At the Doors of Hell

At the Doors of Hell

Raed Jarrar, Raed in the Middle

Saturday, January 29, 2005

According to a poll conducted by US-based Zogby International, 82 per cent of Sunnis and 69 per cent of Shiites want US forces to withdraw "either immediately or after an elected government is in place." ( http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1218915,001301600000.
htm ) SEE ARTICLE BELOW

Elections are a small part of one of the mechanisms of public participation or democracy, which is by itself a small part of a huge econo-socio-cultural complexity of the state.

The current early and premature Iraqi election is being marketed as THE event, THE peak, THE happening! as if everything will be over after the day of elections! just like in some stupid love movies where the curtain falls after the two lovers get married.

The romantic Iraqi elections will open the doors of hell. If the majority of Shia in the southern governorates of Iraq were "waiting", they will stop waiting after elections are hi-jacked. When the kurds in the north have their "unofficial" referendum on "independance" from Iraq, kurds and arabs will stop "waiting" in the north too. When sunnis are completely excluded from the government, they will continue "not waiting".

What matters is not the election, what matters is what will happen next, when the Iraqi people start asking the occupying forces to leave the country, and leave their 14 permanent bases in Iraq. When Shia start asking bushtani why is he siding with the occupation army...

These elections will open the doors of hell.

Three in four Sunnis won't vote in Iraq's elections: poll

Agence France-Presse

Washington, January 29, 2005|10:30 IST


Three out of four Sunni Arabs will not vote in Iraq's weekend elections, while a majority of Sunnis and Shiites want US troops to leave the country immediately or as soon as an elected government is in place, according to a poll.

About 76 per cent of Sunnis say they "definitely will not vote" in Sunday's elections, according to the poll conducted by US-based Zogby International for Abu Dhabi television. Only nine per cent of Sunnis say they will cast ballots.

Conversely, 80 per cent of Shiites, Iraq's majority group, and 57 per cent of Kurds say they will "likely" or "definitely" vote.

Zogby polled 805 Iraqi adults from January 19-23 throughout Iraq, including the cities of Baghdad, Hilla, Karbala and Kirkuk, as well as the provinces of Diala and Anbar. The survey has a 3.6 plus or minus percentage-point margin of error.

The poll, released on Friday, showed that 82 per cent of Sunnis and 69 per cent of Shiites want US forces to withdraw "either immediately or after an elected government is in place."