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Iraq is disintegrating.
The first results from the parliamentary election
last week show the country is dividing between Shia,
Sunni and Kurdish regions.
Religious fundamentalists now have the upper hand.
The secular and nationalist candidate backed by the
US and Britain was humiliatingly defeated.
The Shia religious coalition has won a total victory
in Baghdad and the south of Iraq. The Sunni Arab
parties who openly or covertly support armed
resistance to the US are likely to win large
majorities in Sunni provinces. The Kurds have
already achieved quasi-independence and their voting
reflected that.
The election marks the final shipwreck of American
and British hopes of establishing a pro-Western
secular democracy in a united Iraq.
Islamic fundamentalist movements are ever more
powerful in both the Sunni and Shia communities.
Ghassan Attiyah, an Iraqi commentator, said: "In two
and a half years Bush has succeeded in creating two
new Talibans in Iraq."
The success of the United Iraqi Alliance, the
coalition of Shia religious parties, has been far
greater than expected according to preliminary
results. It won 58 per cent of the vote in Baghdad,
while Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister
strongly supported by Tony Blair, got only 14 per
cent of the vote. In Basra, Iraq's second city, 77
per cent of voters supported the Alliance and only
11 per cent Mr Allawi.
The election was portrayed by President George Bush
as a sign of success for US policies in Iraq but, in
fact, means the triumph of America's enemies inside
and outside the country.
Iran will be pleased that the Shia religious parties
which it has supported, have become the strongest
political force.
Ironically, Mr Bush is increasingly dependent within
Iraq on the co-operation and restraint of the
Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has
repeatedly called for the eradication of Israel. It
is the allies of the Iranian theocracy who are
growing in influence by the day and have triumphed
in the election. The US will fear that development
greatly as it constantly reminds the world of Iran's
nuclear ambitions.
Iran may be happier with a weakened Iraq in which it
is a predominant influence rather than see the
country entirely break up.
Another victor in the election is the fiery
nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army
militia fought fierce battles with US troops last
year. The US military said at the time it intended
"to kill or capture him".
Mr Bush cited the recapture of the holy city of
Najaf from the Mehdi Army in August 2004 as an
important success for the US Army. Mr Sadr will now
be one of the most influential leaders within the
coalition.
All the parties which did well in the election have
strength only within their own community. The Shia
coalition succeeded because the Shia make up 60 per
cent of Iraqis but won almost no votes among the
Kurds or Sunni, each of whom is about 20 per cent of
the population. The Sunni and the Kurdish parties
won no support outside their own communities.
The US ambassador in Baghdad, Zilmay Khalilzad,
sounded almost despairing yesterday as he reviewed
the results of the election. "It looks as if people
have preferred to vote for their ethnic or sectarian
identities," he said. "But for Iraq to succeed there
has to be cross-ethnic and cross-sectarian
co-operation."
The election also means a decisive switch from a
secular Iraq to a country in which, outside
Kurdistan, religious law will be paramount. Mr
Allawi, who ran a well-financed campaign, was the
main secular hope but that did not translate into
votes. The other main non-religious candidate, Ahmed
Chalabi, won less than 1 per cent of the vote in
Baghdad and will be lucky to win a single seat in
the new 275-member Council of Representatives.
"People underestimate how religious Iraq has
become," said one Iraqi observer. "Iran is really a
secular society with a religious leadership, but
Iraq will be a religious society with a religious
leadership." Already most girls leaving schools in
Baghdad wear headscarves. Women's rights in cases of
divorce and inheritance are being eroded.
Sunni Arab leaders were aghast at the electoral
triumph of the Shia, claiming fraud. Adnan al-Dulaimi,
the head of the Sunni Arab alliance, the Iraqi
Accordance Front, said that if the electoral
commission did not respond to their complaints they
would "demand the elections be held again in
Baghdad".
Mr Allawi's Iraqi National List also protested.
Ibrahim al-Janabi, a party official, said: "The
elections commission is not independent. It is
influenced by political parties and by the
government." But while there was probably some fraud
and intimidation, the results of the election mirror
the way in which the Shia majority in Iraq is
systematically taking over the levers of power. Shia
already control the ministry of the interior with
110,000 police and paramilitary units and most of
the troops in the 80,000-strong army being trained
by the US are Shia.
Mr Khalilzad said yesterday: "You can't have someone
who is regarded as sectarian, for example, as
Minister of the Interior." This is a not so-veiled
criticism of the present minister, Bayan Jabr, a
leading member of the Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, the largest Shia party. He is
accused of running death squads and torture centres
whose victims are Sunni Arabs.
It is unlikely that the Shia religious parties and
militias will tolerate any rollback in their power.
"They feel their day has come," said Mr Attiyah.
For six months the Shia have ruled Iraq in alliance
with the Kurds. Kurdish leaders are not happy with
the way this government has worked. The Kurds,
supported by the US, will now try to dilute Shia
control of government by bringing in Sunni ministers
and Mr Allawi. But one Kurdish leader said: "We have
a strategic alliance with the Shia religious parties
we would be unwise to break."
The elections are also unlikely to see a diminution
in armed resistance to the US by the Sunni
community. Insurgent groups have made clear that
they see winning seats in parliament as the opening
of another front.
The break-up of Iraq has been brought closer by the
election. The great majority of people who went to
the polls voted as Shia, Sunni or Kurds - and not as
Iraqis. The forces pulling Iraq apart are stronger
than those holding it together. The election, billed
by Mr Bush and Mr Blair as the birth of a new Iraqi
state may in fact prove to be its funeral.
www.independent.co.uk
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