.Iraq's Diyala Province Puts Power of Ballot to the Test
BAQUBAH, Iraq, Jan. 31 -- In Iraq's receding but still entrenched sectarian struggle, perhaps the most important votes in the provincial elections Saturday were cast in Diyala, a sometimes picturesque province known for its orange groves and its killing fields.
American officials have insisted the vote Saturday must prove credible -- that is, relatively free of fraud, with its results acceptable to most of its participants -- if elections are to begin taking root as a mechanism to transfer power in a country that has begun bracing for the intangibles of a U.S. withdrawal.
In Diyala, credibility would mark a watershed moment, both for this troubled province and for Iraq itself, where power has long been monopolized by a party or man.
In 2005, the Sunni Arab majority here largely boycotted the vote, delivering nearly two-thirds of the seats on the old provincial council to Shiite Arabs and Kurds, and helping ignite a struggle that stands as one of the bloodiest theaters of Iraq's sectarian war. Save for those in a radical fringe, no one boycotted Saturday, potentially making the vote the first since the fall of President Saddam Hussein to take power from one constituency -- Shiite Arabs and, to a lesser extent, Kurds -- and deliver it to another: Sunni Arabs.
But perception may prove an obstacle in Diyala, where 638 candidates vied for 29 seats in a province that was so tense party activists hardly ever ventured across sectarian borders, a candidate and his two aides were kidnapped and executed, and leaflets still littered some streets to warn residents that casting votes was tantamount to treason against God and country.
On Saturday, it felt changed. Only the most dangerous neighborhoods seemed besieged. Elsewhere, children played soccer in the streets, parents pushed their children in strollers and elderly men shared cigarettes under a winter sun.
Yet in Saturday's vote, no one, neither Sunni nor Shiite, seemed prepared to lose. And that raised the prospect that in defeat, neither would acknowledge the other's victory.
"A new dawn, God willing," said Sabah Bashir Hassan, known as Abu Talib, who leads thousands of former insurgents and others in the Popular Committees, the name here for the U.S.-backed Sunni militia that fought the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.
"To me, the elections represent the point between darkness and light," the Sunni leader said. "Everybody wants to turn a page on the past. We're turning a new page over today."
Raad Abbas, a Shiite member of the old council and a candidate, also felt certain of triumph over his rivals. He predicted his group, the Dawa party of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, would capture a third of the seats. With other Shiite candidates, they would win a majority.
"If this is the result of the vote, how can anyone be angry?" he asked hopefully.
Some residents like to call Diyala a miniature Iraq and, indeed, much of its turmoil reflects the country writ small. Northeast of Baghdad, its fertile land of dates and citrus, watered by the Diyala River, stretches to the Iranian border. Its Sunni Arab majority numbers 55 percent and perhaps far more. Shiites are the second-largest group, possibly a third of the population, with a sizable Kurdish minority toward the province's northern end.
At the peak of Iraq's sectarian bloodshed, al-Qaeda in Iraq controlled swaths of the province, its bombings stoking more sectarian strife. Villages became islands, roads from them too dangerous to travel. The council barely functioned; eight of its members were assassinated. Tens of thousands fled the province, many from Baqubah. Given the turmoil, Shiite and Kurdish politicians tried unsuccessfully to delay the elections.
"Sukhna" was the word often used to describe the province. It means hot.
Iraqis often lament what they see as a culture that embraces a strongman. One resident in Diyala called it "a state of mind." In some ways, it is nostalgia for an order some believe the days of Hussein represented. But it also speaks to the coups and revolutions of modern Iraq, where power was sometimes captured in coalitions, sometimes by force, but usually then monopolized. Dissent became sedition -- by its nature, a threat.
Politics are still existential in Diyala. A party's background, whether Sunni or Shiite, determines the Iraqi flag it displays -- the new one brandished by Maliki's government, or the old one, emblazoned with three stars, borrowed from Hussein's era.
Sunnis complain that security forces in the province, their ranks filled with Shiites and Kurds, are still directed by the Badr Organization, the ostensibly disbanded militia of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, created in Iran and arguably Iraq's most ardently sectarian party. Abu Talib puts the number of officers loyal to Badr at 70 percent. To him, they are no more than a transparent cover for plots from Iran, which Diyala borders.
"You have to repay the person who raised you," he said darkly.
After voting Saturday, his finger stained with purple ink, he said those forces were still holding more than 1,000 of his men, detained in an offensive by Maliki's government last year that he said unfairly targeted his forces and Sunni regions. Even with a victory, Abu Talib said he doubted Badr would surrender control of the security forces.
"Definitely not," he said. "The obstacle that faces Iraq now is Badr."
Shiites worry that the Popular Committees loyal to Abu Talib are infiltrated by former insurgents, who are eager to become part of the security forces but still bent on sectarian strife. A new government, some warned Saturday, could ensure their entry, with the unintended consequence of making men like Abu Talib warlords in uniforms.
"There's fear," said Saif Amr Shaker, a 21-year-old student outside a polling station in Hawaider, which lost hundreds of residents in the fighting. "The majority of them are al-Qaeda, and we know that. If they come, we're going back to square one."
Nearly all the parties in Diyala, whatever their religious background, go to lengths to avoid sectarian language. Each sensing victory, all can afford to.
