Iraq

This is wilder than I even imagined. From start to finish. What a joke.

Juan Cole posts:

Nancy Yousef of Knight Ridder reports from Baghdad that campaigning for the January 30 elections has worsened ethnic tensions. Her interviews with university students reveal that the Shiites she talked to are determined to vote, where the Sunnis are afraid to do so, having received death threats.

Speaking of death threats, she reveals that 2 members of Nasser Chadirchi's 48-person Arab nationalist list have resigned on receiving such threats, and that the others are afraid to reveal their names. He estimates that each candidate needs 8 bodyguards if the person is to actively campaign.

Left I also looks at the situation (links embedded in the post):

The entire country is under martial law. Election "observers" will be "observing" the election from another country (via telescope, presumably). The names of the candidates are being kept secret, as are the location of the polling places. The entire election commission in one of the largest cities in the country resigned. Up to a million exiles may be voting in the election, including second-generation exiles born in other countries. People who have been out of the country for most of their lives (or all of their lives, in the case of the second-generation) are able to vote, even though they haven't been back to the country in the two years since it's been "liberated" and have no intention of ever going back. Indeed, it seems likely that more people living in America will vote than in the entire "Sunni Triangle."

Catch this:

Most international experts assessing the fairness of Iraq's elections will monitor the Jan. 30 vote from the safety of neighboring Jordan, but a few observers will head to Baghdad and perhaps other Iraqi cities if security permits, U.N. and other officials said Thursday.

[...]

"We believe we can run a very effective operation to assess how well-run the election was even if there are not huge numbers of electoral observers on the ground," said Canada's chief electoral officer, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, who hosted a meeting in Ottawa this week of international election experts to discuss the Iraqi election.

[...]

"We will be very careful deploying people in known hazardous situations," he said. "We have not ruled out going into Iraq or parts of Iraq."

Assessing an election required much more than being on the ground on election day, Kingsley said.

"We're talking here about an (Iraqi) electoral commission that is known to be independent, that is well-oriented, that has support from U.N. personnel on the ground," he said. "This is very different than when you have a suspect electoral body."

Uh-huh. If the electoral commission is so trustworthy, why have independent international monitors at all? In fact, if they're not going to be on the ground in Iraq, I don't know why they need to leave the comfort of their own homes.

"The presence of international observers adds an extra layer of credibility to any electoral process," U.N. election chief Carina Perelli said. "Therefore, what we can do is urge, call for, and plead for international groups to come to the fore.

"We not only welcome the Canadian effort but we urge other groups to come to the front and to send observers to this process."

The Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe said Wednesday it will not send observers to Iraq, and the European Union also reportedly opted out.

Clearly they need more help. I'm thinking of sending in a proposal. Anybody want to get together with me and monitor the Iraqi elections from the Bahamas?