Arab News Blog

Iraq’s Independent Higher Election Commission (IHEC) has taken much longer than expected to publish the results of the general election conducted five days ago, on Sunday. Their English-language website is here. I leave it to my esteemed friend Reidar Visser to interpret the details of what the IHEC has been releasing– e.g. here, yesterday evening. I will note only that the “latest news” posted here on the IHEC website tells us that they have (very) preliminary results only from five of Iraq’s 18 provinces– and of those, in the province in which the vote-counting was most complete, Najaf, the proportion of votes counted was still only 34.11%!

So it is still far too early to “call” the election even there. It looks as though the process of counting all the votes throughout the country will be a long one indeed.

Which need not be a problem in itself. There are plenty of countries in which vote-counting takes one or two weeks, due to to poor infrastructure of various kinds. And in this election, it’s true that the ballot sheets are enormous and complex, thus very difficult to handle in bulk and to tally.

However, the slowness of the IHEC in completing its work is bound to raise fears and tensions throughout the country, especially fears and accusations of ballot-rigging– just as happened in Afghanistan after last August’s election.

In Afghanistan, the sharp inter-party tensions that arose after the election were only finally reduced, after a number of weeks, when the main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew his challenge to the announced results. To the huge relief of the U.S. authorities in the country, that meant they, NATO, and the U.N. would not have to go through the enormous bother of organizing a run-off election. And Hamid Karzai was rapidly reinaugurated as president.

I’ve seen no reports on what inducements Abdullah was offered to withdraw, but I’m assuming there must have been some big ones, supplied by someone.

In Iraq, the post-election controversies could, but may not, become equally polarizing. There, it looks so far (but still with only very preliminary numbers) as if PM Maliki’s State of Law will emerge as the bloc with the largest number of seats, but well short of a simple majority, and even further short of the two-thirds majority required for many significant steps in governing the country. Therefore– as in Israel!– even if there is no controversy over the counting of the votes, there may still be a lengthy period of post-results coalition-forming haggling.

That was kind of what happened in Iraq in 2006. And then, of course, those post-election tensions immediately became tied up with the eruption of brutally intense sectarianism that followed the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

This time around, I am fairly strongly convinced– unlike some others in the antiwar movement here in the U.S.– that the U.S. authorities really do want to try to get the bulk of the military out of Iraq in accordance with the Withdrawal Agreement of November 2008. And to do this without the whole process being a debacle that would certainly destabilize the whole region, they need some form of “legitimate enough” government to emerge and start governing in Baghdad.

Just as, for slightly different reasons, they needed some form of “legitimate enough” government to emerge in Afghanistan last summer…

In the present global-political context, in which the U.S. has tied itself and much of the U.N. bureaucracy to the idea that western-style elections are an essential component (or source) of political legitimacy, having a “legitimate enough” government in a country under direct U.S. sway means that that government must emerge from elections that are also judged to be “legitimate enough”.

I earlier explored a few of the challenges involved in plucking “legitimacy” out of a severely challenged election with regard to the Afghan elections of 2004, here, and 2009, here.

It is not clear whether– or how– this may happen in Iraq. We need to stay attuned to the fall-out that can be expected throughout the whole region if the post-election political challenges there cannot be speedily and satisfactorily resolved.

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It’s hard to avoid the subject of corruption when you talk to people in Jordan. During my last few visits there, no matter how much I tried to talk about the Muslim Brotherhood or the Parliament or constitutional reform, talk would always eventually come around to dark whispers about the rising tide of corruption at the highest levels. When King Abdullah disbanded Parliament, his new Prime Minister Samir Rifa’i had made battling corruption a top priority, though there was skepticism given that he had himself been reportedly forced out as Minister of Court for abusing his position. So most everyone was stunned last week by the arrest of four high-level officials at the heart of the regime over allegations of corruption in the contracting of Jordan’s petroleum refinery. What’s going on?

[[BREAK]]

Corruption is hardly novel in Jordan, but this kind of major case is pretty rare. When Jordanians get caught up in corruption investigations, it’s usually because they fell out with the Palace or else because they got caught up in the Kingdom’s always-tense Jordanian-Palestinian divide. The current  round is different. At least 24 people are reportedly targets of the investigation, in addition to the prominent figures arrested: former Finance Minister Adel al-Qadah, wealthy businessman Khaled Shaheen, the Prime Minister’s economic adviser Mohammed al-Rawashdeh, and former Petroleum official Ahmed al-Rifa’i. These are well-connected people, many from Transjordanian rather than Palestinian origins.   

