Iraq's Election: What to Watch For

The following is an election guide to Saturday's provincial elections in Iraq. Tomorrow and Friday I will report on interviews with two spokesmen for opposing sides of the vote.

On Saturday, January 31, Iraq will conduct its first elections since 2005, when Iraqis went to the polls to select both their national parliament and provincial councils. This time, the election will decide only the provincial councils in 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Still, the election is likely to be a turning point for Iraq. Which way it turns -- toward greater democracy, or toward further instability and a return of violent resistance -- depends on what happens on Saturday.

It's not a pretty picture. The elections promise to be marred by violence, fraud, intimidation, vote-buying and bribery, bloc voting by tribes and ethnic constituencies, and undue influence by Shiite clerics.

If things don't go smoothly, and if the elections don't result in gains for parties that were shut out of the political process in 2005 -- especially among Iraq's disenfranchised Sunni bloc -- then it's very likely that violence will increase once again. It's even possible that many Sunnis will return to armed resistance, and some of them will rejoin Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Viewed most broadly, the election is a test of the ability of Iraq's ruling coalition to cling to power despite having presided over a catastrophic collapse of Iraq's economy, social services, and utilities, and despite widespread public perceptions that the ruling parties are guilty of vast corruption, mismanagement, and rule by paramilitary force through party militias. The four ruling parties are the two Shiite fundamentalist religious parties, the Islamic Dawa party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), and the two Kurdish separatist parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). According to many sources I've interviewed, including Iraqis involved in the elections, large numbers of Iraqis view all four ruling parties with disdain. They are blamed for their inability to provide basic services such as electricity, health care, fuel, water, and trash collection, all of which are intermittent at best and nonexistent at worst. They are blamed for their mismanagement of the economy, and especially Iraq's oil, and for the unemployment rate that is estimated at 50 percent. Under ordinary circumstances, all four parties would suffer massive repudiation at the polls. But these are not ordinary circumstances.

The election is also seen as a referendum of sorts on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose Dawa party is a powerful player in Saturday's vote. Although Maliki's Dawa has split and split again -- it is down to a miniscule six seats in the 275-member parliament, after schisms -- it benefits from Maliki's heavyhanded use of political power as prime minister. Despite Dawa's history as a secretive, cell-based and cult-like religious movement with obscurantist Shiite views, Maliki is drawing electoral support from Iraqis who view him as a strongman, sort of a Saddam-lite ruler, and he has recast himself as a nationalist. He's built a fiefdom in the Iraqi army, shifting and reappointing generals who support him, in a naked effort to turn the army into Dawa's private militia. He's used a pair of security organizations that report directly to the prime minister's office to carry out arrests and intimidation of rival politicians and parties, especially against Muqtada al-Sadr's allies. He's constructed paramilitary "tribal councils" in provinces all over Iraq, lavishing tens of millions of dollars in government funding on these organizations, which are in fact nothing more than outright arms of Maliki's office. And he's using the Iraqi government's state-owned media openly on his behalf.

Here's what to watch for on Saturday:

First, can the religious parties hold on? According to many accounts, liberal, nationalist, and secular Iraqis believe that the population at large is disenchanted with Dawa, ISCI and the Sadrists. Will that result in gains for parties of a distinctly secular approach, especially the party led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite who has broad appeal to many nationalists and Sunnis? Or will the built-in advantages of Dawa and ISCI, who control the media and the government, allow them to continue as dominant forces?

Second, will the Sunnis gain power in the provinces where they are either dominant or strong? In 2005, the Sunnis boycotted the vote, and only about 2 percent of Sunni Arabs voted at all. That led to a victory for the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), a fundamentalist religious party of Sunnis tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2009, many analysts expect that the IIP will be decimated. Since 2003, the IIP has cooperated with the United States and with the Kurdish-Shiite ruling alliance, so if the IIP is knocked out, expect a more militant, more nationalist force to take its place. Many of the former resistance groups, the Awakening movement, and Sunni tribal parties have formed parties for the Jan. 31 election.

Key battles will be in Mosul, capital of Nineveh province in the north; in Baghdad, the capital and a province of its own, with nearly one-fourth of Iraq's population; and Diyala province, a mixed area northeast of Baghdad.

