By Firas Al Atraqchi
Published in Allvoices.com
When millions of Iraqis head to the polls today (March 7), they will be standing at a crossroads. The decisions they make at the ballot box will determine whether Iraq is to remain in the grip of an extremist, religious culture of political zealotry, or be led by a nationalist and secular government.
All the signs emerging from Iraq seem to indicate that nationalism and secularism may emerge as the winning mantras from the elections. The irony that is not lost on many Iraqis is that the country is struggling to return to a secularism that existed prior to the US invasion.
Two years ago, sitting in a cafe in downtown Aleppo, I listened to a group of Iraqi exiles who fled the surge in violence in 2006 as they of their hopes for their country.
It was a motley crew of artists, journalists, former soldiers who served in the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s, and a physical therapist.
There was a sullen, downtrodden mood as the discussion got under way; they appeared resigned to the fact that Iraq had become a bloody mess after the US-led invasion and occupation in 2003 which deposed Saddam HusseinSaddam Hussein [Unlink], the former Baathist president.
They lived in fear, they said, of religious persecution. As none of them were from Baghdad but cities and towns with predominantly Sunni populations, they said they mostly feared Al-Qaeda in Iraq and its violent means of enforcing strict Islamic codes.
The artist said he had stopped holding exhibitions of his work after he received threats warning him not to paint men and women and instead turn to Islamic calligraphy. The journalist, meanwhile, said he forced his daughters to don the hijab when news emerged that gunmen had opened fire on a car carrying unveiled women.
Despite their despair, however, they did voice a belief that many Iraqis had tired of the politics of religion turning Iraqi society upside down.
A nation galvanised
On March 7, Iraqis voting at the polls will have the chance to turn their culture right-side up.
These national parliamentary elections - only the second since Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003 - have galvanised the country in ways no one could have predicted just years ago.
For the first time, the polls will be held in all 18 provinces. In the provincial elections in January 2009, the Kurdish regions were left out of the voting process because of Arab-Kurdish-Turkmen disputes over territories such as Kirkuk, which all three ethnic groups claim as their own.
Fearing violence and disruption of the process as a whole, the Iraqi electoral commission postponed elections in Iraqi Kurdistan to July 2009.
Furthermore, the Sunni community, which by and large boycotted the 2005 parliamentary elections, is this time participating in full force. The Sunnis say they have learned from past mistakes. For one, they blame themselves for allowing the Iraqi government to be dominated by Shia religious coalitions.
They also say they were wrong to have sympathized with Al-Qaeda prior to 2005.
In 2006, Al-Qaeda revealed that its agenda was not to fight US occupation, as it declared, but to foment sectarian warfare in Iraq. Al-Qaeda affiliated groups focused on attacking Shia and Sunnis alike. By 2006, Sunni militias changed their tactics, opting to work with US forces and the Baghdad government in their efforts to rout Al-Qaeda groups and end their presence in Iraqi cities.
Fighting Al-Qaeda
It was these Sunni Awakening Council militias which were largely credited for securing Iraq since 2006 - not the Bush [Unlink] administration's military surge, as some media pundits would have you believe.
The success of the Awakening Council militias garnered much-needed political clout for the Sunni community, which had up until then been seen as outside of the political system - or "deadenders" as Donald RumsfeldDonald Rumsfeld [Unlink] once called them.
By 2009, Nouri al-MalikiNouri al-Maliki [Unlink], the Iraqi prime minister, was courting Sunni groups in once hostile Anbar province in western Iraq, for votes. Although he is still seen as largely favouring sectarian politics (a Shia, he was deputy chief of the Islamic Dawa party, headquartered in Iran and Syria), he campaigned then - as he does now - on a nationalistic platform.
His message resonated with voters, who chose him over other Shia religious factions, which had once been his stalwart allies.
In 2005, formerly exiled Shia opposition groups banded together to form the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), which comprised the Islamic Dawa party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Iraqi National Congress, as well as the populist Moqtada Sadr bloc.
Each faction within the Alliance commanded considerable influence as well as strong, well-armed militias. With the Sunnis boycotting the elections, the Alliance swept parliamentary elections in 2005 and won 125 seats. It was followed in number and dominance in the parliament by the Kurdish Alliance, comprising the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
But recent events have not been kind to either the Shia or Kurdish blocs. Iraqis have come to realize that merely opposing Saddam in the years prior to the US invasion, or carrying a religious agenda, since will not necessarily guarantee the formation of a strong and stable government.
They have watched the country slip and become one of the most corrupt in the world.
Government failures
Government corruption has become so rife that virtually no business can be conducted without money exchanging hands under the table. Securing university entrance or even applying for a job requires that someone be bribed to the order of several hundred to several thousand dollars.
