The Common Ills: No elections law but lots of violence

Thursday, October 03, 2013

No elections law but lots of violence

It happened again in Iraq today. Violence? Yes. But we're actually talking about the election law. Iraq is supposed to hold elections in 2014, parliamentary elections. The last ones were in March 2010.

That's not how it was supposed to be. They were actually supposed to take place in 2009. But they failed to pass the election law on time. Under Nouri nothing happens on time. Each election brings more problems than the one before.

All Iraq News reports that not only did the Parliament not pass an election law today, they're not going to take up the issue again until Monday. Ayad al-Tamimi (Al Mada) reports that the Legal Committee met and Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi participated in the meeting where it was discussed that the election would take place in all 18 provinces and the Kurdistan Alliance is saying the compensatory seats have to be based on voter turnout.

Turning to the violence, NINA notes a Mosul bombing claimed 2 lives and left six more people injured, police Lt Majid Anwar Ahemd's Falluja home was invaded leaving him injured, a police officer and a civilian were injured when their car was shot up in Shuhada, an Albu Faraj sticky bombing injured one police officer and three civilians, a Mosul roadside bombing left two Iraqi soldiers and one civilian injured, a bombing near Mosul General Hospital claimed the lives of 5 police officers and left three more injured, 2 Shabanks (wife and husband) were shot dead in Mosul, a Baquba sticky bombing injured one person, 2 border guards (Iraqi and Syrian border) were shot dead, a Baghdad football field bombing claimed 4 lives and left thirteen people injured, and police say they shot dead a suspected bomber in Mosul.

On violence, Mustafa Habib (Niqash) reports:

Having lived through years of violence and war, many Iraqis didn’t believe the hype about the recent “summer of terror”. In general, they didn’t think there could be all-out sectarian war again so soon. But over the past few weeks this has changed: real signs of sectarian conflict are starting to emerge again, corpses are being left on streets, and ordinary Baghdadis are starting to worry.

The Shiite Muslim family headed by local man, Abbas, lives in Sadr City, in Baghdad. Recently the family members have been watching TV news reports all about death, violence, murder, kidnapping and internal displacement in their country. Not that far away in the mainly Sunni Muslim neighbourhood of Saidiya, in southern Baghdad, the Sunni Muslim family headed by Mohammed, has been watching the same reports.
And despite their sectarian and social differences, the two families share one fear: that a sectarian conflict is about to start in Iraq again.
Both families have as much reason to fear this as any other Iraqi: A member of Abbas’ family was killed during the last round of sectarian violence when the family was living in the mostly Sunni Muslim area of Amiriya. Meanwhile Mohammed’s brother was kidnapped by unidentified gunmen in 2006 – they still don’t know what happened to him but can only assume he was killed.
And Baghdadis in particular know about the signs of sectarian conflict. When violence erupted between 2006 and 2008 between Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims, Baghdad was at the centre of much of the unrest because of the variety of different sects and ethnicities resident here.
For months now, Iraq has been being tormented by a wave of carefully coordinated bombs and terrorist attacks. Security forces appear to have been unable to stop these – recently one even went off in the mostly peaceful, semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan. But although these events are clearly frightening and they terrorize the population, most locals have not believed they were leading to the start of a new sectarian conflict.

The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley -- updated today: