Baghdad, Iraq – After angry street protests and charges of vote-rigging in last week’s elections heightened tensions, U.S. officials and Iraqi leaders are trying to form a coalition government to head off further fragmentation and more violence.
The country’s three largest communities – Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and ethnic Kurds – voted overwhelmingly on Dec. 15 for lists of parliamentary candidates that represented their groups.
According to preliminary, unofficial ballot counts, the largest share of votes was won by the alliance of Shiite Muslim religious parties that leads Iraq’s outgoing government.
That voting pattern, and the subsequent unrest and charges of fraud from minority Sunni Arabs, exacerbated long-standing fears among Iraqis that had emerged since the fall of Saddam Hussein almost three years ago, Iraqi officials and Western diplomats said.
In recent weeks, Shiite and Sunni leaders have called for the formation of sectarian armies to police their respective regions, a step some observers say could be a precursor to open clashes between the groups.
The Kurds, who dominate most of northern Iraq, already have their own fighting force, as do several Shiite parties.
“Every group here is afraid of every other group: The Sunnis are afraid, the Shiites are afraid, and the Kurds are afraid,” said a Western diplomat in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“And the response to that has been to sort of draw together as a kind of self-preservation tactic. When it came down to it, people voted on the basis of identity, and now it is time to walk everybody back and choose a government that represents the country. This is a critical time.”
Iraq’s largest Sunni parties, together with the secular Shiite leader and former interim prime minister Ayad Allawi, have denounced the elections as fixed and threatened to boycott the next parliament if the vote is not rerun.
In a demonstration Friday by more than 10,000 Iraqis, protesters held banners that vowed to “extinguish the candle” – a reference to the symbol employed by the Shiite parties during the campaign.
In response, leaders of top Shiite religious parties such as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq said Saturday that Iraqi law precluded repeating the elections.
“What is happening in the streets is led by gangs of the former regime insurgents who don’t want to fix the results” but want to “disrupt the political process,” said Jawad Maliki, a senior member of the Supreme Council.
Despite the public standoff, factional leaders are engaged in behind-the-scenes negotiations. Maliki acknowledged Saturday that Iraq could not move forward without factional unity and that negotiations had “started already between us and the slates that won in the elections, away from the voices we hear in the street.”
“The next government will have a full term of four years, which requires that we have agreement on how to positively run the government and the state,” said Alaa Makki, a senior member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the country’s largest Sunni political organization.
“We don’t want to end up with a government similar to the current one.”
The Sunnis, who account for about 20 percent of Iraq’s population, controlled the government under Hussein.
Since his ouster, they have struggled to come to terms with their diminished power. Their strategy has shifted from boycotting the January elections – which left them powerless in parliament – to turning out in force to vote last week.
U.S. officials have long maintained that the inclusion of Sunnis, who are thought to make up the bulk of the insurgency, is crucial to stemming the violence.
“The challenges ahead are real,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said during a visit to Iraq. “The task of fashioning a government as described, a government of national unity that governs from the center, that has the confidence and the capability to lead this country during a challenging period, is a considerable task.”
On Saturday, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq, with unparalleled influence over Shiite politicians, was said to have called for a government that would help maintain unity.
After a meeting with al-Sistani, who rarely speaks publicly on politics, the national security adviser, Mowaffak Rubaie, said the cleric “appealed to all sides to remain calm.” Al-Sistani also said it was crucial for “the winner in the elections to work with the rest of the Iraqi groups to form a national unity government,” Rubaie related.
