Whatever one thinks of Iraq’s nascent ‘democracy’, it’s hard to deny the enthusiasm of some Iraqis for elections. I am surprised to find that everyone – from a former newspaper columnist from Saddam-era Iraq, to the old conductor of the Iraqi National Orchestra, to a Sufi Sheikh – seems to be running for office. And election posters now outnumber the old images of Saddam that once greeted you from every corner.
Iraq in the last seven years has been transformed from a secular police state to an anarchistic pseudo-democracy
