Post by vgambler33 on Dec 21, 2005 2:13:28 GMT -5
Iraq Election Results Underscore Challenge Facing U.S.
WASHINGTON -- The apparent failure of secular, Western-oriented political groups to win many seats in Iraq's four-year parliament puts new pressure on the Bush administration in its efforts to stabilize the country.
In Iraq, U.S. officials will have to intensify their efforts to contain ethnic and sectarian divisions that have deepened over the past year and, if allowed to fester, could push the country toward civil war. And as initial results indicate that the Iraqi government will be led by Shiite Muslims with ties to Iran, U.S. officials also may face pressure to establish their own direct working relationship with Tehran. Both tasks could be key factors if the administration is to achieve its oft-stated goal of creating a stable, unified, democratic and peaceful country.
On Tuesday, as election officials in Baghdad released data showing that Shiite-led parties had won big, there were signs the Bush administration was already working to dampen enmity over the results.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters at a news conference in the capital that he had conducted what he called "preliminary discussions" with Iraqi leaders, urging them to reach across the sectarian and ethnic lines dividing Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds.
The Bush administration had vocally supported electoral alliances that crossed such lines, including the one led by former interim premier Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite. But all such groups did poorly.
Allawi's Iraqi National List appears to have won only 21 seats, claiming 8 percent of the popular vote tallied so far, while the Shiite-based United Iraqi Alliance won 110 seats with an estimated 44 percent of the vote. Allawi and other groups will pick up more seats in the 275-member parliament once out-of-country votes are tallied.
A secular alliance headed by controversial Deputy Premier Ahmad Chalabi, a one-time Pentagon favorite to lead Iraq, scored less than 0.5 percent of the vote -- not enough to win a seat.
"It looks as if people have preferred to vote for their ethnic and sectarian identities," Khalilzad said. "But for Iraq to succeed there has to be cross-sectarian and cross-ethnic cooperation."
The strong draw of Iraqi's religious and ethnic-based parties, coupled with the poor showing of broader alliances, underscore a potential danger in the Bush administration's plan to expand democracy across the Middle East: Elections can act to sharpen social divisions rather than heal them, and to increase political instability rather than temper it.
Those with experience in elections in conflict zones said they were not surprised by the initial results in Iraq.
"Voters are not looking for creative, forward-looking candidates, they are looking for people who they think can protect them," said James Dobbins, a foreign affairs specialist at RAND Corp.'s Washington office, who has served in diplomatic posts, including in the Balkans, under several presidents. "They fall back on the familiar and the powerful. The same thing happened in post-war Bosnia, where the parties that fed the conflict in the first place got most of the vote."
Dobbins noted that the last U.S. forces pulled out of Bosnia nine years after they were first deployed in 1995 and a European security force still remains in the country.
"We're going to have to face the fact that there are strong centrifugal forces in Iraq that have the potential of tearing the country apart," Dobbins added.
The tension among Iraq's various groups was underscored Tuesday as rival parties traded accusations of vote fraud. The main Sunni Arab coalition, the National Consensus Front, alleged "flagrant forgery" in Baghdad.
"Falsifying the will of the voters in such flagrant way will have its serious reflections upon the security and political stabilization, and will put the future of the political process in the wind," the group said in a statement.
"We reject these results," said Adnan Dulaymi, a leader of the Sunni coalition, before calling for a rerun of the Baghdad elections.
Allawi's supporters, meanwhile, accused Shiites of ballot-rigging and intimidation. Ibrahim Jenabi, an Allawi deputy, said armed and masked men roamed the capital's Sadr City district on election day Thursday and threatened to kill anyone who voted for Allawi.
In public Tuesday, senior U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington, insisted that the results of the election were too preliminary to determine know the precise shape of the new government.
But as vote-counting continued in Baghdad, it seemed increasingly clear that Shiite-based religious parties and parties representing ethnic Kurds' interests will dominate the parliament, while Sunni-based parties appeared likely to win about 20 percent of the seats -- below their expectations.
The United Iraqi Alliance, an amalgam of Shiite Muslim political parties that won the most seats in the interim parliament that was elected in January, won about 110 of the 230 seats up for grabs in provincial balloting for the new assembly. Kurds followed with 43 seats and a Sunni Arab coalition with about 35. Another 45 seats will be allocated according to a complicated formula.
White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley underscored the importance of bringing Sunnis into the government in a speech to a gathering of foreign affairs experts in Washington on Tuesday. Hadley agreed that the administration must get "key neighboring and Arab states more involved in Iraq," but was less certain how the United States planned to deal with Iran.
In Senate testimony two months ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the administration was considering direct contacts with Tehran as part of efforts to gain greater cooperation on Iraq. She indicated that such contact would be restricted to issues related to Iraq and would likely occur through the Baghdad embassies of the two countries.
On Tuesday, however, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said that so far, the Baghdad contact has not been used. The United States severed diplomatic ties with Tehran in the wake of the 1979 hostage crisis and has had no regular contact since.
On Iraq, however, Iran and the United States have overlapping interests in assuring that the incoming Shiite-led government in Baghdad survives. Iran wields considerable influence within Shiite-dominated political parties in Iraq. And there are strong social and economic links between Shiite-dominated southern Iraq and Shiite-led Iran.
"We have to establish our own lines to Iran," said Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East specialist at the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank. "No matter what outrageous shenanigans are happening in Iran, what counts is that the Iranians are there in Iraq, using hard power, soft power and money and they aren't going away."
Any resumption of direct contacts would be controversial, particularly given that the Bush administration believes Tehran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons and its newly elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recently called for the annihilation of Israel.
Speaking Tuesday, Hadley gave no indication the administration was planning any overtures to Tehran.
