- Mohammed Hassan al-Balwa is a Sunni Muslim businessman
from the devastated Iraqi city of Falluja. The former head of the city
council, he says he will not vote in his country's forthcoming elections
on 30 January. 'The election will be the beginning of the division of the
Iraqis,' he said. 'From the beginning [of the US-led invasion], the Sunnis
have been marginalised, because they said the Sunnis were all Baathists.
This was their mistake.'
-
- 'The majority of people in Falluja,' he adds, 'have hatred
and anger in their hearts.'
-
- Balwa reflects the sharp divisions in Iraq in the run-up
to an election for which 12.5 million people are registered to vote.
-
- He reflects on an Iraq divided between those who will
vote and those, either through fear, or rejection of the process, will
stay at home.
-
- He reflects, too, on an Iraq divided between the minority
Sunni Muslims, who dominated the Iraq of Saddam Hussein for decades, and
southern Shias and northern Kurds. The latter comprise 80 per cent of the
population who were persecuted under Saddam's rule, while the Sunni minority
of just 20 per cent dominated all areas of Iraqi life, the ruling Ba'ath
party in particular.
-
- It is the lethal tension between these two groups that
will define whether the next 12 months of the political process, which
the elections will kick-start, will mark the beginning of the end of Iraq's
violence, or the start of the country's break-up and descent into civil
war.
-
- The elections will not just be critical for Iraqis. For
countries such as Britain and the US, whose increasingly war-weary populations
are supplying the bulk of foreign troops in Iraq, the elections threaten
to have a lasting impact, dictating when those soldiers can finally come
home.
-
- Evidence on which path Iraq might follow has for months
been pored over by politicians, diplomats, academics and intelligence officials.
-
- Ig one thing is certain, it is that this month's elections
will mark the moment of ascendancy of the majority Shia, which make up
60 per cent or more of the country's population. And of Sunni defeat.
-
- What is also certain is that the weeks leading up to
the announcement of the results in mid-February will be bloody.
-
- These are twin issues that are highlighted by Mike Rubin,
a former political adviser to the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority
in Iraq: 'I expect there to be a great deal of violence, especially in
the two or three days before the election itself.'
-
- He describes the conundrum at the heart of the Sunni
abstention and Sunni violence.
-
- 'The Sunni leaders,' he explains, 'are not afraid that
the election will not represent them. They are afraid that it will represent
them. They are afraid of coming to terms with their minority status.'
-
- While their minority status will be confirmed whether
Sunnis vote or not - all they can hope is that by abstaining in large numbers,
and blaming the violent disruption caused by their own community for being
unable to participate, somehow they can rob the poll of its legitimacy.
-
- What is clear is that despite the spiralling violence
aimed at disrupting the elections, vast numbers of Iraqis will vote on
30 January.
-
- Polls conducted over the past few months in Iraq - while
uncertain in other respects - have indicated that 80 per cent of the electorate
intends to vote, a figure that would suggest turn-outs for Shias and Kurds
in the ninth percentile and a Sunni vote likely to be desperately low.
-
- Given the campaign of abstention and intimidation in
the Sunni heartland, that makes the likely results not difficult to fathom:
a massive victory for lists dominated by Shias way beyond the 60 per cent
that they represent in the population.
-
- That high turn-out is being encouraged by a religious
decree issued by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani calling on all Shias to
vote.
-
- But for some the likely scale of a victory for Shia candidates
as a result of a Sunni boycott is as much a cause for concern as the boycott
itself.
-
- Among those afraid of the impact of a widespread Sunni
abstention is Iraq's Interior Minister, Falah al-Naqib.
-
- 'Boycotting means betrayal and the sparking of civil
war,' he said last week. 'If the National Assembly does not represent all
Iraqis, we will enter civil war.'
-
- It is precisely this that has driven one of Iraq's most
influential Shia parties, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution
in Iraq (SCIRI), to appeal last week to reluctant Sunnis to vote.
-
- Most Sunnis, however, seem unlikely to listen, a situation
that has deteriorated markedly from even two months ago when the main Sunni
political party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, entered a list of 275 candidates.
-
- After failing to win agreement for a six-month delay
to the vote because of the violence, the party eventually withdrew. While
it remains on the ballot paper, its candidates have promised not to take
up their seats.
-
- With a self-justifying logic, Ayad al-Samarrai, a senior
official in the party, said he believed a delay would at least have helped
reduce the violence.
-
- 'If there are 80 per cent of our supporters who can't
vote now, that would be down to 20 per cent who couldn't vote,' he said,
ignoring the fact that it is precisely the fact of Sunni militants seeking
to disrupt the elections that is behind the low Sunni participation.
-
- It is a reality not likely to be transformed by a six-month
delay.
-
- But whether the election's backers in London and Washington
like it or not - and no matter how hard they try to persuade the world
to focus on the political process and not the violence - it is precisely
the fear of civil war and division that hangs over not just the poll, but
its aftermath as well.
-
- A single question dominates: whether the insurgency will
continue to grow in parallel to the rolling-out of the political process
that will lead to a referendum on a new constitution planned for October,
or whether these elections will be the high-water mark of the violence.
-
- It is the latter that Washington and London are counting
on.
-
- And the social complexity of the insurgency has led some
to abandon attempts to put a numerical value on the scale of the resistance,
which at least one Iraqi minister has claimed recently to be 200,000 strong,
to evaluate whether even now it is still growing, and to conceive of it
in terms of its potential to influence instead.
-
- 'It is very difficult to define what membership of the
insurgency entails,' says one Whitehall source. 'If you let your cousin
hide in your house because he is an insurgent, does that mean you are an
insurgent too?
