Iraq illustrates problems and dangers in young democracies

Democracy can be such a messy business.

And we are not talking about the recent goings-on in Washington, D.C. Ours is a relatively mature democracy (well, republic, actually, but we’re not going to split those hairs today). Where democracy can get really ugly is when it is in its nascent state, as it is in Iraq.

Leaders of emerging democracies don’t yet have a firm grasp on the concept that elections have consequences (yes, we know that some of the players in mature democracies sometimes forget that too, but we’re not talking about the Sunday news shows today).

And so, perhaps it is not surprising to see that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s first reaction to election results that showed his party losing by a narrow margin was to suggest fraud, despite the fact that international observers said the vote was fair and transparent.

The results showed that Ayad Allawi’s Iraqiya coalition won 91 seats, while al-Maliki’s bloc won 89. Neither won the 163-seat majority needed to take control, but the bloc with the highest number is supposed to have the first right to form a coalition government. Allawi is a secularist who has strong support from the Sunni minority. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni, but pre-election vetting eliminated candidates with ties to Hussein’s Baathist party.

Allawi’s victory reflects strong opposition to Al-Maliki and the Shiite religious parties, which have been accused of playing on sectarian tensions and being too closely aligned with Shiite Iran.

With neither of the major blocs having the necessary majority, two minority blocs are in a strong bargaining position. Those are a Shiite religious coalition that includes anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the U.S.-allied Kurdish candidates.

Cause for concern

At this point in the development of an Iraqi democracy, politics is much more than academic for the United States, which still has nearly 100,000 troops in Iraq. It is the only western nation with boots still on the ground.

Efforts to extract those U.S. troops in line with deadlines the Bush administration established with al-Maliki and which the Obama administration wants to meet or exceed could be complicated if election results are not respected. Already Sunday, several bombs exploded near a house belonging to a brother of one of Allawi’s candidates, killing at least five people.

Violence directed against the presumed winners of the election obviously invites counter violence, which could be used as an excuse for those holding on to power to launch a crackdown. That could escalate into something that hasn’t been much talked about in connection with Iraq for a couple of years now, civil war. It is no leap of imagination to see neighboring Iran doing everything it could to foment discord and violence.

The time is now for the United Nations, the United States and Iraq’s responsible neighbors to make it clear that the results of an election that was closely monitored and, if anything, favored the ruling party, must be respected. It is in virtually no one’s interest, not even al-Maliki’s, to subvert this election and damage the possibilities for democracy and peace in Iraq.