[Dialogue] Iraqi vote points to Islamist path

[Harry Wainwright]

Colleagues, look at what may be coming to Iraq. Peace, Harry 
  _____  


 

                 <http://www.csmonitor.com/index.html> The Christian Science
Monitor - csmonitor.com   

 

from the December 21, 2005 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1221/p01s03-woiq.html  

Iraqi vote points to Islamist path

Early returns reveal that Shiites and Sunnis opted for religious parties.

By Ilene
<http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/encryptmail.pl?ID=C9ECE5EEE5A0D2AEA0D0F2F5
F3E8E5F2>  R. Prusher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor 

BAGHDAD - Stretching newfound democratic muscle upon their first chance to
elect a full-term government, Iraqis overwhelmingly threw their support
behind religious parties defined along sectarian lines and ethnicity.

A bloc of Shiite religious parties close to Iran has, according to results
released Tuesday, attracted the largest percentage of voters.

Here in the capital, a national barometer because it is the most diverse of
Iraq's 18 provinces, the United Iraq Alliance - religious Shiites who
dominated the interim government formed in May - won about 58 percent of the
vote.

A Sunni Islamist alliance comprised of politicians who have defended the
insurgency campaign against US troops came in next, with close to 19
percent.

Trailing in third is Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite who was favored by the US
and Iraqi moderates hoping to rise above the country's rising sectarianism.
Mr. Allawi, billed as a man who could unite parties and crack down on
terrorism, received less than 14 percent of the vote.

Results are still preliminary and a final count may not be announced until
January. But what clearly emerges is the tendency of millions of Iraqis to
turn to religious and sectarian leaders to represent their interests in the
post-Saddam political arena.

With more than three-quarters of the country giving a vote of confidence to
Islamist parties, last Thursday's vote raises the prospect of Iraq being
more overtly religious than ever before.

The ideological orientation of the two leading vote-getters means Washington
may have to work with a government of leaders who have resented the US
presence here and demanded some kind of timetable for a troop withdrawal.

Clouding the election process are more than 1,000 complaints of
irregularities, 20 of them considered serious enough to be deemed "red-card"
violations. "The results won't be announced until those red complaints are
resolved," said US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.

Several Iraqi observers say they were deeply concerned over whether voters
will see the results as legitimate, and raised the possibility of increased
strife if claims of vote-rigging and the use of force at the polls are not
answered.

Both Allawi and the Sunni alliance have made charges of voter fraud, and
suggested that the Iraqi election commission was stacked with Shiite
sympathizers.

"What will happen if even five of these red complaints don't get resolved?"
asks Ismail Zayer, the editor of the Sabah el-Jadida (New Morning)
newspaper. "We will have a national crisis on our hands because I don't
think the Sunni coalition will accept that," he adds. "I think a lot of the
moderates were putting their hopes in Allawi because he was the one who was
going to be able to bridge the gap as a secular person who didn't want to
focus on sectarian interests."

Iraq's sectarian shift 

Since its creation as a nation-state by British and other power brokers in
the post-World War I Middle East, Iraq has been tenuously held together by
emphasizing national identity over religious and sectarian ties. Sunni
Arabs, however, were entrusted with the country's leadership. And although
Saddam Hussein's Baath Party was set up to be a supposedly secular
nationalist party with roots in socialism, the former dictator increasingly
relied on Sunni tribal ties to maintain his power base.

Today's shift toward Islamic parties, says Thabit A. J. Abdullah, a history
professor at York University in Toronto, has grown in part as a backlash
against that period, as well as a reaction to the postwar turmoil since Mr.
Hussein's overthrow by US forces in April 2003.

Professor Abdullah, a native of Baghdad, recently returned to find sectarian
divisions palpable at a level that didn't exist 25 or 30 years ago.

He points to the US decision to dissolve the Iraqi Army after the invasion
and the ensuing social disorder as an example of why many Iraqis have turned
to religious leaders: They have been one of the few constant comforts in a
sea of upheaval.

"Whatever kind of a national fabric - the Army, the police - was done away
with, there was nothing to fill that vacuum. Nothing replaced it. So, people
will look to those leaders who stood by them through their decades of need -
at the mosque," he says.

Abdullah says it was unrealistic for the US to assume that Hussein would be
replaced with a government that would put a premium on Western ideals, or
that a critical mass of Iraqis would choose an overtly pro-US leader who
promised to stay out of the sectarian fray.

"Anyone who expected secular democracy and liberal, Western values to
suddenly become ingrained in the Iraqi psyche is totally deluding himself,"
he says.

Shiite power play 

The Shiite coalition that is likely to determine the configuration of Iraq's
next government is made up of several parties that don't necessarily agree
with one another's outlook, for example, on the role of the clergy in
politics.

That ticket, known as 555, did extraordinarily well in the south - winning
over 77 percent of the vote in Basra. But newspapers in Baghdad have carried
stories of voter manipulation in those areas, telling of instances in which
voters were met at the polling stations by officials asking them to put a
hand over the Koran and swear to vote for the Shiite religious ticket.

Kurdish parties, meanwhile, garnered an overwhelming majority in northern
Iraq.

Mr. Khalilzad, giving a year-end press conference, acknowledged that most
Iraqis preferred to cast votes along sectarian and ethnic lines. "But for
Iraq to succeed," he warned, "there has to be a cross-sectarian
cooperation." Too heavy of a focus on sectarian ties, he said, "undercuts
prospects for success."

With growing protests and the threat of a Sunni walkout looming, the hard
work of coalition building has hardly begun.

But many here are trying to work out the permeations. While the Shiite
religious politicians seem most likely to turn first to their recent allies
in the Kurdish parties, there is also speculation that Iraq could see the
emergence of an Islamic coalition that would unite Sunnis and Shiites.

Another scenario includes the possibility of disgruntled Sunni Arabs and
Kurds allying themselves with Allawi to form a multiparty coalition to
prevent Shiites from assuming power.

And as the election results roll in, still other options exist.

The wider the Shiite victory, the less they will need coalition partners to
control the 275-seat parliament for the next four years.

Full <http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1221/p01s03-woiq.html>  HTML version of
this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links

www.csmonitor.com | Copyright C 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. All
rights reserved.
For permission to reprint/republish this article, please email Copyright
<http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/encryptmail.pl?ID=C3EFF0F9F2E9E7E8F4>  

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20051221/b1db430c/attachment.htm
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 6834 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20051221/b1db430c/attachment.jpg