In Nineveh province, because the Sunnis boycotted the last vote, the provincial council is controlled overwhelmingly by Kurds, who are a small minority in Nineveh, confined to eastern Mosul city. The Kurds are angling to suppress the Sunni vote, and they've even armed a Christian militia. By all accounts, though, the Sunnis ought to seize control of Nineveh. If they don't, an angry and violent resistance movement is likely to emerge in the north.

In Baghdad province, now controlled by ISCI and Dawa, there's a chance that nationalist parties, Sunnis, and secular parties can win a large number seats on Baghdad's 57-seat council, and if they make the right alliances -- say, with Sadrists -- they could oust ISCI and Dawa in the heart of the country. But Baghdad has been ethnically cleansed, and many Sunnis have been displaced. It's not clear if displaced Iraqis will be allowed to vote, or if so, for whom. If the Shiite religious parties maintain control of Baghdad, again it's possible that there will be a violent reaction from former insurgents and elements of the Awakening movement.

In Diyala province, where Sunnis and Shiites are more balanced, the outcome up for grabs. Sunni and Shiite enclaves are walled off, violence is endemic, candidates can't easily campaign or promote their parties, and the results will make no one happy. It's a tinderbox.

There is also the question of outside support. Iran is undoubtedly pouring money into support for its allies, including ISCI. To a lesser degree, Saudi Arabia is probably supporting some Sunni parties and possibly some secular parties as well. Turkey is suspected of backing the IIP. And it's hard to believe that the CIA isn't giving cash to back favored candidates.

Meanwhile, the election will be incomplete because there is no vote in disputed Tamim province, whose capital of KIrkuk is claimed by expansionist Kurds. The problem in Kirkuk is so explosive that the Iraqi government decided to put off elections there altogether. And there are no provincial elections in the three Kurdish provinces in the north, which are increasingly seen as part of a separatist, independence-minded zone -- something that both Sunni and Shiite Arabs reject.

Comments (22)

1. "It's not a pretty picture. The elections promise to be marred by violence, fraud, intimidation, vote-buying and bribery, bloc voting by tribes and ethnic constituencies, and undue influence by Shiite clerics."

   No, no, no, no, Mr Dreyfuss....as PONTI has told us...

   "we won in Iraq"...everything's fine...except for a few glitches.

   Posted by Mask at 01/28/2009 @ 2:49pm

2. Thanks for the fine post Mr. Dreyfuss and, in general, for work that you do here at The Nation.

   I'd like to add valuable links to a couple of pieces by the bold, and intrepid Norman Finkelstein, and Ross Mokhiber --of the DC based Corporate Crime Reporter:

   Foiling Another Palestinian "Peace Offensive" By NORMAN FINKELSTEIN

   Early speculation on the motive behind Israel's slaughter in Gaza that began on 27 December 2008 and continued till 18 January 2009 centered on the upcoming elections in Israel. The jockeying for votes was no doubt a factor in this Sparta-like society consumed by "revenge and the thirst for blood," where killing Arabs is a sure crowd-pleaser. (Polls during the war showed that 80-90 percent of Israeli Jews supported it.) But as Israeli journalist Gideon Levy pointed out on Democracy Now!, "Israel went through a very similar war…two-and-a-half years ago [in Lebanon], when there were no elections." When crucial state interests are at stake, Israeli ruling elites seldom launch major operations for narrowly electoral gains......

   The rest: tinyurl.com/affvsy

   Mokhiber:

   tinyurl.com/as3eev

   Just food for thought in an American media wasteland.

   Posted by b_kool_66 at 01/28/2009 @ 3:25pm

3. Here's another (brief), but succint analytical piece:

   Barack Obama's new Middle East peace envoy, George Mitchell, arrives in Israel today charged with working towards an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. But the expected victory of the right in the Israeli election on February 10 may doom his efforts from the outset.

   Benjamin Netanyahu, who did much to bury the Oslo peace accords when he was last prime minister in 1996-99, will almost inevitably be the next prime minister, according to the latest opinion polls. His right-wing Likud party is likely to be the largest party, and the right-wing bloc of extreme religious and nationalist parties is likely to have a majority in the Israeli parliament. Mr Netanyahu would probably have won without the war in Gaza, but the conflict has shifted Israelis significantly to the right. "Prior to the war there was already disillusionment with negotiations and the peace process," says Galia Golan, political science professor at the Interdisciplinary Centre at Herzliya, near Tel Aviv. "Patriotism and nationalism were whipped up as never before by the media who treated the war as if it was one of the wars when we were really under attack."

