Iraq's Election: What to Watch For

The following is an election guide to Saturday's provincial
elections in Iraq. Thursday 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.