Iraq approves 2010 election law

First on the left: Dr Saadetin Ergeç, in the middle: Abbas al-Bayati,

4th from the left: Fawzi Akram Terzi, members of the Iraqi Parliament. (Reuters/Mohammed Ameen)

By Salam Faraj, AFP
November 8, 2009

BAGHDAD — Iraqi MPs on Sunday approved a law to govern the country's general election in early 2010, paving the way to finalise a date for a vote seen as crucial ahead of a US military exit from the country.

The law was passed after weeks of delays and following huge pressure from the United Nations, religious leaders and the United States, with intense lobbying at parliament on Sunday from American ambassador Christopher Hill.

US President Barack Obama congratulated the MPs, saying the law is an important step towards ensuring a lasting peace.

Key to approval were provisions governing the conduct of the vote -- slated for January 16 but now likely to be put back -- in Kirkuk, a disputed and ethnically-mixed province of Kurds, Sunnis and Turkmen.

The MPs decided the election result will be provisional in Kirkuk and other provinces where there is disagreement over electoral rolls because of a high recent increase in respective Kurd and Arab populations.

Kirkuk's majority Kurds have long demanded incorporation into the region, arousing fierce opposition from the province's Arabs and Turkmen, who say the overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003 led to massive demographic change.

Arabs and Turkmen say a huge number of Kurds have settled in Kirkuk in the subsequent six years but they contend they were only returning to an area from which they had been forced out of during Saddam's reign.

A committee of parliamentarians, officials from government ministries and Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) with the help of the UN, will have one year to review the vote in Kirkuk and cancel fraudulent ballots.

The final law was a compromise as Kurds favoured using current voter registration lists and keeping Kirkuk as one electoral constituency. Arabs and Turkmen wanted 2004 or 2005 records to be used, or for Kirkuk to be split into two constituencies.

Amid frenzied scenes the parliament's vice president Khaled al-Attiya said on state television that 141 of the 195 members present voted for the document."After a long wait and intense efforts the parliament managed to produce a text acceptable by everyone on the electoral law," he said moments before voting began."It is a very important achievement for the parliament," he added.

The election is viewed as critical to consolidating the war-torn nation's fledgling democracy ahead of a withdrawal of US combat troops by August next year and a complete pullout by the end of 2011."There is a time for discussion and there is a time for decision," said US ambassador Hill, who spent the entire day moving between MPs from different camps, prior to the vote, underlying its importance."Today is a time for decision," he added.

However, Hamdiyah al-Husseini, a high ranking IHEC official said weeks of delays caused by wrangles over the electoral law mean the scheduled January 16 date is too soon for the vote, the second national poll since Saddam's fall.

"The election cannot take place on time and a new date will be chosen," she said.The electoral law was supposed to be in place 90 days before voting takes place. Constitutionally, the election must be held by January 31.

Turkmens have fears about rigging coming Iraq's parliamentary elections

Iraqi legislators call for replacing IHEC's chief, Faraj al-Haydari over accusations of “corruption”.

October 17, 2009
BAGHDAD, Iraq,— A Turkoman lawmaker on Friday expressed fears that rigging might occur in the forthcoming parliamentary, noting negotiations are underway to vote for a no-confidence motion against Iraq’s Independent Higher Electoral Commission.

“No-confidence vote against the IHEC or any other state institution is the constitutional and legal right for the Iraqi parliament. Negotiations are going on in this respect,” Akram Tarzi told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

“We have evidence that this IHEC has been formed on the basis of the abhorrent sectarian quota system and we have our own concerns and doubts that the forthcoming elections might be rigged like the case with the 2005 elections,” Tarzi added.

Iraqi legislators had called for replacing the commissioners council in the IHEC after its chief, Faraj al-Haydari, was questioned last week over accusations of “corruption” that occurred during the recent provincial councils elections.Tarzi, who belongs to the Sadrist bloc, or Iraqi members of parliament loyal to Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr,
called for adopting “the smart card system in the coming election in a bid to prevent rigging”.

Haydari had said that denying the IHEC confidence in parliament would mean that the legislative elections in the country would be held without a new commission formed.Iraq’s parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held on January 16, 2010.

