After the Shi'ite victory, the work
starts By Sami Moubayed
There are two faces to the democratic Iraq
that is emerging after Saddam Hussein. One is the
good face, which is that people have had a chance
to express themselves, voice their opinions on
different matters, and elect politicians who truly
represent them.
The good side of Iraq is
that 307 political parties competed in the
parliamentary elections of last December 15,
backed by 19
political coalitions, with a
voter turnout that reached 70%. Dreaming of such a
development under Saddam would have been a capital
offense, punishable by death.
Democracy,
however, is not the cure-all for everything. The
country remains a security nightmare, with no end
in sight to the insurgency.
And democracy,
by its nature, does not always deliver the ideal
results, as with the victory of the Shi'ite
coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), in the
official results announced last Friday.
The people have brought in a religiously
driven Muslim coalition that wants to carve up
Iraq further and is backed by the mullahs of
Tehran. The UIA has a near-majority in Iraq's
first permanent parliament since 2003. This means
democracy in Iraq was a victory for Shi'ite
regionalism and religiousness.
The UIA
received 128 seats of the 275 in the National
Assembly, meaning it is 56 seats short of the
two-thirds majority needed to form a government on
its own. It could still easily get this majority
by allying with the Kurds or the Sunnis. This
result, however, is a regression in Shi'ite
politics, as in January 2005 the UIA won 146
seats. Had the UIA won a two-thirds majority, it
would have been able to choose its own cabinet,
prime minister, president and two vice presidents.
Now this process will involve major horse-trading
with other parties.
One of the reasons the
religious Shi'ites could not secure their previous
majority was that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
who publicly backed the UIA last January, refused
to give public endorsement this time.
Another reason for the Shi'ite setback is
the appalling security situation, topped with a
bad economy, which the UIA has been unable to
remedy since its candidate, Ibrahim Jaafari,
became prime minister last year.
The
fundamental reason the UIA did not secure a
majority vote, however, was that the Sunnis
decided to join the elections, unlike last year.
They reasoned, very wisely, that having
some deputies in parliament was better than having
none at all. The Americans pushed the Sunnis to
join for two reasons. One was to counterbalance
the influence of the Iran-backed UIA, preventing
the implementation of an Iran-style theocracy, and
also so that the Sunni leaders could negotiate a
truce with the Sunni rebels who have been fighting
the Americans since 2003.
The Americans
believe that once the Sunnis shoulder
responsibility and share blame for security by
becoming decision-makers and part of the
government, like the Shi'ites and Kurds, they will
feel obliged to bring peace and quiet to Iraq.
Winners and losers Depending on
whom one listens to in Iraq, the elections mean
different things to different people. The
religious Shi'ites, despite their setback, remain
a parliamentary majority and are relatively
content with the results.
The secular
Shi'ites, headed by ex-premier Iyad Allawi, won
only 25 seats, down from 40 in the former
assembly. His victory would have been warmly
embraced by the Americans, since he is a strong
leader who has character, connections in the Arab
world and is powerful enough both to fight the
insurgency and prevent Iranian meddling in Iraq
affairs. He is also secular and committed to a
united Iraq, unlike the UIA leaders, who want to
create a Shi'ite state in the south.
The
Sunnis are pleased, having secured 44 seats for
the Iraqi Accordance Front, thereby restoring some
of the power they had enjoyed in the past,
especially under Saddam in 1979-2003. In the
earlier elections they only had 17 seats, none
representing major Sunni parties.
Another
Sunni bloc, called the Iraqi Front for National
Dialogue, won 11 seats, while a third, called the
Reconciliation and Liberation Bloc, won three
seats, and a fourth, the Iraqi Nation List, won
one seat. In all, this brings the number of Sunni
seats in the assembly to an impressive 59.
The Kurdish coalition, however, was not
too happy, having won only 53 seats, down from
their original 75 in the elections of 2005. This
coalition represents President Jalal Talbani and
Kurdish leader Maasoud al-Barazani. The Islamic
Part of Kurdistan won five seats, the al-Rafidian
List (Christian) won one seat, the Yazidi minority
won one seat, and the Turkmens won one seat.
The list of the young Shi'ite rebel leader
Muqtada al-Sadr, al-Risaliyoun, won two seats, and
it has declared its support for the UIA, despite
earlier rivalries between Muqtada and Abd al-Aziz
al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
Muqtada wanted a Shi'ite rebellion to oust
the Americans and curtly refused partitioning Iraq
and creating an autonomous Shi'ite region in the
south, while Hakim warmly embraced the idea, put
forth by the leaders of Tehran, who had been the
proteges of Hakim since the early 1980s. The
honeymoon between Muqtada and Iran was made clear
on Sunday, when the young rebel visited Tehran,
receiving a hero's welcome, and met with Ali
Larijani, the secretary of the Higher Council of
National Security.
