BAGHDAD — In the once-turbulent Sunni enclave of Adhamiyah, hope that Sunday’s election will herald a dramatic change in Iraq’s leadership mingles ominously with fear that it won’t.
There is none of the reluctance that characterized voting during the last election, in December 2005, when the ubiquitous presence of insurgents in the community deterred most people from going to the polls, and candidates didn’t dare campaign for fear of being killed.
This time, huge billboards promoting Sunni and secular candidates jostle for attention on drab streets strewn with garbage. Top politicians, including Sunni Vice President Tariq Hashemi and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, have made campaign appearances, mingling with residents in markets, kissing babies and urging everyone to vote.
Everyone, it seems, says they will. And expectations are high — perhaps dangerously high — that the full participation of the Sunni minority in this election will bring to an end five years of rule by the Shiite religious parties that took power in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Change is expected
“This election will bring change,” said Abdullah Sabah, 26, a businessman who plans to vote for Allawi and has no doubt that he will win. “He will create equality among Iraqis because he is not sectarian, which means opportunities and jobs will be available to us.”
Allawi, a secular Shiite whose Iraqiya coalition is made up of both Sunnis and Shiites, seems to be the preferred choice of most of the voters in this staunchly Sunni neighborhood. That is a sign that politics have matured somewhat since the days when this was a stronghold of the Sunni extremist al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Shiites, a minority here, were driven from their homes or killed.
How much its politics have matured, however, is the fundamental question confronting Iraq as it prepares to elect the government that will steer the country beyond the final departure of U.S. combat troops by the end of August and all U.S. forces by the end of 2011.
Multiple factions
The last election triggered a civil war in which triumphalist Shiites leveraged their control over the institutions of state.
This election, with its multiple competing factions and uncertain outcome, has the potential to be just as destabilizing, said Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group.
“Whether the results alone will trigger a renewal of conflict, I don’t know. But it’s not clear whether the losers, whoever they are, will accept defeat,” he said. “Anything could happen, and it will be happening just as U.S. troops withdraw.”
Just across the street from Adhamiyah’s Abu Hanifa mosque, once the scene of fiery anti-American sermons and frequent attacks against U.S. forces, men gathering at a tea shop spoke darkly of renewed conflict should the same Shiite parties that control the current government win again.
They say they are not prepared to contemplate a renewal of the mandate of the Shiite religious parties, be it Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition or the Shiite Iraqi National Alliance.