"We have a lot of issues with Iran," he said.
WASHINGTON -- The apparent failure of secular, Western-oriented political groups to win many seats in Iraq's four-year parliament puts new pressure on the Bush administration in its efforts to stabilize the country.
In Iraq, U.S. officials will have to intensify their efforts to contain ethnic and sectarian divisions that have deepened over the past year and, if allowed to fester, could push the country toward civil war. And as initial results indicate that the Iraqi government will be led by Shiite Muslims with ties to Iran, U.S. officials also may face pressure to establish their own direct working relationship with Tehran. Both tasks could be key factors if the administration is to achieve its oft-stated goal of creating a stable, unified, democratic and peaceful country.
On Tuesday, as election officials in Baghdad released data showing that Shiite-led parties had won big, there were signs the Bush administration was already working to dampen enmity over the results.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters at a news conference in the capital that he had conducted what he called "preliminary discussions" with Iraqi leaders, urging them to reach across the sectarian and ethnic lines dividing Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds.
The Bush administration had vocally supported electoral alliances that crossed such lines, including the one led by former interim premier Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite. But all such groups did poorly.
Allawi's Iraqi National List appears to have won only 21 seats, claiming 8 percent of the popular vote tallied so far, while the Shiite-based United Iraqi Alliance won 110 seats with an estimated 44 percent of the vote. Allawi and other groups will pick up more seats in the 275-member parliament once out-of-country votes are tallied.
A secular alliance headed by controversial Deputy Premier Ahmad Chalabi, a one-time Pentagon favorite to lead Iraq, scored less than 0.5 percent of the vote -- not enough to win a seat.
"It looks as if people have preferred to vote for their ethnic and sectarian identities," Khalilzad said. "But for Iraq to succeed there has to be cross-sectarian and cross-ethnic cooperation."
The strong draw of Iraqi's religious and ethnic-based parties, coupled with the poor showing of broader alliances, underscore a potential danger in the Bush administration's plan to expand democracy across the Middle East: Elections can act to sharpen social divisions rather than heal them, and to increase political instability rather than temper it.
Those with experience in elections in conflict zones said they were not surprised by the initial results in Iraq.
"Voters are not looking for creative, forward-looking candidates, they are looking for people who they think can protect them," said James Dobbins, a foreign affairs specialist at RAND Corp.'s Washington office, who has served in diplomatic posts, including in the Balkans, under several presidents. "They fall back on the familiar and the powerful. The same thing happened in post-war Bosnia, where the parties that fed the conflict in the first place got most of the vote."
Dobbins noted that the last U.S. forces pulled out of Bosnia nine years after they were first deployed in 1995 and a European security force still remains in the country.
"We're going to have to face the fact that there are strong centrifugal forces in Iraq that have the potential of tearing the country apart," Dobbins added.
The tension among Iraq's various groups was underscored Tuesday as rival parties traded accusations of vote fraud. The main Sunni Arab coalition, the National Consensus Front, alleged "flagrant forgery" in Baghdad.
"Falsifying the will of the voters in such flagrant way will have its serious reflections upon the security and political stabilization, and will put the future of the political process in the wind," the group said in a statement.
"We reject these results," said Adnan Dulaymi, a leader of the Sunni coalition, before calling for a rerun of the Baghdad elections.
Allawi's supporters, meanwhile, accused Shiites of ballot-rigging and intimidation. Ibrahim Jenabi, an Allawi deputy, said armed and masked men roamed the capital's Sadr City district on election day Thursday and threatened to kill anyone who voted for Allawi.
In public Tuesday, senior U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington, insisted that the results of the election were too preliminary to determine know the precise shape of the new government.
But as vote-counting continued in Baghdad, it seemed increasingly clear that Shiite-based religious parties and parties representing ethnic Kurds' interests will dominate the parliament, while Sunni-based parties appeared likely to win about 20 percent of the seats -- below their expectations.
The United Iraqi Alliance, an amalgam of Shiite Muslim political parties that won the most seats in the interim parliament that was elected in January, won about 110 of the 230 seats up for grabs in provincial balloting for the new assembly. Kurds followed with 43 seats and a Sunni Arab coalition with about 35. Another 45 seats will be allocated according to a complicated formula.
White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley underscored the importance of bringing Sunnis into the government in a speech to a gathering of foreign affairs experts in Washington on Tuesday. Hadley agreed that the administration must get "key neighboring and Arab states more involved in Iraq," but was less certain how the United States planned to deal with Iran.
In Senate testimony two months ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the administration was considering direct contacts with Tehran as part of efforts to gain greater cooperation on Iraq. She indicated that such contact would be restricted to issues related to Iraq and would likely occur through the Baghdad embassies of the two countries.
On Tuesday, however, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said that so far, the Baghdad contact has not been used. The United States severed diplomatic ties with Tehran in the wake of the 1979 hostage crisis and has had no regular contact since.
On Iraq, however, Iran and the United States have overlapping interests in assuring that the incoming Shiite-led government in Baghdad survives. Iran wields considerable influence within Shiite-dominated political parties in Iraq. And there are strong social and economic links between Shiite-dominated southern Iraq and Shiite-led Iran.
"We have to establish our own lines to Iran," said Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East specialist at the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank. "No matter what outrageous shenanigans are happening in Iran, what counts is that the Iranians are there in Iraq, using hard power, soft power and money and they aren't going away."
Any resumption of direct contacts would be controversial, particularly given that the Bush administration believes Tehran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons and its newly elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recently called for the annihilation of Israel.
Speaking Tuesday, Hadley gave no indication the administration was planning any overtures to Tehran.
"We have a lot of issues with Iran," he said.