The government has banned the publication of any details about the corruption cases in the local media without its prior approval — an unfortunate decision which is depressingly consistent with its increasingly harsh line on media and public freedoms. But the way information travels in Jordan, it hardly needs to be in the media for the message to get out — and Jordanians are buzzing about it (one blogger called it "the Jordanian equivalent of putting Al Capone on trial"). Why the ban on media coverage when the government appears to be doing something genuinely popular and fulfilling a major promise of its platform in the face of extreme skepticism?  

The answer to that depends on the real reasons for the arrests.  One theory is that the Palace finally realized that the growing public whispers about corruption were becoming too damaging to regime legitimacy, and that this was a move to restore public confidence. But then why ban coverage in the local media?  A second theory making the rounds is that in fact it was a signal not so much to the general public as to the elite, that certain lines should not be crossed — for which the mass media would not be needed. Adherents of this view ask why there was a major corruption investigation in this case and not in a wide range of other well-known, or at least widely rumored, cases.   

A third  possibility is that it may also be a signal to the international community by the cash-strapped and aid-dependent Kingdom. Only weeks ago, Jordan had been embarrassed by its showing in the 2009 report by Global Integrity, which gave its anti-corruption efforts a rating of 55/100 (Very Weak):

A number of key agencies contributing to Jordan’s national anti-corruption framework have been redesigned during the past few years with mixed results. For example, an ombudsman’s office was established in 2008; however, it has only taken on low-level cases to date. Fearful of political interference after the head of the Audit Bureau was recently removed from office, the newly created anti-corruption commission has been slow to act or issue reports. Meanwhile, the Jordanian Foundation for Investment, the agency responsible for oversight of state-owned enterprises, was abolished in favor of ministerial-level monitoring with less transparent oversight practices.

King Abdullah cares about Jordan’s international image, and may have felt the need to reassure international investors and the international community that anti-corruption efforts will be taken more seriously.  And again, having it in the local media would accomplish little for this goal. 

Whatever the case — and there’s plenty we don’t know yet — it’s somewhat heartening to see a rare serious anti-corruption move in Jordan. But I would be more heartened if the move was not accompanied by a state security ban on local media coverage, if it extended to a wider range of cases and not just one seemingly isolated incident, if it were accompanied by a rapid move towards passing the progressive legislation which Parliament was supposedly dissolved in order to push through, and if there were clear signs of a rapid move towards elections for a new Parliament under a reformed electoral law.  

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Last week, there was considerable fuss in much of the U.S. media because, just a couple of days after the Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Bill Burns, visited Damascus and announced that after a five-year absence Washington would finally be returning an ambassador to Syria, President Bashar al-Asad turned to hosting some other political figures important to him, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the heads of Hamas and Hizbullah.

Various U.S. commentators (many of whom were anyway just primed to pounce on anything the Obama administration does) became apoplectic in their fury, arguing that Asad’s meetings with his other allies just “proved” that Burns, Secretary Clinton, and Pres. Obama had all been taken royally for a ride.

So I’m glad that we can now read the calm voices of Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett on the subject. The Leveretts were actually in Damascus, and had a meeting there with Pres. Asad, shortly before Aasad’s meeting with Ahmadinejad and the rest of the Jabhat al-Mumana’a (though maybe I should find a better name for the Jabha… That one, which means “Blocking Front” is very Bush-era-ish… Anyway, I guess readers will know whom I refer to.)

The Leveretts:

A week before Ahmadinejad’s arrival in Damascus, we had our own conversation with President Assad—a conversation that came one day after… William Burns met with the Syrian leader. In our session with him, Assad expressed satisfaction over his meeting with Undersecretary Burns. However, Assad also made clear that Syria’s relations with Iran, as well as its ties to Hizballah and HAMAS, are not on the table.

They note that, also shortly before Ahmadinejad’s visit to Damascus, Hillary Clinton had told the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee that,

“We have laid out for the Syrians the need for greater cooperation with respect to Iraq, the end to interference in Lebanon and the transport or provision of weapons to Hezbollah, a resumption of the Israeli/Syrian track on the peace process which had been proceeding through the offices of the Turks last years, and generally to begin to move away from the relationship with Iran which is so deeply troubling to the region as well as to the United States.”

