By Ashraf Khalil
Los Angeles Times, 13 December 2005
SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq — The Kurdish security forces who have made northern Iraq an oasis of comparative safety must be vigilant and brave on the job, says the 19-year-old policeman. And, of course, in Sulaymaniyah they must be members of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
"They have to know who you are and where you're from," says Awjin Salaheddin, who owes his job on the police force to the political party.
In the Kurdish north as well as Shiite-dominated southern Iraq, old-fashioned political machines that one expert compares to 1950s Chicago have been grafted onto existing tribal, family and ethnic networks. Patronage and influence-peddling are so systemic that they are not even considered corrupt.
The effectiveness of those machines will be tested in Thursday's national election as Kurdish and Shiite slates look to maintain their dominant roles in Iraqi politics.
To a large extent, machine tactics are simply the way business and politics are done in the Middle East. The ruling parties in Egypt and Syria, for example, are basically patronage systems backed by security services.
The idea of using power to benefit a circle of friends, relatives and loyalists is so entrenched in the regional culture that there are half a dozen words in Arabic that mean patronage or cronyism.
Salaheddin, the young police officer, said he plans to vote "with my blood" for the PUK's Kurdish coalition list. "So will my family," he said. "So will my neighbors."
The Kurdish political machine is expected to dominate the north, where the PUK and the Kurdish Democratic Party exert near total control.
But in the Shiite Muslim heartland, a much younger, less organized and in some cases more violent political machine has bred popular resentment. Unhappiness with the ruling United Iraqi Alliance — a coalition of Shiite religious parties with ties to Iran — could result in large-scale defections, especially by moderate Shiites.
One building contractor in the holy city of Najaf complained bitterly about the sweetheart construction contracts doled out to loyalists of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, one of the two leading political parties.
"You can't work without pleasing them," said Alaa, the 35-year-old contractor, who asked that his full name not be published. "There are common faces that get all the contracts, and new contractors like me can only get subcontracts and share the profits with the whales."
Similar complaints ring out in southern cities such as Hillah and Basra, where control is split between Alliance partners such as SCIRI, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's Dawa — the other top party — and loyalists of populist Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr.
The factions have stocked civil service rolls and security forces with their cadres. They've also waged turf wars in Basra and Nasiriya, targeting critics and former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.
"In focus groups again and again, people in the south describe [corruption] as a cancer eating into our society," said an official with an international organization working with Iraqi political parties.
"At the very least they expected [the Alliance] to be well meaning and honest…. What they've seen is rampant corruption, avarice, greed, a police state, infighting."
The official, who requested that neither she nor her organization be named, said the Kurds had a fairly mature ward-style political machine after nearly 15 years of self-rule. The Shiite system in the southern part of the country was less refined, she said.
"It's too violent. It's like Chicago in the '20s, instead of Chicago in the '50s," she said. "The Kurds can get away with it for a few more years. But not the Alliance."
Former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has been trying to peel away disaffected Alliance voters for his bloc, the Iraqi National List, a secular slate.
Mufid Jazairi, head of the Hillah office for Allawi's coalition, said residents were fed up with the government after eight months in office. "Many people cannot get jobs because they are not from the party of the prime minister," he said.
Jazairi, a former minister of culture under Allawi, acknowledged that the Allawi government had handed out its own share of patronage positions.
"It's very normal that every new government brings in the people they believe in," he said. However, he said the Alliance's behavior had been "beyond the natural borders" of Middle Eastern favoritism.
Cracks also have begun to show in the Kurdish north, but they are unlikely to produce many defections. Kurds typically rally around the two big Kurdish parties in a national election, regarding them as protectors of Kurdish independence.
Complaints about corruption and patronage have become commonplace in the Kurdish media. The KDP, which controls the western half of Kurdistan, including the city of Irbil, is known for doling out jobs to the clansmen of its leader, Massoud Barzani.
"We don't have institutions that people trust. Here everybody talks about corruption," said Mohammed Tofiq, a member of the PUK Politburo. "It's hard for a political machine to police itself, and it's hard for the population to police a political machine."
In the last provincial election in 2000, the Kurdistan Islamic Union captured just 20% of the vote. That was viewed partly as a protest by Kurds, who take pride in their secularism.
The KIU was part of a combined Kurdish slate in the last parliamentary election in January but is running against the coalition of the two leading parties this time.
"There are a lot of people who want to see a change, especially those not affiliated with the parties," said Omar Abdel Aziz, a KIU leader. "We are appealing to people who are sick of the way politics are practiced here."
Opponents also worry that the main Kurdish parties could fall back on a tradition of the old-fashioned political machine: stuffing the ballot box.
The turnout of Kurdish voters in January's election was widely suspected of exceeding the actual population of Kurdistan. In the disputed, oil-rich city of Kirkuk, the local electoral commission announced last week that it was eliminating 87,000 names from voter rolls.
Khalil also reported from Hillah. Special correspondent Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf contributed to this report.
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Citation: Ashraf Khalil. "In Iraq, Old-Style Chicago Politics Is Boss," Los Angeles Times, 13 December 2005.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-machine13dec13,1,2951731.story?coll=la-iraq-complete
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