Sunnis opt for bullets and the
ballot By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - Leading Sunni clerics and
insurgent organizations are unofficially
encouraging Sunnis to vote in Thursday's
parliamentary elections for a slate of candidates
who are calling for a timetable for US troop
withdrawal.
The decision to support
participation in the election is the latest step
in an evolving Sunni strategy that now combines
armed struggle, participation in electoral
politics and negotiations for a peace settlement -
all aimed at ending the occupation and gaining
bargaining leverage for Sunnis in post-Saddam
Hussein politics.
The policy in favor of
Sunni participation in the polls has been
facilitated by an agreement worked out between
armed militants
and
the slate of Sunni candidates running under the
banner of the "Iraqi Accord Coalition". Those
candidates are pledging to call for a timetable
for foreign troop withdrawal and to oppose the
"federal" provisions of the constitution once they
are elected to parliament.
Neither the
main Sunni resistance organizations nor the
Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), which claims
to represent 3,000 Sunni mosques countrywide, has
made a public statement clearly announcing such a
decision.
An AMS statement of December 7
indicated the organization would not participate
in the elections in order to avoid giving
"legitimacy" to the occupation, but did not call
for a popular Sunni boycott, unlike statements
prior to the January elections and the October
constitutional referendum.
However, Sunni
preacher Ali al-Zindi of the Umm al-Qura mosque in
Baghdad, said on Friday participation in the
election was "a religious duty", calling the
election "a decisive battle that will determine
our future".
That statement can be taken
as a reflection of the views of the AMS, as well
as of major resistance organizations. The cleric
who presides over the Umm al-Qura mosque, Harith
al-Dhari, is the general secretary of the AMS. He
is considered by US intelligence to have close
ties with major insurgent organizations. Several
insurgent groups have reportedly met regularly
with Sunni clerics at the mosque.
Although
six insurgent organizations joined in a statement
in mid-August calling for Sunnis to vote down the
constitution in the October referendum, no such
statement by those groups has been reported in
advance of the parliamentary election.
But
the London Daily Telegraph reported that
insurgents in Anbar province led by former
Ba'athist officers would protect polling places
and that they had warned al-Qaeda against attacks
on voters. A "senior commander" of the Army of
Mohammed, which encouraged participation in the
referendum, told Time magazine last week, "This is
a two-track war - bullets and the ballot. They are
not mutually exclusive."
By encouraging
participation in the vote, Sunni leaders can hope
to pick up 50 seats out of a total of 275,
compared with 17 in the current parliament.
Statements by Sunni clerics indicate, however,
that Sunni insurgents and the AMS believe that
what is most important is to have strong
anti-occupation figures in those seats.
The preacher at the Umm al-Qura mosque
said, "If you give your vote to the wrong people,
then the US occupation will continue and the
country could be lost."
The new Sunni
strategy appears to be the result of negotiations
involving the AMS, the insurgent groups and the
three Sunni organizations that had opted to run a
slate of candidates in the wake of the adoption of
the constitution on October 25.
The AMS
and some other militant Sunni leaders were
initially negative about Sunni participation in
the election. Whereas the three organizations
fielding a Sunni slate defended the new
constitution, the AMS attacked it as benefiting
only "the occupiers and those who collaborate with
them". The AMS also denounced the entire process
and said it would not "take part in any political
process".
But after discussions with other
Sunni leaders, organizers of the "Iraqi Accord
Coalition" have now abandoned their earlier
defense of the constitution's provisions for a
federal system and have adopted the slogan "Vote
for Iraq's Unity". That slogan now hangs on the
wall of the Abu Hanifa Mosque, considered the
holiest Sunni shrine in the country.
The
Sunni slate is also pledged to lead a push within
parliament to demand a timetable for withdrawal.
That was enough to soften the initial hard line of
the AMS and armed organizations toward the vote.
In June, 82 members of the Iraqi
parliament, including members of the ruling United
Iraqi Alliance, joined in a letter to the speaker
calling for withdrawal of foreign forces, but the
letter did not call for a timetable.
Supporting participation in parliament is
not without its downside for Sunni leaders. They
don't want Sunni voters to get the idea that
resistance organizations are accepting the
legitimacy of the US-sponsored political system
and, indirectly, of the occupation.
The
AMS stance of non-participation appears to be
aimed at counteracting that effect by reminding
Sunnis that the primary issue is to obtain a
timetable for complete withdrawal of occupation
forces.
Gareth Porter is an
historian and national security policy analyst.
His latest book, Perils of Dominance:
Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam,
was published in June.
