As the scheduled date for the Iraqi elections approaches, there have been a number of suggestions - by outsiders and by Sunni Arab political figures in Iraq - that the elections should be postponed, due to the ongoing violence and insecurity in Iraq and the likelihood of widespread non-participation in the so-called Sunni Triangle. So far, frankly, I have found almost all of these suggestions a bit unreal, even when they have been made in good faith (as opposed to postponement being used as a way to prevent elections from happening at all).
It is certainly true that right now the conditions for holding national elections in Iraq are terrible, and their legitimacy will be undermined if a large proportion of the Sunni Arab minority either boycott them or are intimidated from voting by the Sunni insurgents. These are valid concerns, and they point to genuine and serious problems attributable in large part (though not exclusively) to the spectacular incompetence of the post-Saddam US occupation of Iraq. But why on earth should delaying the elections at this point help solve any of these problems, or improve the conditions for successful and more representative elections? I have been waiting to hear a half-way plausible case for this proposition, but in vain.
On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that postponing the elections at this point would only make matters worse. The collection of fascists, Sunni irredentists, Islamist fanatics, and foreign jihadists that make up the Sunni 'insurgency' are determined to prevent the elections from ever taking place, and have been waging a ferocious campaign of terrorism and disruption to block them. It's pretty obvious that postponing the elections as a result of their campaign would only encourage them to re-double their efforts.
Opposition to the elections also has some wider support among the Sunni Arab minority (probably about 15-20% of the population), including people who are not Ba'athists, terrorists, and/or religious fanatics. There are a number of reasons for this, some of them worth taking seriously or sympathetically, but the fundamental factor is that the Sunni Arab minority has always dominated Iraq, and the sudden loss of their dominant position has been traumatic and disorienting, particularly in conjunction with widespread lack of security and the absence of tangible payoffs from the reconstruction of the country. It is hard for them to come to terms with the idea of an Iraq dominated by the Shiite majority (probably around 55-65%), not to mention the (overwhelmingly Sunni) Kurds (around 20%). A major portion of the Sunni Arab elites, as well as the general Sunni Arab population, simply will not accept this situation if there's any way to avoid it. But that means that these political forces are really opposed, not to elections under present circumstances, but to any (more or less) democratic elections. (And they are supported in this opposition by a very large portion of public opinion in the wider Arab world, which is of course overwhelmingly Sunni and was overwhelmingly hostile to the war that overthrew the Iraqi Ba'ath regime.) Once again, a postponement isn't going to change that.
On the other hand, capitulating to the insurgents at this point would almost certainly enrage and demoralize the majority of Iraqis, who very much want the elections to go ahead. Much of the discussion about the Iraqi elections in the US and Europe seems to assume that pushing forward with the scheduled date is an obsession peculiar to the Bush administration. This completely misses the point. The key reason that these elections have been scheduled is that the Iraqi Shiite leadership, both religious and secular, has demanded that they be held. And unlike the situation among Sunni Arabs (in Iraq and elsewhere), the entire range of political and religious forces in Shiite Iraq - with the partial exception of Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers - are determined to make the elections happen, come hell or high water. To put things in the most basic terms, the really crucial point is not that George Bush wants these elections to go ahead, but that the Ayatollah Sistani (and the whole mainstream Shiite religious leadership, centered on Sistani) has insisted that they go ahead. Every week, sermons in Shiite mosques all over Iraq repeat the message that voting in the elections is both a religious and a national duty, and there is every indication that a large proportion of Iraqi Shiites will actually turn out to vote, despite the threat of being shot or blown up as a result. The Iraqi Kurds are also committed to the election, along with such non-sectarian political forces as the Iraqi Communist Party. (So we're probably talking about a total of roughly 80-85% of the country that wants the elections to take place.)
