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Toi Staff
Tarik Cyril Amar
Gideon Levy
Sabine Sterk
Stefano Lusa
Mort Laitner
Mark Travers Ph.d
Ellen Ginsberg Simon
Gilles Touboul
John Nosta
Gina Simmons Schneider Ph.d
An Unusual Election in Iraq Offers the U.S. an Unusual Opportunity
Americans who haven’t been following Iraq for the past decade might be surprised to learn that the country just conducted a reasonably free, fair, and peaceful election. On Nov. 11, nearly 7,750 candidates competed for 329 parliamentary seats in a contest that, by the troubled standards of the region, went remarkably smoothly. There was no major violence and relatively few allegations of fraud. Despite predictions of record-low participation, election turnout reached 56 percent—comparable to many U.S. presidential elections over the past century.
Iraq, for so long a shorthand for everything that can go wrong with U.S. foreign policy, just demonstrated more democratic resilience than its critics give it credit for. Squint hard enough, and you might even see it as the closest thing to a stable, peaceful, and genuinely democratic Arab state.
Americans who haven’t been following Iraq for the past decade might be surprised to learn that the country just conducted a reasonably free, fair, and peaceful election. On Nov. 11, nearly 7,750 candidates competed for 329 parliamentary seats in a contest that, by the troubled standards of the region, went remarkably smoothly. There was no major violence and relatively few allegations of fraud. Despite predictions of record-low participation, election turnout reached 56 percent—comparable to many U.S. presidential elections over the past century.
Iraq, for so long a shorthand for everything that can go wrong with U.S. foreign policy, just demonstrated more democratic resilience than its critics give it credit for. Squint hard enough, and you might even see it as the closest thing to a stable, peaceful, and genuinely democratic Arab state.
Twenty-two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, it’s worth acknowledging: Iraq is still standing, still voting, and still trying.
That said, what comes next is far from certain. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s Reconstruction and Development bloc seems to have won a plurality in the election but not enough to form........© Foreign Policy
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