Text 8976, 148 rader
Skriven 2005-02-10 05:05:12 av Stephen Hayes (5:7106/20.0)
Ärende: family.chris_soc: Iraqi elections
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From: family.chris_soc@family-list.org(family.chris_soc)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0204-25.htm

Published on Friday, February 4, 2005 by the San Francisco Chronicle

U.S. 'In For a Shock'

In early election results, Shiite cleric's alliance trouncing Washington's
favorite

By Borzou Daragahi

BAGHDAD -- Partial results from Sunday's election suggest that U.S.-backed
Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's coalition is being roundly defeated by a list with
the backing of Iraq's senior Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
diminishing Allawi's chances of retaining his post in the next government.

Sharif Ali bin Hussein, head of the Constitutional Monarchy Party, likened the
vote outcome to a "Sistani tsunami" that would shake the nation.

"Americans are in for a shock," he said, adding that one day they would
realize, "We've got 150,000 troops here protecting a country that's extremely
friendly to Iran, and training their troops."

The partial totals so far show the Iraqi List headed by Allawi, a secular
Shiite and onetime CIA protege, trailed far behind with only 18 percent of the
votes, despite an aggressive television ad campaign waged with U.S. aid. A
lopsided majority of votes, 72 percent, went to the United Iraqi Alliance list,
topped by a Shiite cleric who lived in Iran for many years and whose Sciri
party has close ties to Iran's clerical regime. More than a third of the
alliance's vote came from Baghdad, the cosmopolitan capital where Allawi had
been expected to fare well.

Although the results are only from Baghdad and five southern provinces where
the Shiite parties were expected to score strongly, and from only 10 percent of
the country's 5,216 polling stations, the scale of the alliance's vote
underscored the probability of a historic shift in the Shiites' favor from
decades of Sunni minority rule in Iraq.

Safwat Rashid, a member of Iraq's Independent Election Commission, and
international election officials warned observers not to read too much into the
early numbers, which did not include tallies in the country's Sunni or Kurdish
provinces.

Rashid said the Baghdad numbers came from "mixed" -- meaning Sunni and Shiite
-- neighborhoods in the city where Allawi was expected to perform well.
Hussein said Allawi had also performed poorly in Babil province, a relatively
urbanized, mixed Shiite-Sunni area south of Baghdad.

He said the vote total and the total turnout numbers wouldn't be known for
another 10 days.

Already, Western officials in Baghdad appeared to be downplaying worries about
the possible victory by the alliance, topped by Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, a cleric
who spent years exiled in Iran.

The alliance "is a very diverse group of people, from Westernized independents
to Sunni sheikhs to people who really believe in an Islamic state," one Western
diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity said of the alliance on Wednesday.
"It will be hard to maintain unity."

The election commission also released final vote tallies from overseas voters
in eight countries, the United States, Britain, France, Iran, Syria, Jordan,
the United Arab Emirates and Australia. The alliance won of 44 percent of the
170,000 votes cast in those countries, the Kurds 18 percent and Allawi's list
12 percent. In U.S. voting, Allawi garnered just 5 percent of the vote, less
than the Communist Party total.

Some Sunni leaders said the Shiite coalition's strong showing to date did
little more than validate the deep sense of alienation felt by Iraq's Sunnis,
most of whom did not cast ballots Sunday.

"The Shia were determined and encouraged their supporters to vote and to
register, and the Sunnis didn't care that much, either out of fear or apathy,"
said Adnan Pachachi, a foreign minister in the years before Saddam Hussein who
is a prominent Sunni leader. "This is the story, really."

But signs also have emerged that some Sunni leaders are ready to involve
themselves at least in a limited way in the country's political debate. The
leaders of 13 mostly Sunni political parties that stayed out of the election
agreed earlier this week that they would take part in writing a permanent
constitution for Iraq.

When the vote count is final, the 275 seats in the National Assembly will be
divided up among the 111 parties, individuals and coalitions that ran in the
election, with each ticket getting seats according to its proportion of the
vote. Each list that receives one-275th or more of the vote total gets at least
a seat.

A two-thirds majority of the parliament must approve a president and two deputy
presidents, who will be in charge of naming a Cabinet. The new assembly
is also responsible for writing the constitution, a process that could be
adjusted in order to include Sunni representatives.

Presuming the constitution is approved by referendum next autumn, new elections
for a permanent government will be held by year's end.

None of the votes announced Thursday came from the Kurdish north, where heavy
turnout is sure to guarantee a strong Kurdish presence in the assembly.

Kurdish political leader Jalal Talabani said he would seek the office of either
president or prime minister when the legislature convenes. "We, as Kurds, want
one of those two posts, and we will not give it up," Talabani, head of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and a candidate on the unified Kurdish list of
candidates, told reporters.

Now that the election is over, Pentagon authorities have decided to start
reducing the level of U.S. forces in Iraq next month by about 15,000 troops,
down to about 135,000, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress
Thursday. "I think we'll be able to come down to the level that was projected
before this election," he said.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that about
40,000 of Iraq's best forces "can go anywhere in the country and take on almost
any threat." But he acknowledged that more than two-thirds of the 136, 000
members of Iraqi security forces that the United States and its allies have
trained and equipped were unready to tackle the insurgency.

That uprising began rattling the nation anew Thursday as at least 26 Iraqis and
three U.S. Marines died in an uptick of violence following days of
post-election calm.

Insurgents stopped a minibus south of Kirkuk, ordered army recruits off the
vehicle and killed 12 of them. Gunmen fired on a vehicle carrying Iraqi
contractors to jobs at a U.S. military base in Baquba, killing two.

A suicide bomber struck a foreign convoy escorted by military humvees on
Baghdad's airport road. Rebels attacked Iraqi police Thursday in the Baghdad
suburb of Abu Ghraib, killing one policeman and wounding five, the Interior
Ministry said.

One U.S. Marine was killed Thursday in Babil province, the U.S. command said.
Two other Marines were killed in action Wednesday night in Anbar province.

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