To an increasing extent, many of the terrorist attacks being carried out by Sunni insurgents - not just on political figures, government workers, policemen, and members of the Iraqi National Guard, but also Shiite religious leaders, religious pilgrims, and ordinary civilians - seem to be deliberately aimed at provoking an all-out civil war between Sunni and Shiite Arabs in Iraq. So far, this civil war has remained mostly incipient and one-sided, in large part because the Shiite leadership has made great efforts to prevent Shiites from responding violently to these atrocities and other provocations. Instead, they have united in pursuing a strategy of gaining power (and, in the longer run, phasing out the US-led occupation) through largely peaceful political means. (Again, Muqtada al-Sadr and the Sadrists have been the exception, but for the moment they seem relatively marginalized.) That means they have been willing to sacrifice a good deal to hold open the possibility of national elections. If the Sunni insurgents are able to derail the elections by means of escalating terrorism and other violence, that Shiite strategy will have hit a dead end, and there's a good possibility that Shiites will opt for violent retaliation, with results that will make the present situation look idyllic.
The first serious case for postponing the Iraqi elections that I have encountered is the one put forward by the political scientist Larry Diamond in this piece and elsewhere. Diamond, who spent some time in Iraq as an adviser to the CPA, knows what he's talking about, and has demonstrated that he's sincerely committed to promoting democratization in Iraq (and elsewhere). He rejects most of the sillier points raised by other advocates of postponement (e.g., that the elections should wait until the terrorists stop murdering people and otherwise disrupting the country), and his analysis plausibly brings out potential dangers of proceeding with these elections as planned. He is absolutely right to emphasize cases where 'badly timed and ill-prepared elections set back the prospects for democracy, stability and ethnic accommodation'.
So this is probably the best argument for postponement available. But on closer inspection, Diamond's argument only underlines the reasons why postponing the elections at this point would be a bad idea. Diamond proposes, not an open-ended delay, but 'a one-time postponement of several months, in order to establish the "necessary conditions" for a fair and inclusive vote'. But, as I asked above, what could such a postponement actually accomplish? It turns out that Diamond's key proposal is to use this period of postponement to fundamentally change the entire electoral system (to an alternative system that Diamond supported from the start), while in the meantime carrying out the first accurate Iraqi census in many years.
In my (non-expert) opinion, this is a total non-starter. In the first place, it is not self-evidently clear that the alternative system favoured by Diamond and others would have been better, on balance, than the one adopted (in negotiations involving Iraqi political forces and the CPA, under the aegis of the UN). As other scholars of constitution-making and possible democratization in Iraq have argued, the system proposed by Diamond and others also had important drawbacks, and could well have been unacceptable to significant sectors of Shiite and Kurdish opinion. (These arguments have been effectively made, for example, by Brendan O'Leary, another political scientist who served as a constitutional adviser to the Kurdistan regional government.) In a more ideal world, the whole framework for political transition could certainly have been crafted in ways that better met some of the reasonable and legitimate concerns of the Sunni Arab minority (and others) - though, of course, there is no guarantee at all that meeting their legitimate concerns would have reduced the violence of the insurgents or the intransigence of rejectionist Sunni elites, and any compromise that went beyond that would have angered Iraqi Shiites and/or Kurds (i.e., the other 80-85% of the population). I think there is weight to the objections raised against the system preferred by Diamond, though I certainly wouldn't claim that the existing system is without flaws - and, anyway, I don't feel entirely qualified to adjudicate these issues.
However, all these arguments were a lot more immediately relevant back in mid-2004. To postpone the election now, at the last minute, and engage in a frantic overhaul of the whole electoral system, strikes me as a sure recipe for disaster - leading to heightened terrorist violence and Sunni Arab intransigence, Shiite and Kurdish outrage, deadlocked negotiations, dismay and demoralization among Iraqis who support elections, and an increased likelihood of all-out civil war... among other problems. If this is the best alternative solution that Diamond can offer, then he's basically clinched the case for going ahead with the elections as presently scheduled.
That's certainly the conclusion I would draw. Yes, the Iraqi elections are set to take place under terrible conditions, they will almost certainly be marked by considerable violence and chaos, and their long-term results are not easy to predict. Some of their political consequences may well be unpleasant. In a lot of ways, the whole process leading up to this point could have been done better - much better.
But at this point it's clear that going ahead with the elections is by far the best (or least bad) alternative from among the realistically available possibilities, and that any delay or postponement will almost certainly make matters worse. That being the case, I think the choice for those of us outside Iraq is clear. Either one supports those Iraqis who are determined to make the elections happen successfully, even under the threat of violence, or one supports those Iraqis (and foreign terrorists) who are determined to kill other Iraqis in order to prevent the elections from taking place. From my point of view, it's no contest. (Jeff Weintraub)