So, there goes Hillary, in the fine nanny-ish tradition established by Condi Rice before her, of trying to publicly dictate to other sovereign governments what their policies should be.

Asad’s laconic response was to say,

“We must have understood Clinton wrong because of bad translation or our limited understanding… I find it strange that they [Americans] talks about Middle East stability and peace and the other beautiful principles and call for two countries to move away from each other.”

I do think that Clinton (like everyone else from both party leaderships here in the U.S.) has a pronounced and very worrying tendency to continue to see every actor in the Middle East as being “either with us or against us” on the question that continues to preoccupy most of official Washington, that of Israel vs. Iran.

But matters aren’t as simple as that in the region, any more. At least two very significant actors in the region can no longer be clearly categorized as being in either the “pro-Iranian” or “pro-Israel/western” camp. They are Turkey and Saudi Arabia, both of which have many close ties to the west as such, but a lot of reservations about Israel; and both of which believe that negotiating in good faith with Iran is greatly preferable to continuing to saber-rattle and escalate the tensions against it.

Significantly, both these governments now have good relations with Syria. In the case of Turkey, these relations are of some years’ standing at this point. In the case of Saudi Arabia, they are more recent, dating from the landmark visit that King Abdullah made to Damascus last year. Prior to that, for several years– and most especially since the February 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri, which has been widely but not categorically blamed on Syria– Riyadh’s relations with Damascus were extremely hostile. (Though prior to that, too, the present Saudi King, Abdullah, also had a long history of friendliness to Syria’s rulers; so go figure that.)

All of this provides some background for the judgment the Leveretts make in their blog post about their meeting with Asad, that,

the perceived value in Damascus of strategic realignment with the United States through a carefully conditioned peace deal with Israel is slowly declining as America’s hegemonic standing and influence erode.

They go on to write,

Certainly, the Syrian leadership was relieved by President George W. Bush’s departure from office and his replacement by President Obama. But, with a right-leaning coalition headed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in power in Israel, expectations in Damascus for what Syria would see as major improvements in America’s Middle East policy are not high. And, as President Assad noted to us, poor policy choices in the Middle East by the United States over the last decade have created “vacuums” which “others [Iran and Turkey] filled”. (In this context, Assad argued that Iran’s evolving regional role does not represent “new ambitions” on Tehran’s part.) This has expanded Syria’s strategic optionality. In this context, Assad underscored that the rise of Iran and Turkey to new levels of regional influence has not come at Syria’s expense; rather, all three states have been able to improve their own relations and bolster their regional influence.

This is not to say that Hafiz al-Assad’s preferred strategic option of realignment toward the West through a “principled” peace with Israel does not remain deeply attractive to his son and successor. But, the longer that Damascus must wait for the United States to deliver on its end of the peace process, the more time that Bashar and his advisers have to internalize what they see as the reality of America’s slow decline. And that has a palpable effect on the price they are willing to pay for realizing Hafiz al-Assad’s preferred strategic option.

I see that the well-informed Syrian analyst Sami Moubayed also focuses a little on King Abullah’s role in this recent article on Syria’s diplomacy.

I’m not quite sure how Moubayed manages the feat of “reading” King Abdullah’s mind… But what he writes here is nonetheless very interesting:

King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia shares this view [that Syrian-Iranian relations are in the best interest of the international community, and should be seen as a blessing in disguise for the United States], believing that Syria can indeed walk the tightrope between the so-called moderate and radical camps in the Middle East, helping influence and moderate the behaviour of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. Syria has repeatedly used its influence with these players in meetings like the ones that just took place in Damascus (which perhaps were not as high profile) to get Hamas to accept the Arab Peace Initiative, for example, or to get Hezbollah more involved in the political process in Lebanon. In Iran, Syria used its influence to free 17 British sailors captured in 2007, as well as a French prisoner in the summer of 2009. Syria, after all, doesn’t have a history of anti-Americanism, and has proven since 1990 that it is a credible peace partner, with whom the West can do business.

