A
Litmus Test for Iraq
Reidar Visser
January 30,
2009
(Reidar
Visser is a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International
Affairs and editor of the Iraq website http://www.historiae.org.)
Former Iraqi
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari arrived in Basra on January
24. His mission in the southern oil port was to stump for his
Reformist Front, a breakaway faction of the Da‘wa Party of the
current premier, Nouri al-Maliki, ahead of Iraq’s January 31
provincial elections. His itinerary included visits to the Five
Miles area -- often described as a stronghold of the movement
loyal to the young Shi‘i leader Muqtada al-Sadr -- as well as
a rally at a sports stadium. Only days earlier, he had been preceded
by Maliki himself, and in the first days of 2009 numerous other
national politicians trooped to Basra as well.
The barnstorming
of political figures from Baghdad through the country’s various
localities is but one of several ways in which the 2009 provincial
elections differ from the contests of January 2005, the purple-finger
moment that was much celebrated at the time, but in retrospect
was the backdrop to Iraq’s slide into sectarian politics. Western
press reports and governments are likely to focus on statistics
such as the number of violent incidents or the number of parties
running, but the true importance of this round of balloting hides
beneath the surface. To a considerable extent, the results of
the local elections will shed light on the dynamic of Iraqi politics,
namely its degree of progress from an ethno-sectarian model to
a system oriented around ideological issues and candidate qualifications.
The results will also set the stage for even more important events
on the Iraqi political calendar, the choice of a new parliamentary
speaker and the national elections scheduled for December.
THE SILENT
REVOLUTION
Participation
in the 2009 provincial elections is far more extensive than in
2005. In 2005, most Sunni Arabs, answering the calls of communal
leaders for a boycott or fearing insurgent attacks, abstained
from the voting, and only one party with an explicit “Sunni”
profile, the Iraqi Islamic Party, ran candidates. This time,
the Iraqi Islamic Party will face challenges from numerous political
forces originating in Sunni Arab circles. Sunni Arab participation
will likely also contribute to dramatic changes in the Diyala,
Salah al-Din and Nineveh governorates east and north of Baghdad,
where, due to the boycott, Kurds and Shi‘i Islamists wound up
in control of provincial councils despite their status as minorities.
It is sometimes maintained that another difference from 2005
is the absence of Shi‘i Islamist unity. But with the exception
of the province of Wasit east of Baghdad, there was no Shi‘i
coalition in local politics in 2005 similar to the United Iraqi
Alliance in the national elections. Intra-Shi‘i competition did
take place, and in certain areas, it was fierce. In Basra, for
instance, the Fadhila Party raised the slogan “made in Iraq”
against its Islamist competitors with a past in Iran. The real
difference in 2009 is that overall participation is wider, with
the Sadrists supporting two lists (in addition to “independents”
in some areas), and with Da‘wa now a more prominent player, having
drawn a brighter line between itself and the Islamic Supreme
Council of Iraq.
Hence the
second salient feature of the 2009 elections: greater competition
centered on issues and candidates. Partners in Green Zone government
since 2006, Da‘wa and the Supreme Council have developed significant
disagreements over the past year about the basic political system
of Iraq. Emboldened by his improved standing in the eyes of many
Iraqis after the military operations in Basra and ‘Amara in 2008,
Maliki, along with independent Shi‘i allies, is increasingly
reverting to an Iraqi nationalist discourse that includes a tough
stand on issues relating to Kurdistan, tentative moves away from
sectarianism and hardline Islamism, and, most notably, centralism
-- the wish for a strong Baghdad government able to resist further
devolution of the capital’s powers to the periphery. By the terms
of the Iraqi constitution passed in October 2005, every province
save Baghdad has the right to hold a referendum on becoming a
“federal region” with significant autonomy from central government
and/or to band together with other provinces in such a region.
(The three majority-Kurdish provinces of the north were recognized
as a federal region in the 2005 constitution.) Together with
the Supreme Council, the Kurdish parties have pushed for an expansive
agenda of provincial powers at the expense of the center, and
this strong federalist program once seemed the wave of the future.
Today, the idea of “re-centralization” has reached the point
where the oil minister, Husayn al-Shahristani, has suggested
that “the Baghdad government may have no alternative but to revert
to the laws of Saddam in order to increase its production.”[1] The
Sadrists, for their part, stress themes of Iraqi nationalism
and professionalism, with a Basra representative going so far
as to tell a news agency that Sadrists will not vote for established
parties or those campaigning under religious or ethnic banners.
