Iraq’s Election Bans and the Scourge of Sectarian Politics

Posted: Monday, February 1, 2010
Author: Sarah Khederian

A January 14 decision by the Iraqi Supreme National Commission for Accountability and Justice to outlaw 511 Iraqi politicians with former Baathist ties has spurred outrage on both the streets of Baghdad and the corridors of the White House. Many reports on the recent Iraqi ban emphasize that more than 500 Sunni politicians have been disqualified from the electoral process, though the actual figures show that the majority of the people banned are Shiite, signifying a resurgence of the sectarian politics which characterized and devastated post-invasion Iraq. The Sunni outcry signifies the extent to which Sunnis feel disenfranchised and put out by Shiite politics while those who believe in a post-Saddam Baathist party are seeing their political voice disappear. An op-ed in the New York Times by Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon even labeled the prohibitive order a “Ban on Democracy” which not only threatens the short-term future of Iraq’s democracy for its upcoming March 7 parliamentary elections, but also calls into question the very nature of the Iraqi political system.

Not only has this seeming resurrection of sectarian division harkened back to the political violence of 2003 and 2004, the current bans are also reminiscent of older efforts to purge the Iraqi government of Baathist sympathizers. The missteps of the U.S. government in 2003, where De-Baathification orders removed more than 30,000 Baathist members from government positions and eradicated the 500,000 man Iraqi national army, significantly hindered the political reconstruction efforts of the state. Though the United States has since recognized its error in the complete dismantling of the government infrastructure, the Iraqi government has shown that they have fallen into the same political error, barring both the current Defense Minister, General Abdul Qader, along with the head of the National Dialogue Front, Saleh al-Mutlaq, from elections.

This reprimand is not to say that there is no value in establishing some sort of political closure from the almost twenty-five year reign of Saddam Hussein, but the Iraqi government has proven again how difficult it is to separate pragmatic concerns from religious and sectarian considerations. Any attempt at the process was bound to be politically contentious, especially a month and a half before elections. Because of this timing, it doesn’t matter that the list had a majority of Shias on it than Sunnis, it matters that Iraqi Sunnis perceive the central government as a tool of Shiite (and often Iranian) politics. It also wouldn’t have mattered if the Commission legitimately developed its list based on purely pragmatic motives (which it didn’t), it only matters that the bans have re-exposed bitter, religious divisions.

Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Baghdad on January 22 and 23 to facilitate some kind of reconciliation amidst this “Iraqi election crisis” . He has had little success however, as the ban has the support of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as well as Iraq’s Independent High Election Commission. Thus it remains to be seen whether Iraq’s political system, and those who seek to profit from it, can survive this sectarian set-back and furthermore, if they will ever get De-Baathification right.