The Damascus Summit [with Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah, and Meshaal] by no means indicates that engagement has come to an end between Syria and the US. Far from it; the meeting is a reminder of how helpful Syria can be in dealing with these non-state players. Nevertheless, it sends another strong message: Think twice before waging another war on Lebanon, because neither Syria nor Iran will allow it. Rather than escalate the conflict, the tripartite meeting in Damascus actually forced Israel to recalculate, thereby minimising the chances of war next summer. The leaders assembled in Damascus are clearly very confident of their abilities, and feel that neither Israel nor the US can deal with them as they have in the past. Much has changed since Obama came to power in 2009, but much remains the same, given that the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah alliance has outlived five US administrations since that of Ronald Reagan, and will likely outlive the Obama administration as well. Persuading the US to pressure Israel into seeking peace is high on Syria’s agenda, and this explains the recent Damascus Summit.

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More from the Leveretts in the RFI/ here

“…. The “Tripartite Alliance Stands Firm”, opens by noting the rather alarmist commentary in the West about the recent “resistance” summit in Damascus, involving President Assad, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hizballah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. (HAMAS’s Khalid Mishal also met with Ahmadinejad while the Iranian President was in Damascus.) Sami also notes a tone of perplexity in Western commentary on these meetings, which came on the heels of a visit to Damascus by U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns and Washington’s announcement that it would be posting a U.S. ambassador to Syria for the first time in five years.

Sami insightfully explains Bashar al-Assad’s approach to foreign affairs as an adroit exercise in what, from a European historical perspective, could well be described as “classical diplomacy”, based on a nuanced reading of the regional and global balance of power and a flexible approach to individual bilateral relationships. He also relates the “resistance” summit to the question of a possible war in the region later this year, a question that we took up a few days ago.

“Syria wants to keep all doors to Damascus open, much like it did in the 1990s, when Syria enjoyed excellent relations with the US, France, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and both HAMAS and Hezbollah. Many in the West claim this is no longer possible, echoing words spoken by George W. Bush after 9/11, when he said: ‘Either you are with us or with the terrorists.’ Syria thinks otherwise, however, arguing that Syrian-Iranian relations are in the best interest of the international community, and should be seen as a blessing in disguise for the United States.

“King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia shares this view, believing that Syria can indeed walk the tightrope between the so-called moderate and radical camps in the Middle East, helping influence and moderate the behavior of HAMAS, Hezbollah, and Iran. Syria has repeatedly used its influence with these players in meetings like the ones that just took place in Damascus (which perhaps were not as high profile) to get HAMAS to accept the Arab Peace Initiative, for example, or to get Hezbollah more involved in the political process in Lebanon….

“The Damascus Summit…is a reminder of how helpful Syria can be [to the United States and others] in dealing with these non-state players. Nevertheless, it sends another strong message: Think twice before waging another war on Lebanon, because neither Syria nor Iran will allow it. Rather than escalate the conflict, the tripartite meeting in Damascus actually force Israel to recalculate, thereby minimizing the chances of war next summer.”

Along the lines of Sami’s analysis, in our meeting with President Assad in Damascus two weeks ago,the Syrian leader underscored that his ties to Iran and to resistance groups like HAMAS and Hizballah should be seen by the United States as an asset—as something that could help open doors that would otherwise remain shut. It was at a press conference in Damascus in 2006, after all, that Khalid Mishal began talking publicly about the 1967 lines as a potential basis for settling the Arab-Israeli conflict; during 2009, Mishal spoke openly about the prospect of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Indeed, in our first meeting with Mishal last summer, he pointed out that HAMAS has offered Israel “a two-state solution on the 1967 lines”, and noted that “no Arab state has gone farther than that”.)

President Assad presents himself as someone focused on solving problems. He is clearly thinking in comprehensive terms about the Middle East’s core conflicts—as we discussed in our post yesterday, he believes a comprehensive settlement of the unresolved tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict is necessary, and that such a settlement will necessarily involve groups like HAMAS and Hizballah. He also says that the challenge of U.S.-Iranian relations is, in some ways, a relatively simple problem, but could become the region’s “worst” problem if it is not solved. In our view, President Assad is likely to be an important player in “the race for Iran”, and in Middle Eastern diplomacy more generally, for many years to come.

