This Election Will Change the World. But Not in the Way the Americans Imagined

/ maelstroms / electoral /
This Robert Fisk corrrespondence seemed to me the only safe and sensible thing to take out of the elections in Iraq. The elections themselves are interesting (to tell you the truth I can see many reasons one could go vote - despite the fact that these elections are not really legitimate) and I'm waiting to see the results. Sistani is probably going to be the defining figure/winner of the elections, but it will be interesting to see the balance of power and how the victors of the election will handle the issue of American occupation forces withdrawal. Here's Robert Fisk on Democracy Now, talking about the Iraqi elections.

The other important development not being stressed enough is the Kurdish independence push, which is met by threatening and warning noises from across the border.

So whether these elections become the first act of a generalized civil war in Iraq (which I'm not sure if the Pentagon would be very upset about) or just provide positioning for the interested parties, will be to a large part determined by how the "winners" of the election will handle this and how much the situation can be controlled from above. I'm not very optimistic, but then again I never am about such things. There remain of course other options...