Conversely, the Supreme Council is still approaching these elections
in the spirit of 2005, with appeals to Shi‘i religious solidarity
and a general push for decentralization (even if specific propaganda
for its ideas about a Shi‘i super-province in the south of Iraq
is now far rarer). Both the Supreme Council and Da‘wa are bullish
about their chances in governorates south of Baghdad.
Maliki’s attempts
to play the centralist card reflect something of a silent revolution
in Iraqi politics between 2006 and 2008: a reversion to issue-oriented,
cross-sectarian politics. It should be stressed that this reversion
is an internal Iraqi trend that has little to do with the US
“surge.” In fact, US policies have generally continued to embody
support for a “mosaic” model of ethno-sectarian balance. The
new phenomenon has been spearheaded by a loose coalition of opposition
parliamentarians, known as the “July 22 bloc” because it first
emerged during the July 22, 2008 vote on the provincial elections
law. The July 22 bloc has a “coordinating committee” and is composed
of Shi‘i Islamists from Fadhila and the Sadrist movement, secularists
from the National Dialogue Front and the al-Iraqiyya faction
of former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, and members of
the Sunni-identified Tawafuq grouping who dislike the sectarian
orientation of its leading politicians. In the debate over the
provincial elections law, the July 22 bloc tangled with the Kurds
and the Supreme Council over the arrangements that would govern
elections in the disputed city of Kirkuk. The dispute was unresolved,
and there will be no elections in the Ta’mim province where Kirkuk
is located. Away from Kirkuk, the frequent attacks by the July
22 parties on the concept of ethno-sectarian quotas in national
politics, suggest that their goal is deeper reform of the political
system in Iraq, possibly in the shape of a revised constitution.[2] Importantly,
on some issues, Maliki and his Da‘wa supporters have sided with
the opposition against the Supreme Council and the Kurdish parties,
suggesting that there is potential for a breakup of Maliki’s
coalition and even a change in government. Of course, Maliki
has a difficult balancing act, as he himself came under Iraqi
nationalist pressure from Sunnis and Shi‘a alike after security
staff mistreated Muntadhar al-Zaydi, the journalist who greeted
former President George W. Bush with his two shoes. If Maliki’s
steps in the direction of centralism are to have a lasting impact
and mark a definitive break with Iran, they will need to be anchored
in institutional reform and constitutional revision rather than
in flowery rhetoric.
THE ELECTIONS
FRAMEWORK
To what extent
this more mature kind of politics will be reflected in voter
behavior on January 31 is unclear, however. First, it is important
to remember that in Iraq, as elsewhere, all politics is local.
Given the sectarian demography of the country, accentuated by
the “sectarian cleansing” of the civil war, it would not be unusual
for areas with large Shi‘i majorities to cast their ballots for
Shi‘i-identified councillors. And vice versa for Sunni Arabs.
The electoral
system -- proportional representation within each governorate
-- was supposed to be more “open” in 2009, in the sense that
there would be a greater possibility for voters to influence
the race by using their one vote either for an individual placed
far down on a party list or by voting for candidates running
as individuals (technically these are one-person lists). In practice,
though, the choices will be limited because the Iraqi elections
commission has decided not to print full party lists for distribution
to voters, which means that those who wish to rank certain candidates
higher than others will have to consult a grand table of correspondence
in the polling station. Voters’ rankings will be undercut, in
any event, because within the multi-member party lists that win
seats, the elections commission will promote female candidates
regardless of their vote tallies in order to achieve 25 percent
women’s representation on the provincial councils. (The “closed
list” advocates, the Kurds and the Supreme Council, actively
used the gender quota as an argument against greater openness.)
Counting rules, too, favor the established parties, because surplus
votes for an individual candidate who has secured election are
wasted, whereas those accruing to a party list will accumulate
and benefit another candidate on that list. This is another reason
why the change from 2005 may not be as marked as some have hoped.
Concerns about
the overall transparency of the Iraqi political system persist.
