ELECCIONES EN IRAQ y críticas marrulleras hacia éstas, un artículo interesantísimo de Stephen Schwartz:

As the days wind down to the Iraq election, scheduled for January 30, opponents of the Bush administration's project for democratization of the Islamic world, including Americans, Europeans, and Iraqis, continue to object to the timing of the vote. It has become common to hear calls for the balloting to be put off for weeks or months.

Critics of the date focus on the complaints by Iraq's Arab Sunni minority of some 20 percent, leaders of whom express immense fear at the probability that the election will result in a sweep by the Shia parties endorsed by Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Ostensibly, a Shia victory will lead to civil war and the breakup of "historic" Iraq -- as if a civil war were not already taking place and Iraq as we know it were not a creation of British colonialism dating back only 85 years.



Adherents of postponing the vote in effect idealize the "united Iraq" that suffered under the rule of Saddam Hussein, claiming that Arab Sunnis and Shias had never previously been separated from one another, and were loving partners until the recent arrival of the Americans. But anybody who has spent even a few minutes with Iraqi Shia leaders -- and I have spent many, many hours in discussions with them -- knows that the Arab Shias have waited 13 centuries for the right to govern their holy sites, centered on Karbala. Furthermore, the Arab Shias have always rejected the Iranian concept of clerical dictatorship invented by Ayatollah Khomeini -- fear of expansion from Iran to Iraq by the latter being another pretext for opponents of holding the Iraqi election on time.



And, above all, the record of Arab Sunni rule is one of grotesque abuse, of corruption, torture, and other atrocities inflicted on the Shia majority. It is well and truly time for the Arab Sunnis in Iraq to step back and allow majority rule to be established, and to assume a new attitude toward their civic responsibilities. Arab Sunni Iraqis should do everything they can to demonstrate that they accept the new reality and are willing to reconstruct their lives, families, and enterprises on the basis of equal, common citizenship.

[...] But Western media and governments are also handicapped in dealing with Iraq by a peculiar double standard regarding the very status of the Iraqi Arab Sunnis as a formerly-ruling, and oppressive, minority. Twenty years ago, nobody would have listened to the argument that dismantling of the apartheid regime in South Africa and the holding of elections there should be blocked out of fairness to the white minority in that country. Few today listen to those who declare that fair elections and the forging of a new political system in Northern Ireland should be delayed out of concern for the feelings of the Protestant minority.



The Iraqi Arab Sunnis are no different from the white South Africans. (I pointed out this parallel in an interview with Netherlands Radio on January 14 [see here]). The Arab Sunnis have exploited and degraded the Shia majority in Iraq for a long, long time, reserving the wealth of the country for themselves. But why is the rule applied to the white South Africans not equally appropriate in Iraq?