Doug Lorimer
The final outcome of Iraq's December 15 parliamentary election was announced by the country's electoral commission on January 20. The United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of Shiite religious parties that dominates the current US-installed Iraqi government, fell 10 seats short of gaining a majority in the 275-member assembly. In the interim assembly elected in January 2005 the UIA had 148 seats. As it did then, the UIA promised to demand a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
Sunni Muslims largely boycotted the January election, but they turned out in large numbers for the December 15 election. The Sunnis make up about one-third of Iraq's population and are the main social base of the armed insurgency against the US-led foreign occupation forces.
With the main Iraqi resistance groups encouraging Sunnis to vote, turnout for the ballot was particularly high in many of the key centres of armed resistance activity to the US occupation. The December 17 London Financial Times reported a 90% turnout in Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's western Anbar province and an Iraqi guerrilla stronghold where only 2% of voters turned out for previous ballots organised by the US-imposed, Shiite-dominated, Iraqi government.
Reuters reported on December 15 that exit polls it conducted that day "suggested the Anbar vote was split" between the Sunni-led Iraqi Accordance Front and "Saleh al Mutlak's secular Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, which has strong Baathist links".
Despite the large turnout by Sunnis, Sunni-based parties will only have one-fifth of the seats in the new parliament, roughly the same number as the two pro-US Kurdish parties that are part of the current UIA-dominated government.
There were widespread complaints by both Sunni-based and secular Shiite parties of ballot-stuffing by the Shiite religious parties, including by electoral commission officials linked to these parties.
The December 19 London Guardian reported that secular Shiite parties also "accused the Shia religious bloc, which dominates the current government, of intimidating voters in Baghdad and many southern cities". One secular Shiite candidate and several campaign workers were murdered on the eve of the elections.
"Complaints from the cities of Dohuk and Kirkuk against the two large Kurdish parties are also said to be numerous", the Guardian reported.
The December 17 Financial Times reported that a Western diplomat said he had heard reports of "irregularities" throughout the country, including "armed gangs or militias affiliated with parties blocking people from voting, or themselves going and voting multiple times".
There was a widespread suspicion among Sunnis that the election was rigged to boost the vote for the UIA and its Kurdish allies. This was confirmed when the Shiite-dominated Iraqi Supreme Court decided on December 23 to disqualify up to 90 Sunni candidates on the grounds that they had past links to the Baath Party.
Reflecting the sentiments of most Sunnis, Alaa Adel, a 32-year-old guard at a Sunni mosque in Baghdad, told the Inter Press Service on December 31: "I did not believe the election would make the situation in Iraq better, because we are under occupation. I'm sure only real resistance will force the occupation forces to end their occupation."
The new Iraqi government, like the previous one, will be dominated by an alliance of the UIA and these two Kurdish parties. Associated Press observed in a December 16 report that in "the eight months since the interim government took office, many of the country's troubles have deepened — Shiite-Sunni tensions are worse, talk of Iraq breaking up along religious and ethnic lines has caught on, the Sunni-led insurgency shows no signs of abating".
The day after the election, the interim government announced sharp rises in fuel prices, sparking widespread protests. The December 18 Washington Post reported that "the Iraqi government announced Sunday that heavily subsidized fuel prices would rise dramatically, effective immediately ...
"Despite possessing one of the world's largest known oil reserves, Iraq imports about [US]$500 million a month in fuel, including gasoline, because its refinery infrastructure is out-dated and in disrepair.
"The increases announced Sunday raise the price of regular gasoline from the equivalent of less than 5 cents a gallon to just under 40 cents."
According to Baghdad press reports, oil export revenues are still not sufficient to cover the Iraqi state budget. The government is forced to take loans from international banks to cover its running expenses. Daily output of approximately 1.3 million barrels remains far below Iraq's pre-invasion production level of 2.5 million barrels.
The announcement of the eight-fold increase in fuel prices coincided with a visit to Baghdad by US Vice-President Dick Cheney, whose Halliburton oil company has received US$2.2 billion in contracts to repair and modernise Iraq's oil industry infrastructure.
The January 4 Washington Post reported that "US pilots targeting a house where they believed insurgents had taken shelter killed a family of 12, Iraqi officials said ... The dead included women and children whose bodies were recovered in the nightclothes and blankets in which they had apparently been sleeping."
This atrocity is just one of many resulting from Washington's escalating use of air strikes as US President George Bush tries to convince US voters that Washington is making rapid progress in replacing US ground troops with its puppet Iraqi security forces.
Associated Press reported on December 19 that the number of US air strikes had increased "from a monthly average of about 35 last summer to more than 60 in September and 120 or more in October and November" and was expected to reach 150 in December.
On November 30 at the US Naval Academy, Bush made the first of a series of year-end speeches promoting the Pentagon's glossy new booklet, National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.
While declaring that Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror", Bush admitted, for the first time, that "by far the largest group" making up the forces fighting against the US military forces in Iraq were "ordinary Iraqis, mostly Sunni Arabs" and that the al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists were the smallest of the groups fighting the US military in Iraq.
The central element of the US strategy in Iraq, Bush claimed, was the "Iraqisation" of the war — creating a puppet Iraqi army that could replace the US military in fighting the patriotic Iraqi resistance.
"At this time last year, there were only a handful of Iraqi battalions ready for combat", Bush said. "Now, there are over 120 Iraqi Army and police combat battalions in the fight against the terrorists." Yet Bush was forced to acknowledge that "only one Iraqi battalion has achieved complete independence from the coalition". This fact was revealed in testimony by General George Casey, the commander of US forces in Iraq, to a congressional hearing on September 29.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, January 25, 2006.
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