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Analysis-Election results accentuate
Iraq's three-way split
12.2.2006
By Gideon Long
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LONDON, Feb 12
(Reuters) - As graphically as any census, Iraq's
newly-confirmed election results portray a nation
deeply divided along sectarian lines and dominated
by three distinct peoples with differing aims,
ideals and beliefs.
The certified final results, announced on Friday
after weeks of waiting, suggest voters in the Dec.
15 parliamentary poll overwhelmingly cast their
ballots along religious and ethnic lines.
All were Iraqi by nationality but, when they dropped
their voting slips into the ballot boxes, they were
above all Shi'ite Muslims, Sunni Arabs, Kurds,
Turkmen or Christians.
In the three Kurdish provinces of the north, for
example, about 90 percent of voters backed the
Kurdish Alliance, which has vowed to push for
greater autonomy for its people, many of whom want
full independence from Iraq.
In contrast, the Islamic Union of Kurdistan,
campaigning on a less overtly federal ticket, was
crushed. Its party offices were attacked by Kurdish
nationalists in the run-up to the election and it
took only around five percent of the vote.
In the south, the success of the main Shi'ite
Islamist list, the United Iraqi Alliance, was no
less emphatic.
In the provinces of Maysan, Muthanna and Dhi Qar,
the alliance picked up over 85 percent of the vote
-- around 20 times as much as its nearest rival.
After largely boycotting the previous election last
January, Sunni Arabs proved how dominant they are in
western Anbar province, the heartland of the
insurgency.
SUNNIS ENTER POLITICS
The main Sunni coalition, the Iraqi Accordance
Front, took about 74 percent of the vote while the
Iraqi National List, a broad secular coalition,
mustered only three percent.
The list's leading light, Iyad Allawi, viewed by
Washington before the election as a potential prime
minister capable of uniting Iraq, was pummelled at
the polls, and his bloc will have only 25 seats in
the new 275-seat parliament.
In only five of Iraq's 18 provinces -- Baghdad,
Mosul, Diyala, Salahaddin and Kirkuk -- was there
much of a contest between parties. In the other 13,
landslides were the norm.
In a sense, the results should come as no surprise.
Since it was created in 1920 out of the ruins of the
Ottoman Empire, Iraq has always been a divided
nation.
The British and French colonialists who carved up
the Middle East following World War One paid scant
attention to natural frontiers or traditional tribal
and ethnic boundaries, and modern Iraq is
essentially an amalgam of three Ottoman fiefdoms
- Mosul, Baghdad and Basra.
But the results suggest the extent to which many
Iraqis, now they have a chance to vote freely, have
turned their backs on the centralised government
imposed on them for decades, first by the British
and the monarchy and later by Saddam Hussein.
When viewed as a snapshot of the country, the
election results confirm findings from a U.N. census
of 2003.
Based on information from food distribution cards
used under U.N. sanctions in the 1990s, the census
suggested how starkly most of the country was
divided into Shi'ites and Sunnis.
In the southern provinces of Najaf, Qadisiya and
Maysan, for example, Shi'ites made up between 98 and
99 percent of the population, while in Anbar and
Salahaddin the picture was reversed -- 99 percent of
people were Sunnis.
None of this bodes well for the review of the Iraqi
constitution, set to start sometime after the new
government and parliament is formed.
The Shi'ites, who will have a majority in the new
assembly, have already insisted their can be no
major changes to the charter, which was approved in
October and envisages a federal Iraq with
considerable autonomy for the regions.
Sunni Arabs, fearful that will allow the Kurds and
Shi'ites to exploit Iraq's oil reserves,
concentrated in the north and south, want major
amendments.
With Iraqis increasingly entrenched in mutually
fearful sectarian and ethnic camps, the talks
promise to be tough.
But negotiations on the constitution seem like a
distant prospect. The United Iraqi Alliance voted
only on Sunday to nominate incumbent Ibrahim al-Jaafari
as candidate for prime minister, after weeks of
wrangling highlighted divisions.
Reuters
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