Early reports suggest up to 72% of ALL eligible voters turned out. Iraqis are out there voting DESPITE the terrorists, and here's someone drawing parallels between Iraq today and Algeria 10 years ago:
This is good news for the Iraqi people, and could have repercussions for the other undemocratic regimes in the region.For more than 10 years the [GIA] terrorists held the initiative, attacking where and when they wished, forcing the government’s forces into a defensive posture. The terrorists specialized in mass killings. In Bin Talha, a suburb of the capital Algiers, for example, they cut the throats of some 800 people, mostly women and children, in a single night. They also targeted the ordinary personnel of the army and the police, in the hope of discouraging young Algerians from enlisting in government forces.
Like the Iraqi insurgency, part of which desires a return to Baathist power, part of which desires a pure Islamic state, the GIA did not offer Algerian citizens a viable alternative to the Algerian government. Their goal of creating an oppressive Islamic state along the lines of Afghanistan’s Taliban was unpopular. The GIA could only intimidate their neighbors.
Algerian terrorists never came up with anything resembling a political program. They just killed people. They killed children on their way to school. They chopped the heads of Christian monks and Muslim muftis. They murdered trade unionists, political leaders, and journalists. They captured teenage girls and forced them into temporary marriages with “the holy warriors.” They seized hostages, burned schools and hospitals, blew up factories and shops, and did all they could to disrupt the economy. At times they pulled off spectacular coups, for example by murdering the country’s president, and its most prominent trade union leader.
Iraqi insurgents are furiously working to attack Iraqi institutions and civil servants poll workers and organizers, police, soldiers, and interim government officials; and infrastructure such as the water, oil and electricity industries. In Algeria the GIA attempted to destroy the foundations of civil society. The Algerian Army was targeted to reduce its effectiveness, and democratic elections were opposed by any and all means.
They pursued two objectives. The first was to destroy the Algerian Army by killing as many recruits as they could in the hope that this would provoke mass desertions.
The second was to prevent the holding of any elections. “Democracy means the rule of the people,” Antar Zu’abri, one of the most notorious of the terrorist chiefs, killed in action in the 1990s, liked to say. “Those who want the rule of the people defy the rule of God, which is Islam.” (Sound familiar? Recall al-Zaqawari saying that anybody voting was an 'enemy of God.' )
Eventually, the Algerian government learned that democracy was the only way to sideline the insurgency. Elections gave the fence sitters – those who despised the violent tactics of the GIA but lacked the courage or means to oppose them – an opportunity to take sides in the war and empower their government to fight the brutal terrorists. Elections in Algeria effectively split the moderates from the extremists by asking them to chose sides and take responsibility for their future.
They soon realized that the terrorists lacked a significant popular base. But it was also clear that a majority of Algerians had adopted a wait-and-see attitude, hating the terrorists in secret but too frightened of them to make a clear stand against them in public. The key, therefore, was to mobilize the “silent majority” to demonstrate the isolation of the terrorists.
The most effective way to do that was to hold elections. Few people are prepared to die, and even fewer are willing to kill in support of their political opinions. But almost everyone is ready to vote. The task of a civilized society is to render the expression of political opinions easy. The terrorists made it difficult because they demanded of the people to kill [or be killed]. The Algerian leaders decided to make it easy by asking the people to vote.
The turning point came in 1995 when Algeria organized its first ever pluralist and direct presidential election. This is was not an ideal election. The candidates were little known figures that had appeared on the national political scene just a couple of years earlier. None presented a coherent political program. To make matters worse the terrorists did all they could to prevent the election. They burned down voter registration bureaus and murdered election officers. Masked men visited people in their homes and shops to warn that going to the polls would mean death.
And, yet, when polling day came it quickly became clear that the terrorists, in the forlorn attempt at stopping democracy, were, as in so many other instances in history, facing certain defeat. Never in my many years of journalism had I seen such enthusiasm for an electoral exercise anywhere in the world. The “silent majority” spoke by casting ballots, not because it particularly liked any of the candidates but because it wanted to send a message to the terrorists that they had no place in Algeria.
So much for all the doom and gloom.
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