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Moshe Dayan’s widow Ruth, in Haaretz/ here

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Booz/Allen’s “Persia House”/ here

“… This summit will be held in Tehran from February 27-28, and will be attended by dignitaries and representatives from Palestinian resistance groups. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a number of high-ranking Iranian officials will also be in attendance. The session will be held at the Foreign Ministry’s Office of Political and International Studies. The summit’s agenda focuses on supporting the Resistance [movement] against the Zionist occupier regime. For the original article in Persian, click here.

The decision to hold a summit of “Palestinian Combatant Groups” in Tehran represents a public diplomacy effort to demonstrate that the Islamic Republic’s support of the Palestinian resistance remains steadfast despite Iran’s post-election turmoil. Tehran and the Palestinian resistance groups likely will leverage the high-profile summit to issue stern anti-Israeli and US pronouncements, as well as pledge strengthened political and military cooperation.

The conservative Iranian Ghods News has reported that Hamas Political Bureau Chair Khaled Mashal and Dr. Ramadan Abdullah, Head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, will be among the leaders of Palestinian groups who will be in attendance.

This summit may also provide a venue to address concerns some groups may have regarding the Iranian regime’s actions against protesters following Iran’s disputed June 2009 presidential election. In the fall of 2009, a story in the Persian press (spread later in the Arabic press) asserted that several Hezbollah leaders were afraid that their organization’s image would be sullied by the Islamic Republic’s crackdown on protesters. Furthermore, according to a Sunni Lebanese newspaper, in early January 2010, sources close to Hezbollah’s spiritual leader, Seyyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, stated that he “emphasized during his last meeting with the representative of the Supreme Leader in Damascus the need to resolve the problem in Iran by embracing the opposition and by dialogue.” The statement was issued to clarify reports indicating that several leaders of the Iranian reform movement had sought Fadlallah’s help in resolving the Iranian post-election crisis.

On February 9, however, a Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Nabil Qaouq, reiterated that Iran’s strategic presence in the region and globally—in addition to its continuing support of resistance movements in Lebanon and Palestine—“represents a source of force and a strategic depth facing Israeli arrogance and American hegemony.” Qaouq also said that any act aimed at turning the conflict against Iran is an act of treason against the Islamic community. On February 26, President Ahmadinejad and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki met with Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah while visiting Damascus.

A weak and challenged Iranian regime would represent bad news for Hezbollah and Hamas in terms of monetary and logistical support. Hamas, for instance, relies on an estimated $20 to 30 million sent by Iran per year. The Islamic Republic has helped keep Hamas afloat in Gaza, especially following Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead,” which took place from December 2008 to January 2009.”

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WINEP/ here

Willingly or not, Dubai has been thrust onto the front line of diplomacy aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions and terrorism sponsorship. The January 20, 2010, assassination of Hamas gunrunner Mahmoud al-Mabhouh on its soil was a reminder of the emirate’s longstanding trade and commercial links with Iran …..

UAE efforts to clamp down on illicit Iranian trade have grown in the face of U.S. pressure but are still a work in progress. The UAE passed its first national security export control law in 2007, and authorities have seized several illicit shipments destined for Iran. UAE officials say they are making it more difficult for Iranian businessmen to obtain and renew visas and commercial licenses. Similarly, Iranians are reportedly having trouble finding UAE banks to handle their transactions. In addition, plans have been announced to more closely regulate the dhow port on Dubai Creek, where customs supervision is currently nonexistent.

UAE initiatives do not necessarily mean cooperation from Dubai, however. Although the leading emirate, Abu Dhabi, holds nearly 8 percent of global oil reserves and often bankrolls the other six sheikhdoms, each emirate proudly preserves its independent status. Thus, while Abu Dhabi is clearly apprehensive about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, Dubai appears less so. In 2008, Sheikha Lubna al-Qasimi, the UAE’s minister of economy and planning, explained why its authority and ability to act might be limited: “At the end of the day, Iran is still a neighbor.”

Dubai has a track record of eschewing bureaucratic obstacles to trade and downplaying international dangers. Until late 2001, for example, it served as a financial center for al-Qaeda. ….

Dubai also played a central role in nuclear proliferation for many years….

Even before the Mabhouh assassination, various events had severely compromised Dubai’s ambitions as an iconic city-state of the future……

Dubai also has experience with violent death. In 2008, an Egyptian politician paid a hit-man to kill Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim, who was living there in an exclusive apartment block…..