Aswataliraq info

The Virtual Museum of Iraq

The Virtual Museum of Iraq

To visit the Virtual Museum of Iraq
Please click on:
http://www.virtualmuseumiraq.cnr.it/homeENG.htm

La bataille du barrage Saddam, par Gilles Munier

Amitiés Franco-Irakiennes
n°97
2 novembre 2009

La bataille du barrage Saddam
et la menace d’un nouveau « Déluge »
par Gilles Munier

Depuis 2004, une garnison de peshmerga occupe les abords du barrage Saddam, construit sur le Tigre à une quarantaine de kilomètres de Mossoul, pour le « protéger d’éventuels attentats terroristes ». Le prétexte ne trompait personne car l’édifice se trouve sur une zone revendiquée par Massoud Barzani comme faisant partie du « Grand Kurdistan ». Ce barrage lui permet de contrôler l’alimentation en électricité de la province de Ninive et l’irrigation des cultures jusqu’à Tel Afar, ville dont il voudrait expulser les Turcomans qui y sont majoritaires. Les barrages de Dokan (sur le Petit Zab) et Darbandikhan (sur le Diyala), situés dans la Région autonome, lui permettent déjà de faire chanter le régime de Bagdad qui fait face à une très grave pénurie d’eau.

Après la victoire à Mossoul de la coalition nationaliste Al-Abda aux élections régionales du 31 janvier dernier, Atheel al-Nujaifi, nouveau gouverneur, s’est emparé du dossier et a déclaré que personne n’avait demandé aux peshmerga de venir, qu’ils devaient quitter les lieux. Il a donné l’ordre à un bataillon de l’armée irakienne de les remplacer. Le général kurde Azad Hawezi ayant refusé d’obtempérer, il a fallu l’intervention du général Robert Brown, commandant étasunien dans la région, pour éviter un affrontement sanglant. Depuis, le barrage est gardé par une force mixte, sous contrôle américain. On devine ce qui arrivera lorsque les troupes d’occupation se retireront.

Une vague de 10 à 20m atteindrait Mossoul en 3 ou 4 heures…

Mais, le risque d’une guerre arabo-kurde n’est rien à côté de ce qui se produirait en cas de rupture du barrage, un scénario catastrophe évoqué par tous les spécialistes depuis plus de 10 ans. Construit dans les années 80 par des entreprises européennes – dont la française Dumez – sur des roches de gypse, donc solubles dans l’eau, son fonctionnement nécessite le renforcement permanent de ses fondations. Haut de 120 m, son lac de retenue de 400 km2 peut stocker 11 milliards de m3 d’eau au moment de la fonte des neiges en Turquie. Face à la menace, le gouvernement irakien avait chargé une entreprise yougoslave de procéder, 24h sur 24, à des injections de ciment. Elle a cessé ses travaux en 1991 pour cause d’embargo. L’importation de pièces détachées étant interdites, les vannes n’ont pas été entretenues normalement pour la même raison. Pour réduire l’impact de la catastrophe, l’Irak avait entrepris de construire un barrage amortisseur à Babush, à mi-chemin de Mossoul. Mais, l’embargo n’a pas permis de l’achever.

Aujourd’hui, les spécialistes estiment à plus de 20 cm l’épaisseur de roche dissoute à sa base. Le Corps des Ingénieurs de l’Armée américaine a tenté de rattraper le temps perdu. Mais, selon le témoignage de Stuart Bowen Jr, directeur du Bureau de l’Inspecteur Général pour la Reconstruction de l’Irak, devant le Congrès en octobre 2007, 27 millions de dollars ont été dépensés en pure perte, détournés de leur but initial. Au lieu de construire des usines fabriquant des mélanges spéciaux capables de colmater les brèches dans le sol, les entreprises irakiennes retenues ont construit des cimenteries traditionnelles. De plus, le gouvernement Maliki ayant refusé de terminer le barrage de Babush, on peut craindre le pire.

Si le barrage Saddam cédait, une vague de 10 à 20m atteindrait Mossoul 3 à 4 heures plus tard, à une vitesse d’environ 2 m/seconde. Une grande partie de la ville serait détruite. Les villages bordant les rives du Tigre seraient ravagés et des quartiers de Bagdad se retrouveraient sous 5 m d’eau. Un demi million d’Irakiens mourrait.

Espérons que rien n’arrivera. Mais si le pire se produisait, les Etats-Unis, le KRG (Gouvernement régional kurde) et Nouri al-Maliki devront rendre des comptes.

Gilles Munier
Amitiés Franco-Irakiennes

Iraq Elections -Analysis by Reidar Visser: "The Veto Straw Man"

The Veto Straw Man
Posted by Reidar Visser on November 2, 2009

Among the most frequently used and yet least convincing arguments for advocating a delay to the vote on Iraq’s election bill is the fear of the presidential veto. Time and again, Iraqi parliamentarians contend that the greatest possible catastrophe would be to hold a vote without perfect pre-vote consensus, because this would automatically become rejected by the (Kurdish) president, Jalal Talabani, or the (Sunni Arab) vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, that is, if the outcome failed to satisfy the aspirations of either of them. “Then we would be back to square one”, or so the argument goes. (In theory, the veto could of course also come from the Shiite vice president, Adil Abd al-Mahdi, but Hashemi and Talabani recur in the scenarios that are discussed in the Iraqi press.)

