WASHINGTON - The George W Bush
administration is citing the formation of a
coalition of Sunni political organizations to run
candidates in Iraq's December parliamentary
elections, and high Sunni turnout in the recent
referendum, as evidence that its policy of
attracting Sunnis away from the insurgency is
working.
But this argument ignores the
evidence from both the January election and the
October 15 referendum that the overwhelming
majority of Sunnis have followed the political
strategy urged by the insurgent leadership and
anti-occupation Sunni clerics.
After the
announcement last week by three Sunni political
groups that they had united to run candidates on
December 15, the Los Angeles Times quoted a
"Western official" in Baghdad - the usual
term
for US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad speaking on
background - as arguing that Sunni involvement in
the political system would eventually cause "a
gradual erosion of support for the insurgency".
Even as the votes in the constitutional
referendum were still being counted on October 16,
Khalilzad had said the high Sunni voter turnout
"was a good indication that our approach to the
Sunnis is producing results". US Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice echoed the same theme,
declaring, "The Sunnis are joining the base of
this broad political process."
This view
of the relationship between the Sunni population
and insurgency is politically convenient for the
administration. However, the evidence indicates
that the overwhelming majority of Sunnis went to
the polls on October 15 not because they had been
urged to do so by Sunni politicians, but because
Sunni clerics and armed organizations had agreed
on a campaign to defeat the constitution.
The nearly complete absence of violence
that could disrupt the poll throughout most of the
Sunni heartland, which US military spokesman Major
General Rick Lynch later credited to the
"vigilance of American and Iraqi security forces",
was in fact the result of a decision by the
leaders of major Sunni insurgent organizations in
August to get out the maximum number of Sunni
votes against the constitution.
That
decision was supported by the influential Muslim
Scholars Association and most secular political
organizations. It was almost reversed in early
October after Shi'ite and Kurdish lawmakers passed
a law that would have required opponents to get
two-thirds of all eligible voters rather than
two-thirds of those who voted to defeat the draft
constitution.
In response to that move, a
senior commander of the "Army of Mohammed" told
Time magazine that the leaders of several
insurgent groups had been considering "a total
shutdown" of the three key Sunni provinces for 10
days before and after October 15 to enforce a
boycott of the vote.
After the parliament
reversed its position under pressure from world
opinion, however, the Sunni insurgent leaders
coordinated a ceasefire intended to ensure a huge
Sunni voter turnout, as confirmed by a spokesman
for those leaders to Reuters on October 19.
Foreign jihadis, on the other hand, tried
to disrupt the voting in Sunni areas by violence,
including an attack on a polling center in Ramad.
Combined with offensive US military actions in
Anbar province, jihadi threats and violence
reduced Sunni turnout in Anbar to a very low
level, except in Fallujah.
The
announcement by the three Sunni groups that they
will participate in the December elections should
not be confused with a broader Sunni decision to
participate. The Iraqi Islamic Party, the Iraqi
People's Gathering and the National Dialog Council
are all elite groups with no mass base of their
own.
The primary motivation of the leaders
of these three elite groupings is to get elected
to the Iraqi parliament. That motivation has made
both the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Iraqi
People's Gathering willing to compromise with
Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders - and the US officials
standing behind them.
Just four days
before the referendum, a small group of Sunni
political figures, including leaders of the Iraqi
Islamic Party, agreed to a deal with Shi'ite and
Kurdish leaders under which they would support the
constitution in return for assurances that the new
parliament could negotiate on certain points in
the constitution.
One of the Sunni
politicians who agreed to campaign for the
constitution, Mishan al-Jabouri, owns a satellite
channel and he declared confidently that 80% of
the population of Salahuddin province would vote
"yes" to the constitution. But the vote in
Salahuddin showed that traditional Sunni power
brokers no longer influence Sunni voters.
Eighty-one percent of the vote in Salahuddin was
against the constitution.
In Tikrit, 96%
voted "no", according to election officials. In
Fallujah, the figure was 97%, and in Samarra, 95%.
No figures have been released for the Sunni
districts of Mosul, but Sunni leaders said the
vote there was similar to those in the other major
Sunni urban areas.
Last January's
parliamentary election also demonstrated the
decided lack of support for the Sunni parties now
counted by Khalilzad to help rescue US policy.
Both the Iraqi People's Gathering and the Iraqi
Islamic Party wanted to run candidates in the
January election, but the Sunni insurgent leaders
and clerics called for a boycott.
The
Iraqi Islamic Party registered for that election,
but then threatened to boycott if the election was
not postponed, and ultimately did not campaign.
The Iraqi People's Gathering did campaign, but
received only 15,000 votes.
Although it
was never acknowledged by US officials or news
media, the boycott of the election organized by
insurgent groups and clerics was stunningly
successful. Based on first-hand reports from
virtually all the Sunni population centers, it
appears that 95% to 98% of Sunnis stayed away from
the polls.
Based on the results of the
election and referendum, there can no longer be
any doubt that the Sunni community has been
remarkably united, and that it has responded to
the strategic direction of clerics and insurgent
leaders.
There are already some
indications that the new Sunni electoral coalition
does not reflect the views of those who will
decide Sunni strategy toward the December
election. Other Sunni politicians have already
pointed to the apparent vote-rigging in favor of
the constitution in Nineveh province as the
critical factor in strategy toward the elections.
Hussein al-Falluji, a Sunni negotiator who
rejected the final draft of the constitution,
warned on October 18, "If the referendum was
corrupt, then we will boycott the December
elections."
Saleh al-Mutlak, a leading
figure in the National Dialogue Council, said it
would be "very difficult to convince people to
come back to the political process", because they
would be "disappointed that their voices mean
nothing". After the decision by others on the
council to join the electoral coalition, Mutlak
publicly rejected that course.
The other
political shoe has yet to drop in regard to the
Sunni participation in the December election, and
a decision to return to the boycott stance of last
January now seems most likely.
Gareth Porter is an independent
historian and foreign-policy analyst. He is the
author of The Third Option in Iraq: A Responsible
Exit Strategy in the Fall issue of Middle East
Policy.