   Benefiting from this jingoism, the biggest winner in the election is likely to be the super-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party of Avigdor Lieberman with its generalized anti-Arab racism. A likely coalition partner of Mr Netanyahu, Mr Lieberman recently suggested that Israeli-Arab MPs be treated like Hamas. "Ideas that nobody would have dared to let cross their lips 10 or 20 years ago, lest they be thought utter fascists, have been bolstered in recent months by the war in the south," lamented the daily Haaretz....

   Final paragraphs: tinyurl.com/afenfn

   ~Patrick Cockburn @ Counterpunch

   Posted by b_kool_66 at 01/28/2009 @ 3:48pm

4. I thought we had won in Iraq..Bush and Cheney seemed to think we had what about all those hearts and minds we won? What happened to that election day when they showed us all the blue finger marks and that was going to change the world apparently!!!!! Iraq was and still is a fiasco, bring those troops home every last one they never had a "mission to accomplish" in the beginning it was just a farce.

   Posted by Caj at 01/28/2009 @ 4:23pm

5. except your fingers are brown.

   (just kidding.)

   Posted by frosty zoom at 01/28/2009 @ 4:37pm

6. Oh Frosty you are a comedian!

   Posted by Caj at 01/28/2009 @ 6:32pm

7. Wow

   Posted by Thrawn at 01/28/2009 @ 6:53pm

8. The elections promise to be marred by violence, fraud, intimidation, vote-buying and bribery, bloc voting by tribes and ethnic constituencies, and undue influence by Shiite clerics."

   Why, that sounds almost like an American election.

   Posted by lvliberty1 at 01/28/2009 @ 4:14pm | ignore this person | warn this person

   Its how Obamanation won, so why would leftist be against this? I guess it is okay here, but not there since it might give evidence to the very credible fact that the Hon. Pres. G.W.Bush was RIGHT about Iraq and the Undemocrats and leftists were WRONG!

   Posted by comancheamerican at 01/28/2009 @ 7:41pm

9. Lets wait until after 31st to see if Dreyfus is even in the ball park. He was wrong on Basra and the surge (see below) and a little bit of checking indicates he rarely gets it right on Iraq. That's the problem with analysts/commentators who not only shape information to feed their prejudices but introduce shonky and poorly validated information. Like Mask, Robert badly needs to win a few in light of the following two non-winners:

   The Surge to Nowhere

   Traveling the Planet Neocon Road to Baghdad (Again)

   TOM DISPATCH

   posted January 04, 2007 10:33 am

   By Robert Dreyfuss

   ....."That's scary, if it means that Bush -- presumably on the advice of the Neocon-in-Chief, Vice President Dick Cheney -- has decided to launch a major push, Kagan-style, for victory in Iraq. Not that such an escalation has a chance of working, but there's no question that, in addition to bankrupting the United States, breaking the army and the Marines, and unleashing all-out political warfare at home, it would kill perhaps tens of thousands more Iraqis....."

   Or

   Posted on March 26, 2008 10:35 AM

   From the Dreyfuss Report

   (Robert got this one horribly wrong also this was when and where Maliki turned on his own star surge act to almost rival Bush's effort)

   It's getting ugly in Basra and southern Iraq, and it could trigger a broader showdown between the Mahdi Army and SCIRI, in advance of provincial elections this year that SCIRI will lose, and heavily. For background, check out (1) my recent article in The Nation on Iran, SCIRI, and Sadr, (2) Reidar Visser's indispensable site, and (3) the comprehensive reports from the International Crisis Group, Joost Hiltermann, and Peter Harling, here and here.

   That's what happens Mask when you read uncritically. Sort of no scoreboard credibility.

   Posted by lrjones4 at 01/28/2009 @ 8:43pm

10. BTW I think Robert Dreyfus is always worth a read because, though I may not always agree with his outcome scenarios, he does give a broad range of info from a variety of sources. Incidentally I read the bit about Maliki's "special units" in the WP a few days ago. I thought of the very large security detail that you have to provide security for your president and it did occur to me that Maliki was entitled to similar protection from the Iraqi equivalent of your American loonies etc. In Aus our PM gets around like every other citizen without all those G-men, so I notice the hypocrisy a bit more than you Americans probably would.

