The fear of contagion

摘要

There are many versions of Iraq's re-cent history, but the one most widely shared in neighbouring countries has been black and white, like an old newsreel: a poor Muslim country is blitzkrieged by a ruthless Christian army which installs a quisling government, so inspiring a noble, patriotic resistance movement. But if Iraq's bloody complexity has often made it hard to sustain this comforting narrative, the unmistakable imagery of a truly popular election, at least in most parts of the country, has now rendered it untenable. Not that some don't keep trying. In un-democratic Syria and Egypt, the dominant, government-owned press played down the poll. The Cairo daily, al-Ahram, put it on its front page, but squarely below the fold. Syrian state television focused single-mindedly on election-day violence rather than the voting itself. Several Arab newspapers ran cartoons showing Iraqis voting at the point of an American gun. Even al-Jazeera, the pretty independent satellite channel beamed out of Qatar, peppered its far fairer reporting with large dollops of scepticism, highlighting the low turnout in Sunni Arab areas, voting irregularities, and fears of rising Shia dominance.