Iraq's Provincial Elections

The long-awaited Iraqi provincial elections will take place on January 31st, just a week-and-a-half after President-elect Obama takes office.  These are not elections for seats in the Iraqi parliament -- parliamentary elections will happen, or should happen, in December 2009 -- but rather for seats on the councils of fourteen of the eighteen Iraqi provinces.  (As for the remainder, the Kurds will vote for their provinces when the Kurdistan National Assembly wants to, and Kirkuk is not voting until its status is resolved.)  

More than anything, the provincial elections will clarify the lay of the political landscape.  The Sunnis boycotted the first provincial elections in 2005, so their views are to some extent unknown, and it is not clear in general how much popular support the various political parties have in Iraq.  Further, the provincial elections constitute the beginning of a referendum on the job Prime Minister Maliki has performed (to be completed in the December parliamentary elections).  Maliki has done a surprisingly good -- even masterful -- job of sidelining his political opponents through political manipulation and thuggery (perhaps most brazenly by setting up "tribal councils" around Iraq, loyal to him, to dilute the autonomy of local governments), but in a way that leaves it foggy just how he'll do when put to a vote from the people.  He's seen as a dictator by some in Iraq, benevolent or otherwise.

If it turns out that the major political parties, (Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party, and the rival, also Shia, Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council party) get trounced in the local elections in a few days, the resulting year in Iraq could be very odd indeed.  A parliament hollow of popular support would have to trundle on for another year.  If the SIIC trounces Dawa, that would seem to put Maliki in a desperate spot -- or rather, a more desperate spot, as it was never exactly comfy -- and as a result one would expect . . . who knows?  He might become more nationalist, he might lean more to Iran.  He would probably, in any event turn, up the volume on his recent denuciations of Israel.  And he might return to violent crackdowns (by reputation, Dawa favors strong central government while the SIIC favors decentralization).

As a picture of what all of this looks like right now to the average Iraqi, try this image on for size:

On the blast walls lining the main pilgrimage routes from Baghdad to the southern city of Karbala, religious banners commemorating the massacre of Hussein, the murdered grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, competed with posters on which the main Shiite parties advertised their piety.

I think about those blast walls covered with political ads; I try to get my head around what it would be like to be an Iraqi citizen walking past them.  In American film and fiction, the resources for imagination tend to the post-apocolyptic -- an election after a nuclear war.  That's the best I can do.  Again:

Iraq's largest graveyard in the holy city of Al-Najaf has been widely used by election campaign managers to promote their candidates.

Correspondents from Radio Free Iraq report that the cemetery walls are covered with candidates' portraits and election posters.

Back to those blast walls:

"Peace be upon you the martyr of Karbala elect the Martyrs of Mihrab and the Independents," said one banner, draped across the walls that snake throughout Baghdad to close off neighborhoods. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq's ballot number, 290, marked the black banner. Pilgrims passed by the sign that referred to their revered martyr, who many say influenced the peaceful acts of India's Mohandas Gandhi, a far cry from the history of their sectarian war.

This is a specifically Shia sentiment.  "The martyr of Karbala" is Husayn ibn Ali, regarded by Shia as an Imam.  As it happens, Sunnis -- who admire Husayn ibn Ali but do not regard him as an Imam -- mark the same day of the year (this year Ashura was January 7th on the Gregorian calandar) for different reasons.

It's not as though the Shia pilgrims don't get that all of this politicking is manipulative:

Basheer Aoun al Anbari, 55, was born in Kadhimiyah. As pilgrims passed his storefront Wednesday weeping for the murdered Hussein and his followers, Anbari cursed politicians for using his religion.

"Under the past regime God cursed us. Now God curses us again," he said. "It upsets us that they use our religion. They did not apply what Imam Hussein symbolizes: justice."

And certainly Sunnis didn't like it much either:

"The messenger of God said: Whoever considers me as his liege (master) then Ali is his liege. I pray to God to uphold those who support him and to let down those who let him down," one banner said, speaking of another of Muhammad's relatives. It was signed in the name of Maliki's party and the party's ballot number, 302.

"Unfortunately it seems that when all is told it is Shiite support Shiite," said Widad Hamid, a Sunni retired high school teacher, reacting to the banner. "I was really going to vote for him."

What is the import of all of this for the U.S. and the incoming Obama Administration?  Well, that's up for debate, but here's my two cents.  For one thing, the fact that this is an electoral year in both Iraq and Iran is going to make the year tricky at best for Secretary of State Clinton and the new NSC.  With provincial elections this month, parliamentary elections in December, and a popular vote to ratify the SOFA in between, Iraq is in for an interesting year.  

As, I hope, merely a side-note, the Senate's stupidity in going out of their way to bullhorn support for Israel's movement into Gaza three weeks before the provincial elections in Iraq isn't going to help.  The politicians in Iraq are going to be falling over themselves to take political advantage, and we can for the moment forget about convincing anyone (or at least the Shia) in Iraq that Iran is their biggest problem.  Relatedly, notice that I managed to write this entire post without even mentioning Muqtada al-Sadr?  Yeah, well . . .

If Maliki keeps up his good poker playing, he'll have a lot of political leverage with the U.S.  If he doesn't, Iraq will be all the more unpredictable, and the pressure from Petraeus and others to not draw down U.S. forces could become intense. At the same time, with all the voting in the air, Iraq's people and therefore its politicians will quite properly be in no mood to take direction from outside.  It will be interesting to see how Obama and Clinton deal with it.

(For a good overview of the domestic political landscape in Iraq right now, see this short piece by Michael Knights at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.  This appears to be a right-wing think tank but the piece by Knights is neutral, near as I can tell, and very informative.)