Just weeks before the Mahbouh killing, the magazine Vanity Fair claimed that the CIA had tracked A. Q. Khan during his frequent visits to Dubai and had planned to assassinate him there. The magazine’s source said the hit didn’t happen “because of lack of political will” in Washington. A CIA spokesperson refused to discuss the question with the magazine.

The Mahbouh incident, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and Dubai’s crucial regional role are probably key elements of conversations that visiting UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nayhan has had in Washington, D.C., this week. The assassination has likely damaged UAE-Israeli relations, which had grown steadily over the past decade with U.S. encouragement and regular, though unofficial, diplomatic exchanges. (Bilateral trade between the two countries has grown to $1 billion annually.) Sheikh Abdullah also knows the nuclear file, having been given a guided tour of Pakistan’s centrifuge plant at Kahuta in 1999 by Khan himself. Going forward, the United States should point out that helping Hamas obtain arms is unacceptable. It should also emphasize that Dubai has the technical means to prevent Iran from exploiting the emirate to avoid sanctions. Abu Dhabi should use its interest in thwarting Iran and its financial leverage to ensure Dubai’s greater cooperation.”

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Al-Hayat [Life] reports via AFP Arabic on the poll just released by the National Media Center, which reports to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s office. According to this sounding, the major coalitions will perform thusly in the March 7 parliamentary elections (rounding up to the nearest whole number):

State of Law (Nuri al-Maliki): 30%
Iraqi National Movement (Iyad Allawi): 22%
National Iraqi Alliance (Ammar al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr): 17%
Kurdistan Alliance (Jalal Talibani and Massoud Barzani): 10%
Unity of Iraq (Jawad al-Bulani): 5%
Iraqi Accord Front (Iyad al-Samarraie): 3%
No Opinion: 5%

(State of Law: Shiite religious/ nationalist coalition of the current prime minister; Iraqi National Movement: coalition of secular Shiite and Sunni parties led by a former interim prime minister; National Iraqi Alliance: coalition of Shiite religious parties, including Sadrists and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq; Kurdistan Alliance: The major but not the only Kurdish political force; Unity of Iraq: party of Interior Minister, an independent Shiite; Iraqi Accord Front: Coalition of Sunni fundamentalist parties.)

The other 8% must be for small, probably Sunni Arab or Kurdish, parties not so far detailed by the Arabic press.

There are strange things about this poll. First, it gives the major Kurdish coalition only 10%. The Kurdistan Alliance got 21% in December, 2005, or 53 seats. It is true that the Kurds lost out in the expansion of the number of seats in parliament, insofar as they have only had 43 seats set aside for the Kurdistan superprovince, or 13%. But Kurds in the mixed provinces of Kirkuk, Diyala and Ninevah should return some seats for the Kurdistan Alliance or one of its challengers. Moreover, there is no reason for a weighted poll to reflect seat apportionment. This poll is missing half the Kurds who should have turned up in it, and they can’t all be in the 8% that wasn’t detailed. That gap is a major flaw.

Second, the Sunni Arab parties have also disappeared. The Iraqi Accord Front gained 44 seats or 15% in December, 2005, and the National Dialogue Front of Salih Mutlak won 11 seats or 4%. So Sunni Arab parties should also have shown up as nearly 20 percent of the poll results. Instead the IAF has been reduced to 2.6%, and no other Sunni Arab parties are mentioned, though some might be in the unannounced 8%. That poor black hole of 8% cannot magically cover both the missing Sunni Arabs and the missing Kurds. Some proportion of the missing Sunni Arabs may be supporters of Allawi’s National Iraqi List, but can that possibility really account for this anomaly? A lot of Sunni Arabs have not forgiven Allawi for cheerleading the US military’s invasion of and virtual destruction of Fallujah in late fall of 2004.

It is true that Allawi went to visit Saudi Arabia recently in hopes of receiving King Abdullah’s backing as the secular alternative to the pro-Iranian Shiite religious parties. And his coalition partner Tariq al-Hashimi is in Cairo, seeking Egypt’s backing. Al-Hashimi was constrained to deny that the National Iraqi coalition had sent an envoy to Tehran seeking Iran’s acquiescence in Allawi’s return as prime minister, because just such a rumor was flying around Iraq. The visits to Riyadh and Cairo are intended to position the Iraqiya as the secular, Sunni-Shiite alternative to rule by religious Shiites linked to the ayatollahs in Tehran. It is a message that will resonate in the Sunni Arab provinces.