This is a fallacy for several reasons. In the first place, from a theoretical point of view, it is a reductionism that removes any autonomy from the Iraqi parliament and makes it subservient to the presidency council in a way that upsets the existing system of checks and balances and separation of powers. Secondly, from a more practical point of view, this approach ignores the fact that a parliamentary decision would create a dynamic of its own that in turn would set the stage for a different climate for the decision of the presidency council. In either case, the president in question would have the eyes of the international community on himself in a very different way than in the current situation.

For example, in the case of Talabani, there would of course be pressures from his own party and the KDP to stand up for the maximalist position on Kirkuk. But on the other hand there would be potential rewards from the international community (greater international recognition of the Kurdistan federal region, economic cooperation, increased goodwill from the United States etc.) if he should choose to take a more moderate position and emerge as a compromise-seeker instead. Similarly, if Hashemi is faced with a parliament that wants the vote to go ahead in Kirkuk without any special arrangements, he would need to make a careful appraisal of what Kirkuk means in the larger Iraqi context and whether it is still worth a veto if parliament clearly indicates that it is uninterested.

And so there is no reason not to hold a vote on the bill, which is ready in all other respects. As for Kirkuk, there are several alternatives. One would be to persevere with the latest UNAMI proposal for Kirkuk (2009 registers; two compensatory Arab and Turkmen seats; scrutiny of the electoral registers after the election based on older registers going back as far as 1957; new vote one year later).

The proposed formula is so Byzantine that one wonders whether it may have been conceived initially with the intention to fail, but it apparently won approval from almost everyone on the legal committee of the parliament today except the Kurds. (The Kurds reportedly found out they wanted “compensatory seats” for themselves as well, on top of the extra ones they are expected to win at the governorate level based on changes to the voter registers between 2004 and 2009!)

Nevertheless, the new proposal involves a considerable compromise on part of the Iraqi nationalists and it should not be ruled out that the Kurds could end up accepting it when it is crunch time tomorrow (Tuesday has been singled out as yet another “final deadline” for the bill to pass if elections are to go ahead on schedule).

This is true in particular because the theory of an American hand behind the revised proposal also seems somewhat more proabable today, which would be another reason for the Kurds to look at it with new eyes. It has been rumoured for some time that the Americans have joined UNAMI in their behind-the-scenes effort, and yesterday the Sadrist MP Fawzi Akram Tarazi recounted the new UNAMI scheme and added “these arrangements would not have any influence on the future administrative and political status of the governorate” which is more or less a quotation from the mysterious Hill-Odierno statement from before the weekend, except that “influence” has replaced the original “precedent”. (For the record, this latter interpretation of “no influence” is also strictly speaking incorrect; it is obvious that the results of the Kirkuk elections next January may impact the next constitutional revision committee which in turn is likely to deal with Kirkuk.)

Taken together with the conspicuous intensity of telephonic contacts and visits by high-level American delegations to Kurdistan over the last days and weeks, it seems pretty clear that unlike UNAMI (which last week adopted the Kurdish position on Kirkuk) the Americans have been working for some kind of solution that involves compromises on both sides, and are apparently trying to nudge both UNAMI and the Kurds towards the centre.

The likelihood that the Kurds could adjust their policies is probably greater when the pressure is initiated by Washington than in a situation when they are dealing only with Baghdad. [This interpretation seems corroborated by reports in Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Al-Hayat and Iraqi news agencies Tuesday morning, with Kurdish politicians for the first time complaining about US interference and "pressure" and accusing UNAMI of changing its original position.]

However, as long as they agree to hold a vote, Iraqis should not feel any obligation to necessarily include the UNAMI proposal, which is after all a rather wishy-washy affair crafted by foreign hands. This is particularly so if the Kurds decide that they are going to reject it anyway. Alternatively, they could include a vote on two of the “strong” options that have already circulated, for example
1.) No special treatment for Kirkuk, as favoured by the Kurds; and
2.) Postponement in Kirkuk until the conclusion of a satisfactory review of the voter registers, as per the Iraqi nationalist suggestion. This kind of procedure would likely produce a majority and a “dissenting minority” and therefore perhaps be a little more veto-prone, but it would be for the presidency council to review the result carefully (not least the numbers) and to sort out the relative weight of national versus communitarian agendas.

