if the United Nations plays an active role in the election process, that will support and legitimise the assembly" selected through the US-appointed caucuses.
That same day, Bremer met with UN secretary-general Kofi Annan to formally request UN involvement in the "transition" process. Bremer told journalists after the meeting that he hoped "the UN will return to play a role in Iraq, and we hope that happens soon".
Annan had made it clear to Washington that he was willing to play a role in defusing calls for popular elections in Iraq when he told the Security Council on December 16 that "there may not be time to organise free, fair and credible elections" in Iraq before June 30.
After a week of further protests by tens of thousands of Shiites in Baghdad, Basra, Najaf and Karbala in support of popular elections, Washington's hopes of salvaging its scheme to impose an unelected government appeared to be boosted when Sistani issued a decree on January 23 calling for a halt to protests. According to Agence France Presse (AFP), Sistani spokesperson Sheikh Abdel Mahdi al Karbalai said in a sermon in Karbala that Iraqis should "wait until the United States and the UN clarify their positions on the election procedure to choose the nature of the next Iraqi government".
However, Sistani's bid for a compromise with Washington and its UN ally soon fell apart when rival Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr branded the UN of being dishonest and subservient to Washington. AFP reported on January 23 that Sadr, whose base is among the Shiite urban poor, told worshippers in Najaf: "I refuse the participation of the United Nations in supervising elections, because it is not honest and it follows America."
Later that same day, Sistani threatened to bring the predominantly Shiite south of Iraq out in mass protests if Washington did not give in to his demands for popular elections before June 30. In a statement read to thousands of Shiite worshippers during Friday prayers, Sistani said of the US plan: "It is illegitimate because that decision took place between the coalition forces and the Governing Council, and it is an unelected body... The coalition forces are afraid to have direct elections because maybe someone will be in power that they don't agree with."
The January 24 London Daily Telegraph reported that Sheikh Akram Abu Mustafa, speaking for Sistani, said: "It doesn't matter whether the UN is here or not. Seyed Sistani has made up his mind that he wants elections."
Sunni council rejects US plan
The next day, the influential Council of Sunnis declared its opposition to the US plan and called for "free elections", which it said were impossible as long as Iraq was occupied by US troops. The council, formed last month, comprises around 160 Sunni clerics.
Sabah al Qaisi, one of the founders of the Sunni council, told the British Guardian newspaper that Sunni Muslims would not participate in any elections organised by the US-led authority. "Elections under occupation are not the correct way to do it. We want the Americans to leave and then we will hold elections", said Qaisi, a cleric who spent two years and three months in jail under Saddam Hussein.
So unpopular is the US plan that even Washington's favourite to head its planned Iraqi puppet regime — convicted bank embezzler and IGC member Ahmad Chalabi — has been forced to take his distance from it. United Press International reported on January 23 that Chalabi told a meeting at the American Enterprise Institute, a pro-neocon Washington think-tank, that the US plan for creating an interim government was "not an easy concept to reconcile with democracy". Chalabi said he believed an internal report by UN experts written in August confirmed it would take six months to set up nation-wide Iraqi elections.
According to the January 27 Washington Post, US officials have begun to privately consider holding "partial elections or transferring authority to an enlarged Iraqi Governing Council". It reported that "US and Iraqi officials hope that Annan will explore those or other options with Sistani and others who oppose the US plan".
These "other options", however, do not include full-fledged elections. According to the Post, "Annan is facing mounting pressure from the United States and Iraqi leaders to produce an alternative to full-fledged elections that all sides can support".
Commenting in the January 28 Christian Science Monitor on Annan's willingness to have the UN help Washington salvage its plan to install a pro-US government in Iraq, former UN assistant secretary-general John Hughes noted that it is motivated by the UN bureaucracy's desire to "re-establish itself as a force in international diplomacy".
Chirac approves UN mission
The UN can only play this role if there are no major difference in policy between the permanent members of the Security Council — the US, Britain, China, France and Russia. It was not surprising then that prior to his January 27 announcement that the UN would play a role in the "political transition" in Iraq, Annan met with French President Jacques Chirac.
The French government had led opposition in the Security Council to the US invasion of Iraq. In retaliation, Washington had banned French companies from bidding for Iraqi reconstruction contracts. The ban had been announced on December 5 by US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
In his meeting with Annan, Chirac clearly gave his approval for the UN to try to salvage Washington's plans to form an interim government without fully fledged elections.
Speaking to reporters at the Elysee Palace after a "working lunch" with Chirac, Annan noted "there is a certain impasse on the ground in Iraq today" and said he had agreed to the formal request made by Bremer on January 19 for the UN to play a role in creating an Iraqi interim government.
Following Annan's announcement, John Negroponte, the US ambassador to the UN, said: "Today's announcement is a positive development and part of the process on the part of the secretary general and the United Nations to re-engage itself in Iraq. Clearly the United Nations can play a role in the unfolding political process in Iraq."
Reporting on the Chirac-Annan lunch-time meeting, the January 28 New York Times observed that "Chirac would be willing for France to play a larger role in Iraq under the cover of the United Nations". Reuters news agency reported on January 27 that Chirac "has left the door open to sending troops" to Iraq "once the US occupying power hands sovereignty back to Iraqis on July 1".
While Annan was meeting with Chirac, US undersecretary for international trade Grant Aldonas was in Paris meeting with French trade minister Francois Loos. Later that day, Aldonas announced that French companies could bid for a second round of reconstruction contracts in Iraq and that they could serve as subcontractors to the US corporations that have been given the first round of contracts.
Meanwhile, in Iraq that day, resistance fighters killed six US soldiers. This took the total number of US troops killed in Iraq to 519, with most of the deaths — 379 — having occurred since Bush declared on May 1 that major combat operations had ended.
The overall average rate of US fatalities in Iraq was 1.5 per day for May 1 through to Saddam Hussein's capture on December 13. Since then the rate has increased to 1.8 per day.
From Green Left Weekly, February 4, 2004.
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