Although violence has decreased significantly, Iraqis do not yet feel secure nor do they believe that Iraqi forces are competent enough to prevent large-scale terrorist attacks such as the ones which rocked central Baghdad in October and December last year.
Since the 2005 elections, the Iraqi government has also been faulted for failing to provide its citizens with basic services, chiefly electric power; at full capacity, Iraqi households enjoy no more than 12 hours of electricity a day.
With little reconstruction and few economic prospects, Iraqis have grown disillusioned with their government.
Sensing growing dissatisfaction with his cabinet's performance, Maliki switched tactics and sided with Awakening Council militias in hopes of ensuring that his new nationalistic agenda could secure his position as prime minister.
This led to a falling out with other Shia groups who broke off from the UIA and formed the Iraqi National Alliance. Maliki then formed the State of Law Coalition, with smaller Shia and Sunni groups.
Old alliances crumble, new parties emerge
For the first time since 2005, Shia coalitions will be competing against each other in national elections.
In Iraqi Kurdistan, there was a near mirroring of events. Dissident PUK members splintered from their party and formed Gorran, or "movement for change", which accused the traditionally other dominant Kurdish parties of corruption and lack of transparency.
This has entirely rewritten the rules in Kurdish politics; the PUK and KDP have always dominated the Kurdish political landscape. Now, however, Gorran's entry into the fray means that the Kurdish parties will be fragmented when they contest the national elections on March 7.
This, of course, all plays into the hands of coalitions which are running on a secular and nationalistic agenda.
On Thursday, the Iraqiya Coalition, headed by former prime minister Iyad AllawiIyad Allawi [Unlink], held an outside campaign rally, nearly unprecedented given recent violence. Crossing Shia-Sunni lines and comprising the most powerful Sunni politicians, the Coalition is likely to win a large portion of the Sunni vote. Allawi, a secular Shia who was a senior member of the now-banned Baath party in the 1970s, is seen as a unifying factor.
His determination to ensure that Iraq's neighbours, chiefly Iran, stay out of domestic issues has simultaneously won him support from nationalistic Arabs and raised Tehran's ire.
A few hours before polls opened, Moqtada Sadr, the leader of the now defunct Mahdi militia, surfaced in Tehran and held a news conference in a bid to rouse an electorate that will vote based on clearly-defined religious loyalties. Sadr has not been seen or heard from in Iraq for years; his sudden appearance signals that Iran realizes it may be losing its grip on Iraqi politics and is desperate to maintain some influence in the elections.
Iran has strongly backed the UIA since the 2005 elections; when the UIA dissolved into rival coalitions, Tehran was reported to have sent an emissary who urged the Iraqi Shia parties to re-unite to maximize their gains in the 2010 elections.
Iraq's Shia religious parties realize that they are about lose the absolute dominance they once held over the country, and in particular Baghdad. Even Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Al-Sistani, the highest authority in Shia Islam, has remained quiet during the campaigns and urges other clerics to refrain from backing any candidates. This is a far cry from 2005 when Sistani openly endorsed the UIA.
Who's the boss?
With more than 6200 candidates representing 86 political entities vying for just 325 seats, it is quite difficult to predict who will secure a majority in the next parliament.
But the top contenders appear to be Maliki's State of Law Coalition and Allawi's Iraqiya Coalition. Neither are likely to win an overall majority, which means that a political arrangement will have to be reached in parliament.
This is where it gets tricky.
Iraq's current electoral system seems to indicate there will be no clear winner, in comparison to western-style democracies. The vote tally will determine how parliamentary partnerships are formed and what consensus-building efforts the parties are willing to exert.
The presidency, a largely ceremonial post, is determined by the coalition which wins two-thirds of parliamentary seats. In order to reach the two-thirds figure, fragmented Iraqi parties will have to reach consensus on how to select a president and a government.
A coalition which comes to power may not necessarily include the party which wins the highest number of votes.
Once the president is selected, he will then proceed to call on the coalition which won the most seats to propose a government and put forward a prime minister.
And this is where the Iraqi election's real spectacle lies: the post-voting period will be very critical. There is likely to be in-fighting in existing coalitions and some may break apart with new alliances formed. It is unlikely an Iraqi government will be formed for another three months, leaving the situation volatile for armed groups seeking to take opportunity to sow chaos.
It will also be a time when political groups who lose in the elections could turn to violence in a bid to reverse gains made by their enemies.
Iraqi forces - as well as US strategists - are expecting a temporary spike in violence following the elections and preceding the formation of a new government. US generals say they fear a bloody transition of power, which has left them wondering if US forces can - or should - terminate combat operations and begin withdrawing by September 1, 2010.
In the meantime, Iraq's political system will inevitably mature. If present trends persist, the Arab World's most technocratic, most educated society could also become its most liberal.
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