The elections mean that
Talbani will have two weeks to assemble the new
parliament, which will have to choose a new
president within a month. This parliament will
remain in power until 2010. The new president will
be asked to chose a new prime minister to replace
Jaafari.
This premier will have to create
a new cabinet, and submit it to parliament for
approval within a month. The Shi'ites are expected
to form the new government, but since they came
out short of a majority, they will need to create
a coalition cabinet with other parties.
This means, whether they like it or not,
they will have to deal with the Sunnis and the
Kurds. The Kurds can play an important role. They
have common ground with the Sunnis and the
Shi'ites and shifting interests with all parties.
Most of the Kurds are secular and they can
create an alliance with the secular Shi'ites of
Allawi. They would have a natural ally in someone
like Allawi to prevent a cleric such as Hakim from
getting too powerful and imposing a theocracy
agenda on Iraq.
When the issue of Islamic
law (sharia) is proposed, for example, the Kurds
will side with someone like Allawi, who is opposed
to the Islamification of Iraq. When federalism is
on the table, however, the Kurds would support the
religious Shi'ites, who want Shi'ite autonomy in
south Iraq, justifying the Kurdish autonomy in
northern Iraq.
The ascent of Hakim's men
and the UIA is a blow to the Americans, the
Sunnis, the secular Shi'ites, and to a lesser
extent to the Kurds. The rise of religious
clerics, again, kills whatever hopes the Americans
had for a secular post-Saddam Iraq.
The
Bush administration is facing a disgruntled US
public, which argues that its children did not go
to war to replace a military dictatorship with a
religious one. A theocracy was not what President
George W Bush promised the Americans he would
create in Iraq, but that looks exactly what will
happen.
Another sensitive issue resulting
from Hakim's victory is his relations with Iran,
which is heading for a confrontation with much of
the international community over its nuclear
program.
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's
calculated rhetoric (wipe Israel off the map, etc)
has made worldly Shi'ites nervous. The UIA
leaders, after all, are all creations of Iran.
Jaafari is very close to Tehran, Hakim was
nurtured by the Iranians, along with the Badr
Organization, to fight Saddam in 1980-88, and
Sistani is an Iranian national who does not even
have Iraqi citizenship.
Hakim also created
rifts with the Sunnis when he announced that they
should not expect any real changes in the federal
constitution of last October. This Iran-backed
federalism means that the Shi'ites get an
autonomous region in southern Iraq, while the
Kurds get to keep their territory in northern
Iraq, leaving the Sunnis in central Iraq, where
there is no oil.
The Sunnis joined the
electoral process hoping that they could enforce
their amendments on the constitution. While the
constitution says that oil revenue should go to
the central government in Baghdad, it leaves open
a possibility that oil money could be transferred
to the Kurdish and Shi'ite areas.
Key
posts The Kurdish parties have agreed to
present Talbani as their candidate for another
round at the presidency. He is a resistance leader
with an honorable history who is committed to his
cause as head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK).
It is not known who will challenge
him for the job, but real problems lie with the
new prime minister, since the job of president
since the downfall of Saddam has been in essence
ceremonial.
In this aspect, rifts are
likely as the two men competing are from within
the UIA - Jaafari and the deputy, Adel Abd
al-Mahdi. Jaafari is supported by his Da'wa Party,
one of the oldest Islamic parties in Iraq, and
Mahdi is backed by Hakim's SCIRI.
Mahdi,
now 64, was jailed for opposition activities in
the 1960s, before leaving for France, where he
studied economics and became head of the French
Institute for Islamic Studies. He then spent some
time in Iran with Hakim.
The US is opposed
to the re-election of Jaafari, who has not been an
effective prime minister and been unable to get
the resistance to disarm, or even secure a proper
ceasefire. Jaafari, however, is supported by
Muqtada.
The intervention of Grand
Ayatollah Sistani could prove decisive in the
election of the new premier. He might even propose
a third candidate over the next few weeks, to
avoid embarrassing Jaafari and Mahdi.
Whomever he proposes, the Shi'ites are
certain to back him since Sistani is the most
powerful man in Shi'ite politics, as well as being
respected by the Sunnis and Kurds.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian
political analyst.
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