As has happened before, the media outlet of the Iraqi parliament
simply suspended broadcasts of its daily proceedings in the wake
of the controversial resignation of Speaker of Parliament Mahmoud
al-Mashhadani in late December 2008, so that more than one month
later, the number of parliamentarians who backed this fateful
decision (which leaves the parliament unable to conduct its normal
business) remains unknown to the public. Similarly, while the
Iraqi elections commission claims it has booked numerous “independent”
observers to monitor the upcoming election, its handling of the
Basra federalism initiative in January did not instill confidence.
It is perfectly clear that the initiative failed, but the exact
number of signatures gathered in support remained unknown one
week after the formal end of the initiative, and the elections
commission chose instead to publish two NGO reports full of praise
for the commission and extolling the “triumph for democracy”
that the Basra exercise represented. On the bright side, the
Iraqi security apparatus is not a reliable tool of electoral
manipulation, because the parties influential therein are themselves
divided, with Da‘wa seeking inroads into Supreme Council and
Kurdish fiefdoms in many governorates. This fact in itself probably
creates a greater likelihood for diversity than in 2005.
Then there
are those parties that prefer a 2005-like atmosphere for the
elections, such as the Supreme Council and the Kurdish parties.
Despite crystal-clear messages from the senior Shi‘i religious
leadership that they support no particular party as well as limits
on religious propaganda in the elections law adopted in September
2008, the Supreme Council has nevertheless tried to present itself
as a party with special ties to the clergy, in addition to encouraging
votes for the bigger, established entities.[3] Moreover, in early 2009, after
Husayn al-Shami (a Shi‘i activist who has links to Da‘wa and
is considered to be close to Nouri al-Maliki) ventured some critical
remarks about Shi‘i rituals during Muharram, the month of the
Islamic calendar when Shi‘i Muslims commemorate the death of
Imam Husayn, the Supreme Council saw a opportunity to distinguish
itself as the defender of “Shi‘i” interests. “Husayni rites”
are complicated territory; in the past, many leading scholars
have warned against aspects of them, such as self-flagellation.
Even Sistani, supposedly the Supreme Council’s point of reference
on such issues (as they themselves are not clerics qualified
to render judgment), has issued reservations about violent self-flagellation.
But the Supreme Council immediately confirmed their support for
the rituals, thereby opening a rift in the Shi‘i community comparable
in character if not in scope and intensity to a dispute in the
1920s when prominent scholars of Iranian and Lebanese origin
warned against the same kind of practices.[4] Although Maliki, according to some reports,[5] relapsed
into a religious Shi‘i agenda during Muharram, he is clearly
on the defensive in the face of accusations of “abandoning” the
Shi‘i cause, and has attacked the Supreme Council for exploiting
the issue. And in Shi‘i religious circles, there has been an
outburst of sectarian agitation denouncing “the enemies of the
cause of Husayn,” criticizing Maliki for alleged rapprochement
with Baathists and declaring that Shi‘a should “not vote for
anyone who does not serve and love Husayn.”[6] In
2005, it was the Supreme Council that took the lead in branding
Iyad Allawi as a neo-Baathist. As for the Kurdish parties, they
have made attempts to delay the elections in Mosul and Diyala
on procedural grounds, so that they could retain their high degree
of influence established in 2005.[7]
THE INTERNATIONAL
DIMENSION
To what extent
Nouri al-Maliki will succeed in planting himself at the center
of Iraqi politics remains to be seen. There are non-partisan
polls, such as one from the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic
Studies in October 2008, that clearly show greater admiration
for Maliki than for other Iraqi politicians (with the two former
premiers, Allawi and Jaafari, often second and third) and it
seems very likely that some of the successes of the ethno-federalist
forces in 2005 will be reversed, even if the well-organized Supreme
Council may well benefit from strong party loyalties in certain
constituencies that are not reflected in polling. Iraqi nationalism
remains strong. In the same October 2008 poll, 69.8 percent of
respondents identified themselves as “Iraqis,” 10.8 percent self-identified
in ethnic terms and 6.2 percent referred to sects.
But the significance
of Maliki’s outreach to the July 22 bloc and its ilk will not
be clear until after the elections, when a new parliamentary
speaker will be selected, and Maliki will be able to push constitutional
reform prior to parliamentary elections in December. Iran is
probably backing many horses on the Shi'i side, including
some flirting with the July 22 bloc, which is why institutional
change and constitutional reform alone will convince skeptical
Iraqis of the sincerity of Maliki’s apparent turn to centralism.
The composition of his electoral coalition for January 31 --
mostly Shi‘i Islamists -- suggests that he has not made decisive
moves beyond traditional Da‘wa territory in terms of partners.