-
- 'The crucial question is whether its influence is continuing
to expand. At the moment the insurgency still lacks any coherent political
agenda. We still see it as operating largely in local networks and it has
yet to show any signs of achieving any consensus across the sectarian divide.'
-
- This inability to join forces with Shias in a joint resistance,
says the official, is despite the fact that all parties, Shias included,
say they want foreign troops to leave.
-
- But if officials hope that this may mark the limit of
the uprising, what is also evident is that despite the siege of Falluja
and continuing operations across the Sunni triangle and elsewhere, the
resistance - in physical terms at least - still appears not to have lost
its momentum.
-
- While it is inevitable that the violence will accelerate
in the days ahead, the insurgents, foreign governments and Iraqis themselves
recognise that it is the political settlement reached after the elections
that is crucial to whether Iraq can avoid a wider bloodshed.
-
- A Shia-dominated national assembly of 275 members will
be asked to select a president and two vice presidents who will then choose
a prime minister and nominate a cabinet. That cabinet will be referred
back to the assembly for approval.
-
- Already some are predicting that the allocation of ministerial
portfolios may be a source of its own tension as individuals and parties
struggle for powerful ministries.
-
- Mike Rubin is one of those who sees the potential for
tension over who controls the powerful interior ministry, and beyond that
a clash of authority with American military authorities.
-
- It is a fight, Rubin believes, that the Shia will win,
with the Kurds getting the presidency and the Sunnis, perhaps, the foreign
ministry.
-
- Even more critical, however, will be the struggle to
write Iraq's new constitution, scheduled to be put to a referendum in October,
a referendum that can be blocked if it is rejected by three provinces,
a point in the Iraq's interim law already deeply unpopular with Shias,
who fear Kurds and Sunnis could use it to block articles that enjoy majority
support, in particular over the sensitive area of the role of religion
in the state.
-
- It is precisely for these reasons that both US and UK
officials are convinced that even if there is a widespread Sunni boycott,
some 'mechanism' must be incorporated by a Shia-dominated Iraqi assembly
and government to ensure proper Sunni representation of some kind.
-
- Among those who have articulated this in recent days
has been John Negroponte, the US ambassador in Baghdad, who said last week
that it was important for Iraq's new political leaders to be 'as inclusive
as possible' in government even if the Sunnis under-perform in the vote.
-
- It is a call that was reiterated on Friday by the present
Justice Minister, Malek Dohan al-Hasan, a Shia who warned his co-religionists
to protect minority rights, especially those of Sunnis staying away from
the polls.
-
- He touched on an already controversial issue that many
fear will be exacerbated if a Shia landslide is returned in the absence
of Sunni voters: that Shia parties must refrain from staffing the government
only with their followers, a trend already apparent in the interim government.
-
- 'Elections are now certain,' Hasan, who heads a secular
list contesting the election, told the news agency Reuters. 'But I ask
the Shias to look around them. You are in an Arab Sunni region. Who will
come to your aid if you monopolise power? Look at the example of Saddam
and what happens when political power is not used for the common good.
-
- 'The Sunni groups - and I truly despise using this term
because Iraq is truly a mixed nation - have not been frank either. Their
argument about the illegitimacy of elections under occupation does not
hold. Look at Japan and Germany after the Second World War,' he added.
-
- It is an issue that is also bothering some western officials
who admit that no matter how successful election-day turns out to be in
terms of numbers voting, a great deal is being asked of Iraqis about how
they exercise their sovereignty.
-
- 'The parallel is with the Russian economy,' said one
British official. Everyone had high hopes when they had got rid of Soviet
statism, but did not expect the chaotic and erratic results.
-
- 'We are asking an awful lot of the Iraqi people, who
have no experience of a fully participatory democratic system, and who
do not enjoy even the minimum levels of political trust.
-
- 'We would have been OK if the Iraqi middle class had
still been intact, but it had a huge hole blown in it in the past 14 years
between the first and second Gulf Wars. The people who might have been
the motor of change were disempowered. Politically, Iraq is a damaged child.
Its problems are long-term.'
-
- How the votes will count
-
- How will this election work? Iraqis will be voting for
a 275-member National Assembly. Political parties have submitted lists
of candidates - 30 per cent of them women. Parties or groups with militias
cannot run for election. The seats are allocated by proportional representation.
-
- What powers will the assembly have? The assembly will
choose the government and will be able to make laws. It will first elect
a president and two deputies. They will choose a prime minister and cabinet
which will be ratified by the assembly.
-
- It will draw up a new constitution by 15 August 2005
and submit this to referendum by 15 October 2005.
-
- What about security? The US military has increased its
strength from 135,000 to 150,000, but much protection work will be carried
out by the Iraqi security forces, whose ability remains in doubt. There
are plans to seal Iraq's land borders for three days around the vote -
an apparent effort to stop insurgent infiltration.
-
- Will all parts of Iraq vote? Iraqi interim Prime Minister
Iyad Allawi has admitted violence will prevent 'pockets' of Iraq voting.
This will have an impact on whether the poll will be regarded as valid,
especially if the pockets prove to be large. Pockets include two of Iraq's
largest three cities, Baghdad and Mosul, as well as Falluja and Tikrit.
-
- Who is likely to win? Since the Shias form about 60 per
cent of the population, parties representing them are likely to win the
most seats, especially as Sunnis, representing just over 20 per cent of
the population, are either boycotting the election or will find it hard
to vote because of the violence which mainly affects their areas.
-
- Will Iraqis living abroad be allowed to vote? Yes. The
International Office of Migration is setting up voting places in 14 countries
with a substantial expatriate Iraqi population. It is estimated one million
will vote from abroad.
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2005
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- http://observer.guardian.co.uk/
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