What the Iraqi parliamentarians above all need to avoid is a continued search for an elusive pre-vote consensus: They have tried this for months now, and unless the Kurds turn around and agree to the latest UNAMI proposal in the last second, no such consensus position will probably ever be found. It should be remembered that things cannot go terribly wrong here: If no vote is held at all, Iraq will end up simply using the 2005 law for the next election.

The worst-case scenario of a veto is precisely a reversion to the 2005 law, so what is the risk in trying? Additionally, the sheer act of holding a vote would create positive side effects for Iraqi democracy more generally, partly because voters would get a specific indicator (Kirkuk) of what the political parties actually mean when they shout about “national unity” all the time, and partly because the conspiracy theories about secret preferences for closed lists could be laid to rest.


Finally, a critical note on how the Iraqi media is covering the election law. The Iraqi parliament is notoriously clever in disguising exactly who was present and who was not in the parliamentary sessions (only the worst offenders are given fines). For several weeks now, there have been incidents of parliament lacking a quorum. Instead of dutifully paraphrasing the sometimes not-so-inspirational comments delivered by Iraqi MPs on a daily basis, why don’t some Iraqi journalists simply stand at the door of the parliament and make a record of which parliamentarians attended and which ones were absent? That sort of information could also make the mysterious process about the election law a little more transparent.

http://gulfanalysis.wordpress.com/

Bridging Iraq's sectarian gap

By Gabriel Gatehouse BBC News, Baghdad

It is the culmination of seven days of wedding festivities at the Amin household. At the entrance to the house the men sit on two lines of chairs, the family of the bride on one side, the groom's on the other.
Inside are the women, separated from the men so they can unveil themselves, dancing and singing to the accompaniment of an all-female band.

The groom, Ali, comes from a fairly conservative Shia background but his bride, Zeinab, is a Sunni.
"I met my wife during the peak of the sectarian violence in 2006," he says.
"We met at university. They were difficult times, but we were able to overcome that problem."

Ali says the wedding is more than just a happy occasion for him, his wife and their two families.

This is their way of confronting the sectarianism that has claimed the lives of so many thousands of Iraqis since the invasion.

"It is a natural thing, and we are trying to send a message to the world. It is a way to heal the wounds of Iraqi society," he asserts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8335792.stm

“Kerkük’e konsolosluk açacağız”

01 Kasım 2009, Pazar


Dışişleri Bakanı Ahmet Davutoğlu, Kuzey Irak’taki temaslarının son gününde Musul Başkonsolosluğu’nun açılışını gerçekleştirdi. Davutoğlu, Kerkük’e de konsolosluk açılacağını söyledi.

2006 yılından beri faaliyet gösteren Musul Başkonsolosluğu’nun resmi açılışını yapan Davutoğlu, Türk halkının hangi koşulda olursa olsun Irak halkının yanında olacağı mesajını verdi. Açılışın ardından Türk konsolosluğunun bahçesine barışı temsil eden zeytin fidanları dikilirken, Dışişleri Bakanı Davutoğlu’na Musul Üniversitesi tarafından fahri profesörlük unvanı verildi.

Konsolosluğun açılışında konuşan Bakan Davutoğlu; Basra’dan Musul’a, Kerkük’ten Nasıriye’ye kadar tüm Irak şehirlerinin kardeş olduğunu ifade ederek, “Bizler Iraklı olmayan bakanlar değil, sizin bakanlarınız” dedi. En kısa zamanda Kerkük’e de konsolosluk açmayı hedeflediklerini söyleyen Davutoğlu, “Türk halkı hangi şartlarda olursa olsun yanınızdadır. Sizin güvenliğiniz bizim güvenliğimizdir. Tarihte beraberdik ebediyete kadar da beraberiz” diye konuştu.

Kuzey Irak temaslarında Davutoğlu’na eşlik eden Devlet Bakanı Zafer Çağlayan ise, “Ben tarihten çok anlamam, ancak derler ki tarih tekerrürden ibarettir. Bugün burada buna bir kez daha şahit oluyoruz. Yüzyıllar önce Osmanlıların Musul’un kalkınmasına gösterdiği ilgiyi, onların torunları olarak yeniden göstermek için buradayız” diye konuştu.

Açılış töreninde folklor ekipleri gösteri sunarken, Davutoğlu’na Türkmenler tarafından bir Osmanlı subayından kalmış antika plak hediye edildi. Davutoğlu, Musul’daki temaslarının ardından Türkiye’ye hareket etti.
(İHA)

The Reality of Kurdish violence in Kerkuk

Kurds' exactions against Turkmens in Iraq

Please click on the link below:

http://www.tanis-turkmen.nl/arkiv/realityOfTheKurdishViolenceInKirkuk.pdf