On January 12, while rejecting party quotas, Da‘wa figures ‘Ali
al-Adib and Kamal al-Saadi still spoke of sectarian quotas.[8] And
why is Maliki’s list not running in Anbar, the quintessentially
“Sunni” province of Iraq, if its goal is to represent all Iraqis
instead of more wheeling and dealing among political elites?
To Maliki’s credit, the attempts to circumscribe the use of religious
symbols in the first drafts of the elections law probably would
not have progressed at all without a green light from him. Similarly,
there are now more uncertainties connected with the interpretation
of Supreme Council successes: In areas outside Najaf, the Supreme
Council’s political rhetoric has lately been less focused on
specific federal schemes and more aimed at strengthening the
existing governorates vis-à-vis the center.
In this context,
it cannot escape notice that the United States and Iran are perceived
by Iraqis to be on the same side in the struggle. When the name
of Iyad al-Samarra’i of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party was floated
as a successor to Mashaddani as speaker, al-Sharqiyya television
spread a rumor that he had been to Iran to be anointed as the
new “Sunni” face of the Green Zone coalition headed by Iran’s
oldest friend in Iraq, the Supreme Council, and their Kurdish
partners. (The rumor has been denied by sources close to al-Samarra’i,
who say he was in Britain on holiday with his family.) Iranian
think tanks, for their part, make no bones about their preference
for identity-based politics in Iraq at the expense of Iraqi nationalism.[9] At
the same time, US officials in Baghdad have told the Washington
Post that they are counting members of Maliki’s coalition
who are ready to oust the premier (when, for the first time,
he seems to be moving in the direction of what the Iraqi people
want).[10] Other American analysts claim
that “a functioning, Shiite-dominated Iraqi government with its
sectarian blocs in check serves both American and Iranian objectives”[11] and
speak of “the willingness of Sunni and Shiite leaders to establish
and maintain order in their communities,”[12] as if we were still in 2006,
or perhaps in the days of the Raj in India.
On January
23, the Supreme Council’s Sadr al-Din al-Qabbanji, a staunch
Khomeinist who has been on Iran’s payroll for decades, jubilantly
announced during Friday prayers in Najaf that the rhetoric of
President Barack Obama signals the end of US dominance in Iraq.[13] This may be the case, but to
what extent the US will be replaced by Iranian hegemony is something
Iraqi voters will have to wait until the national elections slated
for December to decide on. Only then is there likely to be a
debate about the true fundamentals of Iraqi politics and a possibility
for Iraqis to liberate themselves from the shackles of the sectarian
logic that both Iran and the US have chosen as their preferred
framework for influencing the politics of the country.
-----
CORRECTION:
Due to an editor's error, the initial version of this article
wrongly stated that Iran is backing parties that are formally
part of the July 22 bloc. Iran likely backs parties that are friendly
with the July 22 bloc, but they are not bloc members. We regret
the error.
[1] Al-Sharq
al-Awsat, September 20, 2008.
[2] As
early as October 2007, Fadhila leaders criticized the “four-party
alliance” (the Kurdish parties, the Supreme Council and Da‘wa)
and presented as an alternative “national reconciliation…including
those forces that remain outside the parliament.” Aswat al-Iraq,
October 27, 2007. Most of the July 22 parties signed onto an
explicit critique of ethno-sectarian quotas in a Fadhila press
release around the provincial elections law debate.
[3] Aswat
al-Iraq, January 3, 2009.
[4] Werner
Ende, “The Flagellations of Muharram and the Shiite Ulama,” Der
Islam 55 (1978).
[5] McClatchy,
January 8, 2009.
[6] Buratha
News, January 13, 2009.
[7] Aswat
al-Iraq, December 8, 2008.
[8] Aswat
al-Iraq, January 12, 2009.
[9] See,
for instance, Kayhan Barzegar, The Shia Factor in Iran’s Foreign
Policy (Tehran: Center for Strategic Research, November 2008).
[10] Washington
Post, January 19, 2009.
[11] Ray
Takeyh, “What Iran Wants,” Washington Post, December 29,
2008.
[12] Richard
Haass and Martin Indyk, ”Beyond Iraq: A New US Strategy for the
Middle East,” Foreign Affairs (January/February 2009).
[13] Aswat
al-Iraq, January 23, 2009.
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