Iraqis are no fools....Shiites IMPATIENT for Vote in Iraq.

[LittleApple81]

Shiites Impatient For Vote in Iraq
Mistrust Greets New U.S. Plan
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 17, 2003; Page A01

BASRA, Iraq, Nov. 16 -- With a wispy beard and a gait weakened by age, Mohammed Baqir Nasseri, an influential cleric in Shiite-dominated southern Iraq, has lived the life of an enemy of Saddam Hussein. With other Shiite Muslim clerics, he was driven into exile in 1979 and wandered in Iraq's diaspora. Soon after, the turquoise-tiled Ahl Beit mosque he built was seized. His death sentence was commuted only by Hussein's fall as president.
But Nasseri's message today looks forward, rather than back.
"I believe absolutely in democracy," he said, sitting next to bookcases filled with volumes on jurisprudence, law and history. "Why are running away from elections? The people have a hunger for democracy, for the person who will represent them."
Nasseri's displeasure results from a decision announced this weekend by the United States and its allies to grant independence to a provisional but unelected government by next summer. Under the plan, elections for a constitutional convention will follow in March 2005 and a permanent government will follow by the end of that year.

snip...

"This maneuvering is an old practice of the Americans," said Aws Khafaji, the leader of a group in Nasiriyah loyal to Moqtada Sadr, a young cleric who enjoys support among poor Shiites in Baghdad, Basra, Amarah and Nasiriyah. "We should decide by the choice of the people. We should not decide by the choice of the Americans."
"America is the devil, and Islam has told us not to trust the devil," he added.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50007-2003Nov16?language=printer

[Gloria]

1. Related article--the politics of the Council, Shiites, and civil war....

From the current World Media Watch....

1//The Sydney Morning Herald November 19, 2003

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/18/1069027122315.html



US EXIT MAY LEAD TO IRAQI CIVIL WAR

The death toll on both sides is rising but Paul McGeough warns that George Bush's push to withdraw troops threatens to tear the country apart.



(SNIP)


All that sounds like the civil war Washington said would never happen during the fierce international debate that preceded its invasion of Iraq in March this year.



The Sunnis are already stirring the pot, claiming the Shiites want to impose an Iranian-style theocracy, and the Kurds are wary they might be caught by these two in a pincer grip.



The question now is to what the extent the US will be able to control the process if it surrenders power to a provisional government, changing its own status from that of all-powerful occupation force to mere invited guest.



(SNIP)



As the insurgency ran amok, Bremer last week realised he had crashed into the brick wall of Iraqi politicking. Try as he might, he could not get the Iraqi Governing Council, hand-picked by Washington, to complete the simple task of appointing a panel to draft a national constitution.



The Shiites, a 60-plus per cent majority in Iraq, had dug in their heels, insisting that membership of the panel should be by election. Needless to say, they knew they had the numbers.



The American collapse was a staggering win for the Shiites, whose most revered leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has remained aloof from the political squabbling - with the powerful exception of a fatwah in which he decreed that the membership of any constitutional convention must be by popular election.


It seems that many of us who rated the exile-dominated council as ineffectual misjudged it - what was seen as an inability to transact any business now seems to have been a stubborn refusal, which has forced Bush and Bremer deeper into the dangerous "don't know" territory that has bedevilled their Iraq adventure.



(MORE)

[xJlM]

2. Wait 'till they learn about American elections

What is the point in voting when your vote doesn't count anyway?