Election Date is Good News?

US President Barack Obama, seen here with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki near Baghdad in April, has congratulated Iraqi MPs for approving a new law to govern 2010 general elections, saying it was an important step towards ensuring a lasting peace. (AFP/File/Mandel Ngan)

Yesterday, I was taken back by LongWarJournal's cheerleading for Iraqi elections and the backhanded slap of Tom Ricks. Calling it a great success when a government sets a date for an election is akin to congratulating your neighbor for not wetting his pants. It is a basic function of government therefore it is not good or bad news, just neutral. In the wake of the 2005 election, the Samarra mosque was attacked resulting in the sectarian civil war while the Iraqi government was still forming. Understanding bias and viewing the full context is critical.

The U.S. has many reasons to consider this good news. Just like packing for a family road trip, the U.S. has a checklist of items to complete before hitting the road. The potential downsides appear to be glanced over. Elections simply destabilize a fragile government. Last cycle took five months for the government to finally form. Security is degrading across the country as we have discussed here, here, here, here, here, and here.

From 2003 to 2006, the U.S. strategy for Iraq was to hold democratic elections and pass security over to the Iraqi forces once the U.S. trained them. Let's look at a comparison of headlines from 2006 and today.


2006

Sectarian Bloodshed Reveals Strength of Iraq Militias
Shiite leaders' denunciations of Mr. Khalilzad, who hinted Monday that Americans might not pay for security forces run by sectarian interests, made it clear that positions had hardened. "We have decided to incorporate militias into the Iraqi security forces, and we are serious about this decision," Hadi al-Amari, the head of the Badr Organization, a thousands-strong Shiite militia, said in a telephone interview. Since the Shiites took control of the Interior Ministry last spring, Badr members have swelled the ranks of the police.


Militias roil Baghdad streets
At a recent press conference, US military spokesman Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said that infiltration of the police by Shiite militias was a problem the US military was working to solve by placing an increased number of US troops with Iraqi police units, as the military has done with the Iraqi Army.

"There is that concern on the part of some Iraqis that if you don't have American forces, these forces are going to do the wrong thing," Lynch said. "There are indeed some displaced loyalties. We're going to work through that in the course of the next year, increasing our police transition teams, putting US soldiers with local police stations, district police stations, increasing our number of police trainers focusing on that issue."

2009

Iraqi Official Says Security Forces May Have Colluded in Bombings
Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said Saturday that the coordinated attack that killed more than 100 people, including dozens of his employees, in Baghdad on Wednesday may have been carried out with the complicity of Iraqi security forces.

During a strikingly blunt news conference at the severely damaged Foreign Ministry, Zebari, a Kurd, accused Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government of hubris in talking up its ability to protect citizens.


In Iraq, battling an internal bane
After helping to stanch a stubborn insurgency and harrowing sectarian fighting, security forces in Baghdad now worry they could face a challenge no less difficult: their own men.

A recent spate of high-profile crimes, including a brazen and violent robbery of Baghdad jewelry shops thought to have involved police collusion, has forced Interior Ministry officials to confront head-on the corruption within the ranks of the 663,000-strong security forces.

Obviously we are in a different setting today but a few things remain clear; the Iraqis are struggling with a tempered insurgency and there is a lack of trust in the Iraqi forces.

For the debate over elections from the Al Jazeera perspective, see below.