I conclude that somehow this poll over-represented the Shiite Arabs at the expense of Kurds and Sunni Arabs. The National Media Center maintains that they polled in a weighted way in all 18 provinces, so its results should be proportional. But they clearly are not.

If we focus on the Shiite parties, the results make some sense in the light of the provincial elections of January, 2009, when Nuri al-Maliki’s State of Law coaltion (the core of which is his Islamic Mission (Da’wa) Party) took over a third of seats in the major urban centers of Baghdad and Basra, and did well in the Shiite provinces of the south, though not so overwhelmingly well.

In last year’s provincial elections, the Shiite fundamentalist Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the core of today’s National Iraqi Alliance, virtually collapsed after having been dominant since 2005–though it still gained between 8% and 17% of the vote. The party suffered from an anti-incumbent mood, given poor services and bad security, as well as, allegedly, public distaste at how close it is to Iran. On the other hand, the hard line Sadr Movement, another constituent of the National Iraqi Alliance, did respectably in much of the Shiite South, gaining as much as 15-17% in some provinces. So the non-Da’wa Shiite religious parties could well gain as much as a fifth of the national vote if the trends visible in the provincial elections have continued.

Allawi’s Iraqi National Movement only got 9% in the December, 2005 elections, but it has been reformulated away from being mainly Shiite secularists to being cross-sectarian, and presumably some of the 20% who said they would vote for it were Sunni Arabs. The INM was joined by Tariq al-Hashemi, a vice president and a Sunni Arab who formerly led the Iraqi Islamic Party, and by Salih Mutlak, the secular, Sunni Arab leader of the National Dialogue Front. Mutlak’s disqualification from running because of allegations of links to the banned Baath Party, and his recent call for his supporters to boycott the vote, could hurt Allawi’s poll numbers if the poll were taken now.

For this and other reasons, I doubt Allawi’s list will actually get 20% of seats in the new parliament. Iraqis have a discourse of national unity to which the list is appealing in its rhetoric. And Iraqis typically are embarrassed by sectarianism and deny its importance. But when they have gone to the polls in the past 5 years, they have almost always voted for ethnic or sectarian parties once in the privacy of the voting booth. There was also buzz for Allawi in fall of 2005 coming from polls done in the provinces by US AID and from the American Enterprise Institute (so I was told by journalists who interviewed us both), and it turned out not to amount to anything; Allawi’s contingent in parliament shrank from 14% to 9%.

The poll also gave some provincial estimates for voter support for al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition:

Baghdad: 32%
Basra: 41%
Babil: 49%
Dhi Qar: 42%
Karbala: 50%
Qadisiya: 56%
Muthanna: 44%

These numbers, if true, speak of a revolution in affairs since last year’s provincial election, since the State of Law only won 9% in Karbala then, and the most it got outside the two big Shiite cities was 23%. Because these results are so divergent from those of only a year ago, I have trouble accepting them as accurate. Services and security aren’t better, and unless al-Maliki is buying off constituents with patronage, it is hard for me to understand such a big swing in his favor.

There may also be a fear effect. Al-Maliki has been establishing tribal militias in the Shiite south loyal to him, and has moreover gotten control of a lot of the local police forces as well as the national army, so Iraqis may be reluctant to say to pollsters that they oppose him.

This poll suggests that al-Maliki’s party will pull in about 108 seats in the 325-seat parliament, and that Allawi’s list will get 72.

But the Shiite religious coalition, the National Iraqi Alliance, has done its own soundings, and thinks it will get 70-80 seats or as much as 25% of seats, not the 17% the National Media Center gives them. And the NIA thinks that 80 would make them the single largest party.

Although not all their leaders agree with such a strategy,it still seems most likely that al-Maliki’s State of Law and al-Hakim’s National Iraqi Alliance will make a post-election coalition, emerging as the largest bloc in parliament and forming the government again. Assuming al-Maliki’s party doesn’t actually get 30%, such a coalition might be the only way for him to remain prime minister, assuming he hasn’t burned too many bridges with the other Shiite religious parties to be viable.

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King `Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is dancing. King `Abdullah of Jordan is cooking. The Arab nation is in safe hands. (thanks Fadi)

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Abdullah accused of financing twin suicide bomings on luxury hotels in Jakarta last year that killed seven.
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