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Winners and Losers in Iraq
26.12.2005
Editorial
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The final votes must
still be counted in Iraq, but the trend is already
clear. The biggest winners appear to be the Shiite
religious parties whose politicians have run the
ministries and whose militias have run the streets
of southeastern Iraq for a year or more. The Kurdish
separatist parties that supported this arrangement
in exchange for absolute control of the Kurdish
northeast also appear to have fared well.
Sunni Arabs did a lot better than they did last
January, when most boycotted the polls. But
political fragmentation left them with fewer seats
than they expected. In a further blow, a court ruled
last week that at least 90 candidates, most of them
Sunni, could not serve if elected because of their
Baath Party ties. Still, the biggest losers were
secular parties and those who tried to appeal to all
of Iraq's communities, not just one religion or
ethnic group.
Anyone who hoped that Iraq's broadest exercise in
electoral democracy so far might strengthen women's
rights, secular protections or national unity will
be disappointed. But anyone who expected such gains
cannot have been paying attention to recent
developments in Iraq.
Iraqi politics are settling into an unsettling
pattern. Very few people vote as Iraqis; most vote
as Shiites, Sunnis or Kurds. It is progress that
Sunni Arabs turned out in large numbers, but that
may not be enough to assure them a meaningful role
in reshaping a dangerously divisive constitution and
forming a broad-based government. If the Shiite
parties can keep the support of their Kurdish allies
and pick up a few independents, they may be able to
assemble a two-thirds majority without Sunni
participation and resist the changes Iraq badly
needs.
That would be a disastrous choice, foreclosing the
possibility of containing the insurgency through
political means and dimming the prospects for Iraq's
survival as a stable, unified state. But it's a
disaster that could be avoided if the victorious
parties summoned the sense to reach out to a Sunni
Arab community that now has one foot in the
political process and the other in the insurgency.
The strong vote for the Shiite religious parties
does not necessarily mean that Iraqis have abruptly
turned fundamentalist. What it does prove is that
the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq (Sciri) and the Dawa Islamic Party have
out-organized, outfought and outmaneuvered rival
parties in the Shiite-majority provinces. These two
parties enjoyed multiple advantages, including
decades of help from Iran, inclusion by the American
occupation authorities in the appointive Governing
Council, the strong endorsement of Iraq's leading
Shiite ayatollah and backing from intimidating armed
party militias.
Their main secular rivals, Ayad Allawi and Ahmad
Chalabi, showed few political skills and came with
baggage. Mr. Allawi, Washington's latest favorite,
made more enemies than friends when he served last
year as interim prime minister. Mr. Chalabi, the
earlier American protégé, was distrusted by fellow
Shiites because of his ceaseless scheming and
loathed by Sunnis for his campaign against anyone
even remotely connected to the old Baath Party.
What happens next will be largely up to the leaders
of Sciri and Dawa. Their biggest challenge will be
redeeming the pledge made to Sunni leaders that the
current flawed constitution will be radically
amended. New language must guarantee that all oil
revenues flow to the central government for fair
distribution, that laws and policies that
discriminate against Sunnis, including prohibitions
against former Baathists, are eliminated and that
private militias - some now incorporated into the
Iraqi Army and police - are disarmed and disbanded.
The legal rights of women, currently in limbo
between civil and religious law, need reinforcement
The victorious Kurdish parties need to face up to
their larger responsibilities. If they continue
providing the margin for shutting Sunni Arabs out of
power, they could alienate the American support on
which the security of their northeastern enclave
depends.
The Sunni parties need to face practical political
realities, starting with demographic math. It
remains an article of faith among Sunni Arabs that
their real share of the Iraqi population is far
higher than the 20 percent everyone else places it
at. They are right to demand fair treatment and a
real share of power, but not right to insist that
fraud is the only possible explanation for their
failure to win more parliamentary seats. The last
thing they should be talking about is reviving the
electoral boycott strategy that cost them so heavily
earlier this year.
It is in everyone's interest to draw the Sunni Arab
community more deeply into political life, not to
shut it out. Otherwise, Iraq's future will be civil
war and this election will have no real winners.
www.nytimes.com
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