Iraq’s elections next month are a major fork in the road of the country’s post-election development. One way leads towards increasing stability and political freedom; the other marks the route back to sectarianism and violence.
With US troops due to start withdrawing this year, the March 7 polls are generating a sense of nervous anticipation in Baghdad, a city shaken in recent weeks by a serious of explosions that have killed scores and were seen as a clear attempt to undermine, or at least influence, the democratic process.
Iraq has made much progress in the past two years, away from a civil war that pitted Sunni against Shia and left large swathes of the capital, and the country in general, ethnically “cleansed”.
Nouri al-Maliki, the Shia Prime Minister who came to power after the last elections in 2006, was seen as a weak candidate pushed into office because the main Shia Islamist blocs believed that he would be easy to control.
But Mr al-Maliki has proven a wily player in Iraq’s cut-throat power politics, whose ups and downs have been traditionally reflected in spikes of violence on the streets. Breaking with his sectarian backers, including Iran, Mr al-Maliki led a surprise campaign in 2008 against Shia militiamen in Basra, slashing the power of Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army, while reassuring alienated Sunnis that he wanted to reach across the sectarian divide.
This has left him with few allies, however, and the lingering fears of sectarianism have recently been reinforced. The inscrutable, but increasingly authoritarian, Iraqi leader has pushed for a number of Sunni rivals to be excluded from the upcoming polls while their past links to Saddam Hussein’s banned Baath party are investigated — even though many held seats in the outgoing Parliament.
The sidelined Sunnis have decried the move as an attempt by the Government to subvert the election and cling to power. Some said that the move was a way of concentrating on the crimes of the previous regime while glossing over the record of members of the current Government during the civil war, when police joined death squads and when murder, torture and rape once again occurred in Iraq’s jails.
The issue became so grave, with Sunnis threatening a repeat of previous, disastrous election boycotts, that Joe Biden, the US Vice-President, flew out to propose a compromise whereby candidates could be investigated if necessary after the elections. A panel of judges then overturned the ban — and the Iraq Government called the panel’s ruling illegal.
The stand-off does not bode well for a country where the security gains of recent years are seen by a deeply traumatised population as fragile and reversible. The streets are filled with heavily armed security forces but suicide bombers manage to negotiate multiple checkpoints with ease.
Many analysts are unsure as to who will emerge victorious from the elections, some touting the pro-Western former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, others believing that Mr al-Maliki may be able to pull together enough backing for a second term.
Waiting in the wings are the Shia Islamist blocs the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the Sadrists, with the former hoping that they can clinch the prime minister’s office.
Whichever bloc emerges with the most seats in Parliament will have to form a government from the disparate elements. If Sunni parties are once again sidelined many fear a resurgence of violence just as America switches its focus, both militarily and diplomatically, from Iraq to Afghanistan. Few believe that Iraq is out of the woods yet.
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