Post-election conflict scenario

Expec­ta­tions indi­cate that the Iraqi gen­eral elec­tions, sched­uled for the next month (07-March-2010), will be a deci­sive turn­ing point, most likely will take the Iraqi polit­i­cal process to a new stage.

New Iraq-Iraqi dis­putes will start to emerge, timed with the emer­gence of a very dan­ger­ous polit­i­cal vac­uum (legislative-executive-presidential).

The acti­va­tion of the polit­i­cal vac­uum in Iraq:

- The Iraqi-Iraqi dis­putes: Will take place between the par­ties involved in the polit­i­cal process, based on the future coali­tion gov­ern­ment. Tech­ni­cally, the dis­agree­ments will appear to be Iraqi-Iraqi, but behind the scene, the dis­putes will be linked to the U.S. and Iran influ­ences (one Iraqi politi­cian said: The Iraqi sky for the U.S. and Iraqi ground for Iran).

- Insti­tu­tional weak­ness: Iraqi polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions are vul­ner­a­ble and frag­ile to the pres­sures of any polit­i­cal crises, because these insti­tu­tions are still emerg­ing, sec­ondly, because it has a great poten­tial for infil­tra­tion by exter­nal pow­ers, par­tic­u­larly the U.S. occu­pa­tion author­i­ties, Iran and other regional powers.

The weak­ness of Iraqi polit­i­cal process in the post-election period, will effect the polit­i­cal decision-making, which will directly lead to the rise of Iraqi-Iraqi, Iraqi-American vio­lence, which may in its turn lead to more seri­ous con­se­quences on the future of Iraq.

Insti­tu­tional struc­ture of the com­ing Iraqi-Iraqi conflict:

- At the top of the pyra­mid — the Gov­ern­ment:

i– The pres­i­den­tial author­ity of Iraq, rep­re­sented by the Iraqi pres­i­dent, his deputies and aides.

ii– The exec­u­tive author­ity rep­re­sented by the Prime min­is­ter and mem­bers of the Iraqi cabinet.

This is were the con­flict will be started, mostly about how to dis­trib­ute resources and seiz­ing author­ity between the Iraqi polit­i­cal blocs active in the polit­i­cal process. Each polit­i­cal bloc/party/coalition will seek to offer fur­ther con­ces­sions to the U.S. and Iran to obtain Washington/Tehran sup­port and back­ing to get a larger share.

- At the base of the pyra­mid: the 18 provinces:

i– Three provinces (Sulay­maniyah — Erbil — Dohuk) are under the direct super­vi­sion of the Kur­dis­tan Regional Gov­ern­ment author­ity. The provinces are rel­a­tively con­trolled by the Amer­i­can forces.

The con­flict will revolve more on local secu­rity files and in par­tic­u­lar in the provinces with har­mo­nious pop­u­la­tion (mostly Shi­ite, Sun­nis or Kurds), but for the mixed provinces, it will take a dif­fer­ent form, most likely an ethnic-sectarian violence.

There will be a cor­re­la­tion and mutual influ­ence between the dif­fer­ent lev­els of the Iraqi con­flict — the Iraqi con­flict at the top of the pyra­mid will effect the con­flict at the base of the pyramid.

The con­se­quences of the Iraqi power vac­uum:

A higher rates of dis­place­ment of the pop­u­la­tion, inside and out­side Iraq, in addi­tion to allow a new oppor­tu­ni­ties for the hawks in the U.S. admin­is­tra­tion hawks, par­tic­u­larly Sen­a­tor Biden, and the Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor John McCain — Sen­a­tor Joe Lieber­man, in terms of to claim the Obama’s admin­is­tra­tion needs to post­pone the with­drawal. The Israeli lobby to exploit the effects of the com­ing Iraqi cri­sis com­ing, in terms of build­ing argu­ments cam­paign against Syria and Iran, through the accu­sa­tions that Dam­as­cus and Tehran sup­port the chaos and insta­bil­ity in Iraq.