    Posted by lrjones4 at 01/28/2009 @ 9:08pm

11. "West Germany in 1950"

    "Japan in 1950"

    "Iraq in 2009"

    Now...which one sounds like it's five years later and "we won the war"?

    You can pick 2.....heheh

    Posted by Mask at 01/28/2009 @ 10:09pm

12. Posted by comancheamerican at 01/28/2009 @ 7:41pm

    Oh really?

    I seem to remember being told the "war" would last 6 months and cost 50 billion dollars.

    And that there were weapons of mass destruction.

    Do we really need to go over AGAIN, how they were wrong and why?

    Posted by TexasFlood at 01/28/2009 @ 10:42pm

13. Mask you are right! We should have either dropped 100KT on Iraq or bombed all their cities to dust and declared another victory!

    Posted by comancheamerican at 01/28/2009 @ 10:44pm

14. What is it about Comanche that says to me he spends his night watching informercials, and spending copious amounts of money on hair removal treatments and sham-wows?

    He's such an easy sell.

    Posted by TexasFlood at 01/28/2009 @ 10:44pm

15. Is it fun being gullible?

    Posted by TexasFlood at 01/28/2009 @ 10:45pm

16. Mask you are right! We should have either dropped 100KT on Iraq or bombed all their cities to dust and declared another victory!

    Posted by comancheamerican at 01/28/2009 @ 10:44pm

    Well I can only hope you experience having your family blown up into itsy bitsy pieces.

    Give you a good dose of what we in the thinking world call "perspective".

    Look it up.

    Posted by TexasFlood at 01/28/2009 @ 10:50pm

17. There will be some real change in this eleciton, and some not. In the south, Dawa will take seats from the Supreme Council. Sadr will probably do badly. In the north, the Sunnis, led by the Islamic Party will gain seats from the Kurds and the Supreme Council in Diyala. In the west, the Awakening tribes will get seats, but the Islamic Party has split them so it'll be shared rule. Mostly it will be one part of the ruling coalition behind Maliki giving way to another part of the alliance. The wildcards are the two former prime ministers Allawi and Jaafari who could pick up some unexpected seats because they're doing well in Iraqi polling, but beinc almost completely ignored by the Western media. All the small newer parties won't do well becuse they need to garner votes across the entire province to gain seasts and they aren't known, nor have the money or organization to do that. Here's the big question however, there's over 14,000 candidates, how many are actually known? Are they competent? In 2005 voters picked parties and they got to pick the politicians. This time people can pick politicians, but they seem to be sticking with the major ones like Maliki's list because they kow him, rather than the actual candidates. Doesn't seem a good way to get qualified officials. For more see: musingsoniraq.blogspot.com

    Posted by motown67 at 01/28/2009 @ 11:22pm

18. Posted by TexasFlood at 01/28/2009 @ 10:44pm | Posted by TexasFlood at 01/28/2009 @ 10:45pm Posted by TexasFlood at 01/28/2009 @ 10:50pm

    Deep thoughts for such a shallow mind.

    Posted by comancheamerican at 01/28/2009 @ 11:37pm

19. "I thought of the very large security detail that you have to provide security for your president and it did occur to me that Maliki was entitled to similar protection from the Iraqi equivalent of your American loonies etc."

    The Secret Service doesn't go around conducting purges of the FBI.

    Posted by brunowe at 01/29/2009 @ 04:11am

20. Posted by comancheamerican at 01/28/2009 @ 10:44pm

    See, with you? It's hard to tell if you're being sarcastic...or really meant that.

    Posted by Mask at 01/29/2009 @ 08:59am

21. I thought we had won in Iraq...

    Posted by Caj at 01/28/2009 @ 4:23p

    Well, first of all, I don't know if you've heard, but Saddam was captured, tried, and executed. So, yeah, we won.

    Secondly, I don't know if you've heard, but they are having elections in Iraq. Now, unless Saddam (who's dead) wins 99.9% of the vote AGAIN, I'd speculate that these are REAL elections, where the people care and beleive that their vote matters. So, yeah, we won.

    Posted by Darin_the_Big_Fat_Troll at 01/29/2009 @ 1:57pm

22. Do we really need to go over AGAIN, how they were wrong and why?

    Posted by TexasFlood at 01/28/2009 @ 10:42pm

    Columbus was wrong about finding India. That doesn't mean he was wrong to try.

    Posted by Darin_the_Big_Fat_Troll at 01/29/2009 @ 2:00pm