The partial returns from Iraq

Partial returns are beginning to come in on the parliamentary elections in Iraq and, as should surprise nobody, Sunnis are not happy:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – Sunni Arabs on Tuesday challenged partial returns from Iraq’s parliamentary elections, calling them a “falsification of the will of the people” and saying evidence of fraud was abundant.

Iraq’s election commission, meanwhile, said final results won’t be ready before early January, instead of late December, in order to complete the investigation into various complaints. Commission official Farid Ayar said more than 1,000 complaints had been received, describing 20 as “very serious,” but refusing to elaborate.

“We are studying all of them, we have two or three committees studying them. They are serious and they may change the results, but I don’t think the complaints will make a big change in the overall result,” he said.

Ayar noted there were more than 33,000 polling stations in Iraq 18 provinces, and “if we have a serious violation at four polling stations, that is not many voters.”

Sunni Arab officials suggested Iraq’s security and stability were at stake if their complaints about the Dec. 15 vote were not addressed. Officials concentrated their protests on results from Baghdad province, the biggest electoral district.

Election officials said the United Iraqi Alliance – a Shiite party – took about 59 percent of the vote from 89 percent of ballot boxes counted in Baghdad province. The Sunni Arab Iraqi Accordance Front received about 19 percent, and the Iraqi National List headed by Ayad Allawi, a secular-minded Shiite, got about 14 percent.

The Iraqi Accordance Front, a coalition of three major Sunni groups, rejected those results, warning of “grave repercussions on security and political stability” if the mistakes were not corrected.

The front said it considered the results “a falsification of the will of the people.”

If no measures are taken, said Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the alliance, “we will demand that the elections be held again in Baghdad. … If this demand is not met, then we will resort to other measures.”

Translation for the impaired:

• Shi’ite Arabs are roughly 60% of the Iraqi population.
• Sunni Arabs are roughly 20% of the Iraqi population.
• Kurds are roughly 20% of the Iraqi population.
• Voters voted along sectarian and ethnic lines.
• The Shi’a lists received votes in proportion to their numbers.
• The Shi’a are mostly not secularists.

The Shi’ite lists should be able to form a government without too much difficulty. This reality explains why the Kurds in the north have pushed so hard for a federal system in Iraq—they anticipated this outcome.

None of the this should be a surprise to anybody: this is just how the demographics in Iraq works out and, so long as Iraqis vote along sectarian and ethnic lines, this result was to be expected. Further, the Sunni Arabs threatening violence if they don’t get their way was also to be expected. There’s no commitment to democracy among them. It’s a means to an end and the end they were apparently hoping for was enough seats to force a coalition government that would have greater interest in their concerns than the government that may emerge is likely to.

Ex-patriate Iraqi Nibras Kazimi of Talisman Gate has solid analysis of the results:

These were the numbers released by Adel Al-Lami of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq in a press conference today. Many people, including myself, are in disbelief. Personally, these numbers translate into no seats, not even compensatory ones, for either Ahmad Chalabi (who I worked with for seven years) or Mithal Al-Alusi (a close friend who I voted for in these elections and the previous ones).

Having had the opportunity of a front-row seat during the INC years, I find it heartbreaking that Chalabi—without whom these elections would have never happened—be so crushed. Al-Alusi, whose bravery and fortitude for the cause of a secular and liberal Iraq, even after the murder of his two sons last February, was an inspiration.

[…]

Which leaves us, incidentally, with all the people Iran has been cultivating for decades as the soon-to-be-crowned heads of the Shia community. They will have to do business with the soon-to-be-crowned heads of the Sunni community, who are loathed by ordinary Shias. Adnan Al-Dulaimi, the head of the largest Sunni block ‘The Consenses,’ was elected by a strictly sectarian bias; Sunnis did not listen to him or his allies in the Islamic Party when they called for voting ‘yes’ on the constitution back in October. So, Al-Dulaimi is hobbled by the fact that his constituency controls him rather than the other way around, and thus he must stand as a hardliner against policies such as de-Ba’athification, which would further aggravate the Shia.

The distribution of parliamentary blocks that I had predicted a day after the elections hold true. I got a lot of flack for it. More than anything in the world, I had hoped to be mistaken. Guess I wasn’t, and now Iraq really does need a miracle.

I don’t honestly think that the situation is quite as grim as Kazimi sees it. I doubt that the Shi’a lists are quite the monolith he’s portraying them as (although his knowledge is miles beyond mine). But I do think that the Sunnis have much to worry about. They wielded brutal and ruthless power for decades despite their minority in the country and the very best they can hope for now is neglect.

I also believe that this result confirms what I’ve held all along: that U. S. interests will require a substantial U. S. military presence within Iraq for the foreseeable future if only to act as referee. This is the outcome I’ve expected since March of 2003 and it’s one of the leading reasons I believed the invasion was imprudent.