Abbas Kadhim examines the tortuous contours of the Iraqi political map in 2004 Any assessment of the events that took place in Iraq during the past year must consider a combination of three themes: incompetence, corruption and scandals. Together, they sketch a grim image for one of the worst imperialist adventure in recent history. It all began with a group of American politicians whose knowledge about the Middle East is next to nothing, with the possible exceptions of their skewed perceptions about the Arab-Israeli conflict and the more accurate data about the region's oil production. This group of neo-conservatives, as they are called in the current debate, spent their life-time engaged in the dynamics of the Cold War, which provided them with an intellectual raison d'être. When that war was over, thanks to the inherent bankruptcy of Communism, they began, with great panic, looking for a new convenient target for their cynical world-view. It took them a heart beat to figure out that Islam is the one choice everyone can live with. What remained were an opportunity and a rationale. The election of the easily manipulable George W Bush for the American presidency in November 2000 provided the opportunity and, 10 months later, a group of ignorant terrorists air-delivered the rational to Washington and New York. The magnitude of the crime and the world's despise for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, a sentiment shared even by the vast majority of Muslims, paved the smoothest road to Kabul. America had the cooperation of allies and foes alike. This amount of good will excited the insatiable appetite of the neo-conservatives to embark on their original ploy for the Middle East, even as the real enemies of America were still grouping in the mountains of Tora Bora. Afghanistan was not central enough to achieve the desired results. Iraq was the ideal place to start. It was on their radar since the first Gulf War and it appeared that no one would shed a tear over the toppling of the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. The domino effect was supposed to start from Baghdad and radiate in all directions. When a grand scheme of deception failed to earn the military campaign a minimal international approval, the decision was taken to make the end justify the means. When the international community will see the stockpiles of WMD's and millions of Iraqis take the streets to cheer the liberators, the whole world will see the light. While the military phase to conquer Iraq went better than the neo-conservatives' sweetest dreams, everything thereafter was worse than their worst nightmares. To begin with, there were no WMD's, the one thing that would have been the silver bullet for any international criticism. To make things worse, Iraqis failed to show "gratefulness" for the destruction of their country and the Mongol-style burning of their national heritage, in spite of their relief that Saddam was overthrown. What a shocking discovery for an arrogant power! On 1 May 2003, and instead of admitting any mistakes, United States President Bush orchestrated a media circus on a military ship and declared Iraq "mission accomplished". The seeds of failure throughout 2004, were sown in the second half of 2003. Under tremendous pressure from a hostile population and international criticism, the Bush administration placed the destiny of Iraq in the hands of the neo-conservatives and the civil administrator, Paul Bremer, whose appointment was a terrible mistake. Bremer knew nothing about Iraq's politics, history, culture, or language. For all practical purposes, his name might as well have been pulled out of a hat; and so were his policies throughout the time he spent in Iraq. He hired and fired people on whim, and did the same whenever he picked his fights. One can only cite his decisions to dismantle the three largest institutions in Iraq -- the ministries of defence, interior and information -- driving millions of Iraqis into unemployment; and his misguided provocation of the loyalists of Moqtada Al-Sadr, which caused the Shia majority to be engaged into a manifest armed resistance after months of relative quietism. Another manifestation of incompetence was the appointment of questionable Iraqi politicians with minimal grassroots support and the exclusion of strong segments of the population solely because they were not clearly identified and sorted out on the basis of their politics. The result was a governing council that possessed no legitimacy and no respect outside the walls of the building where it convened, a group of puppets who failed to deliver any meaningful results on the most important issues: security, services and political independence. Well into 2004, and before its term was about to expire, the Governing Council became a liability even on its American patrons. Corruption and nepotism were to be smelled from continents away and the only document they produced, the transitional administrative law (TAL) was proven to be a catastrophic failure even as we speak. It was clear that a replacement must be made to rectify the lack of legitimacy and end the de jure cause of criticism, the occupation. While this political charade was in progress, a sinister policy was taking place in the dark rooms of prisons all over Iraq. Those who ran the occupation, for some Machiavellian motives, had already ran the prison system in a fashion that made Saddam's torturers look like a bunch of amateurs. They raped, tortured and murdered and they were so proud of it that they even made pictures and films and sent them back home. Equally obnoxious was the reaction of top officials in Washington. While the decent world was in rage, Secretary Rumsfeld was splitting words about the "legal" terms of torture and abuse, while the president was saying sorry to the king of Jordan, rather than apologising to the real victims, the Iraqi people. More outright callousness was rampant elsewhere in the US, including among people like Republican Senator James Inhofe, who said during a Senate hearing on the matter: "I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment." The Abu Ghraib scandal and the reluctance to faithfully pursue its roots remains to be an embarrassment for the US and its armed forces. The next political phase was sold to the world as a transformation of Iraq from an occupied country to a sovereign state with a national government. On 28 June 2004, a concoction of politicians was recycled from the disbanded Governing Council and some auxiliaries were added in order to satisfy some ethnic and sectarian equations. The UN was very quick to rubber-stamp the deal and, with a stroke of a pen, this incoherent collection of political opportunists was declared the "sovereign" government of Iraq. To complete the picture, a process began to come up with a legislative body. After a lot of grand rhetoric about democracy and transparency, a group of people were shoved into a large room and were given one list of 81 persons, drafted by the government, to ratify as the National Assembly. In addition to the people in the list, 19 politicians were recycled again from the Governing Council and installed in the assembly. All of this was going on, while Najaf, the most sacred Shia city, was suffering a military offensive and the rest of Iraq was in total anarchy. Until now, there is no viable judiciary in Iraq. The de jure post-occupation Iraq remains a de facto occupied country. Being appointed by the occupation, Iyad Allawi and his government are by definition an illegitimate political entity. Their only chance to gain some sense of legitimacy was by decent governance: providing security and services. So far, the government of Allawi did nothing more than providing cover for military assaults on various Iraqi cities -- Najaf, Karbala, Samaraa, Falluja and Mosul, to name a few -- while the country is still in chaos and Iraqis lack the basic necessities of living amid reports of projected lack of food in the coming weeks. Financial and administrative corruption remain to be the only things this government is good at. The story of Iraq in the past year is boiling down to the issue of the upcoming elections. So much ink has been wasted on the importance of the elections for the future of Iraq. However, a great deal remains to be said about the backlash that is most likely to occur. The optimists cling to the theory and completely neglect the facts on the ground. There is no question about the importance of elections and the submission to the will of the people. It is terribly important that it should be done the right way. It is a fantasy to count on an election held under the occupation, without impartial monitoring and in the face of a partial boycott and the threats of relentless insurgencies. In such circumstances, legitimacy will be in the eyes of the beholder. The story in exile is not nice either. The election commission just decided to waste $92 million to have the IOM facilitate the participation of Iraqis abroad in the elections. For most Iraqis abroad, in order to participate one has to fly twice to a distant location: once to register and another time to actually vote, which makes convincing the people of Falluja to vote much easier. It is no wonder that the IOM anticipates to help only about one-fifth of the Iraqis abroad in this process. Not only the upcoming elections may fail to be the solution, indeed they are likely to be a new milestone on this bumpy road to a coerced democracy.
