Members of the Iraqi Parliament are not directly elected by the whole of society *our aim acy make havoid but effectively appointed by the leaders of militia groups. They have no
independent role and have to act as they are told by the party that appointed them. Bestun Baban Last year there was a lot of noise in both Kurdistan and Iraq about making Iraq a democracy. The Anfal(1), the mass graves and all the people who died were used as powerlul symbols to mouvate lne electorate to go and vote tor the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Kurdish Democratic Party of Irag (KDP) Iraqi Kurdistan.
Did this propaganda have a genuine motivation or was it in the interests of some particular group?
Democracy comes to life as a result of the development of capitalism and it defends the interests and ideology of the system. Capitalism needs the free market, and the free market needs political freedom to be able to operate.
This system we call democracy has only succeeded within societies which have reached a certain stage of political, social and economic development.
What is going on today in Iraq is not an organic process of a developing society, but is a part of the attack carried out by the USA and multinational companies in the name of democracy to provide bigger markets and to detend their interests.
When George Bush said a democracy" that meant the opened to their products.
lo put it another way. democracy is effectively a gun in the hands of America and its allies which it uses whenever a country does not accept their conditions.
The most dictatorial leadership will be described as a democracy if it's in America's interests. The opposite is also true: a progressive leadership will be described as dictatorial if it's against America's interests. 1) The Anfal is the campaign of genocide waged against the Kurds, at the centre of which was the Halabja massacre in 1988.
So is democracy possible in today's Iraq?
The country has a semifeudal social structure. Even now most people in the cities are still known by the name of their tribe. The village was always stronger than the city and the tribe always had a big role in managing the country.
On the other hand, the Iraqi bourgeois class never stood on lls own leel as a united class took the process of development into their own hands.
Although the market has made some progress under the pressure of world capitalism, the feudal structure is an obstacle to its development. As Marx said when speaking of the problems caused by survivals from earlier historical periods: "We suffer not only from the living but from the dead".
The Iraqi economy is not strong. It is dominated by agriculture and the capitalists are mostly involved in three types of activity: in trade, in non-productive acuivilies based on their positions as Iraqi soldiers and victim on the Syrian border tribal leaders, including landownership; or in leadership positions the state.
Now as a result of years of internal and external war, and the sanctions on Iraq, the economy has been destroyed to une polnt wacie ll can l form the basis for building a democracy at least in the near future.
Members of the Iraqi Parliament are not directly elected by the whole of society but effectively appointed by the leaders of militia groups. They have no independent role and have to act as they are told by the party that appointed them.
If they do anything different they will be sacked. Recently, the PUK sacked Fatah Zakholy, who was the culture minister, as well as his wife, a manager, just because they didn't vote for the Iraqi Constitution in the referendum.
Parliament and the government are appointed behind the scenes by Barzani and Talabani, and by Sadr and Sistani in the south. No Parliamentary or governmental decisions can be implemented without their dictual.
During the voting on the Iraqi Constitution, the BBC reported the numbers voting in Kurdistan was between 33% and 66%, but during the later declaration OTI the results. a turnout was declared of over 90%!
And in the last election there was clear fraud: the doors of some polling stations were closed in the middle of the day while at others they used bleach to clean the ink from people's fingers to let Loen vole over and over again.
This is why thirty-five groups who took part in the elections registered protests at the results and demonstrated in Baghdad calling for the election to be rerun.
The most important thing is that the ruling parties do not believe in operating democratically. What kind of democracy lets Masoud Barzani inherit power from his father, and will let him leave it to another member of his family when he dies?
In the south of Iraq, Sadr and Sistani force themselves on society in the same way; from the beginning they were against any kind of freedom, and their main aim is to establish a religious society. There is a lot of concern amongst Iraqi women about how their lives will be in under this sort of rule.
At present South Iraq is being turned into another Iran. How can those people other people in a democratic way? However they voted, the people of Iraq and Kurdistan will not be able to change anythose parties, because they are always there.
From the political point of view, what is going on today
in Iraq is just a game to cover
up what is really going on and
to give legitimacy to the occupation. After they found no
weapons of mass destruction.
the main justification given
for the invasion, the
Americans had to find some
excuse for their prescence.
That excuse was, to make
Iraq a democracy. In this way
they tried to divert people's
attention trom the lack of
weapons of mass destruction.
At first they tried to rule
Iraq directly and put a limit
on the role of Iraqi parties.
That is why they appointed
Paul Bremer as ruler of Iraq in
the beginning, but after the
Arab Sunnis started what will
be a very long war against
them, they gave back that
power to the Iraqi people, in
name only.
They did this for two reasons: tirst. to put the responsibility for the killing in Iraq
on the shoulders of the Iraqi
people themselves, and secondly, to make the Iraqis kill
each other, rather than have it
all done by American soldiers.
This policy is not new in
Iraq. As Sir A. Cadogan from the Foreign Office said in 1944, British tactics were to: "achieve our aims by the use of influence rather than the direct exercise of authority", or put another way, "they had to exercise their control indirectly and lull the Iraqis into a fictitious sense of independence."
This approach is still being applied today, as the Iraqi make Iraq a democracy and politicians don't make indebelieve in living together with pendent decisions. They act as staff for the Americans, and implement their policies. The Iraqi government acts as an intermediary between Iraqi thing about the power of societyand the occupiers. The
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government has no political Ireeaom or autonomy.
The Americans first need is to be able to take the petrol and other natural resources to make Iraq their strategic militarv base in the area.
In addition the new leaders of Iraq have started robbing and pillaging on a scale never seen before in the history of this coully. lhe monev given them by the Americans is not going to the ministries to be used for the benefit of the Iraqi people but into the pockets of the parties.
The leaders have started buying up ordinary people's property, which has driven up prices, including DIODCILY prices. If this goes on it will be difficult for ordinary Iraqis to survive
After fifteen years of rule by the Kurdish parties in the north, and two years of rule in the south of Iraq by the Shia, the Iraqi people still don't have access to the basic necessities of life such as water, electricity and petrol. from jobs, On December 6, the KDP misery for Afghan seeker Jahangir Khan Abdul Wahab Noori volunteered to return to Afghanistan after three years as an asylum seeker in Britain.
He assumed that his life was no longer in danger, but when he returned he was attacked by Taliban members. Abdul was encouraged to return by the British government, who claimed that Afghanistan was now a safe country to return to.
Once again, he had to leave