The key players, on the Sunni side, are a group aligned with Saleh al-Mutlak, a deputy in parliament who has courted the still-substantial support of Hussein's Baath Party, and a coalition built around the Iraqi Islamic Party, an heir of the Muslim Brotherhood that chose to participate in the 2005 elections, delivering it the 14 seats Sunnis hold. Among Shiites, Maliki's party is competing with the Supreme Council and another Islamist group, called Fadhila, that has tried to broaden its appeal. Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister, has sought the secular vote. Kurds are expected to win a few seats.
"It's democracy. It's a political process. It's not a war in which you have to surrender. It's about the peaceful transfer of power," said Abdel-Jabbar Ibrahim, an Islamic Party candidate, sitting in an office adorned with beach scenes and party slogans.
His headquarters felt like a fortress. Days before, a man riding a bicycle carried explosives that Ibrahim said he believed were intended for the underside of his car. The man was shot to death. Unrattled, Ibrahim promised to move Diyala beyond the vocabulary of violence and sect.
But his own language suggested otherwise. He spoke of "taking control" and "imposing policies." He envisioned 20 seats on the new provincial council for Sunnis, leaving six for Shiites and three for Kurds. Even the office suggested the war was not over. "Our martyrs live with God and live in our consciences," read a banner inside.
"They can't keep the political and military power they have," Ibrahim said.
Graffiti scrawled on a checkpoint before the village of Hawaider pleaded, "Patience, my beloved Iraq." And, indeed, some politicians urge that. Time, they say.
"Elections aren't a magic wand that will change everything," said Ali Mehdawi, a candidate on Mutlak's list. "It's simply not going to change the situation 100 percent."
"We're inheriting a past that we've had to endure," he said. "It's a heritage."
But Saturday, among residents bearing ink stains, patience was not the conversation.
Soldiers still crouched, fingers on triggers, at the checkpoint of Gatoun, a neighborhood in Baqubah that was once a stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq and is still too dangerous for any Shiite candidate to enter. The rubble of houses bombed by U.S. forces cascaded over barren lots. Election posters were sparse. No one was playing soccer in the street.
"This is the last chance to create trust between the government and people," said Mohammed Majid, a 21-year-old resident, standing with friends outside a store there.
"If we lose, we'll conclude this was all theater," Thaer Zaidan Khalaf said.
Another friend spoke up. "It means that democracy is a lie," Abdel-Wahid Ahmed said. "If it doesn't grant me my rights, then I'll take them another way. Call it what you want. I'll take them with my hand, with a stick, with a gun or by any other means."
Half an hour away, in the Shiite town of Hawaider, where a monument is inscribed with the names of 232 people killed in Diyala's bloodshed, two youths stood outside a polling station. One bore scars of a drive-by shooting while he was on his way to Najaf in 2006. The other was wounded in a car bombing next to a mosque the same year.
"They can't do anything to us," said one of them, Hassan Jassem. "Nothing."
He offered expletives about the sisters and mothers of Gatoun's men. His friend, Nouhad Safa, soon joined in. "We'll take care of them," he insisted.
"We won't sleep at night to make sure that we do."
WaPo
American officials have insisted the vote Saturday must prove credible -- that is, relatively free of fraud, with its results acceptable to most of its participants -- if elections are to begin taking root as a mechanism to transfer power in a country that has begun bracing for the intangibles of a U.S. withdrawal.
In Diyala, credibility would mark a watershed moment, both for this troubled province and for Iraq itself, where power has long been monopolized by a party or man.
In 2005, the Sunni Arab majority here largely boycotted the vote, delivering nearly two-thirds of the seats on the old provincial council to Shiite Arabs and Kurds, and helping ignite a struggle that stands as one of the bloodiest theaters of Iraq's sectarian war. Save for those in a radical fringe, no one boycotted Saturday, potentially making the vote the first since the fall of President Saddam Hussein to take power from one constituency -- Shiite Arabs and, to a lesser extent, Kurds -- and deliver it to another: Sunni Arabs.
But perception may prove an obstacle in Diyala, where 638 candidates vied for 29 seats in a province that was so tense party activists hardly ever ventured across sectarian borders, a candidate and his two aides were kidnapped and executed, and leaflets still littered some streets to warn residents that casting votes was tantamount to treason against God and country.
On Saturday, it felt changed. Only the most dangerous neighborhoods seemed besieged. Elsewhere, children played soccer in the streets, parents pushed their children in strollers and elderly men shared cigarettes under a winter sun.
Yet in Saturday's vote, no one, neither Sunni nor Shiite, seemed prepared to lose. And that raised the prospect that in defeat, neither would acknowledge the other's victory.
"A new dawn, God willing," said Sabah Bashir Hassan, known as Abu Talib, who leads thousands of former insurgents and others in the Popular Committees, the name here for the U.S.-backed Sunni militia that fought the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.
"To me, the elections represent the point between darkness and light," the Sunni leader said. "Everybody wants to turn a page on the past. We're turning a new page over today."
Raad Abbas, a Shiite member of the old council and a candidate, also felt certain of triumph over his rivals. He predicted his group, the Dawa party of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, would capture a third of the seats. With other Shiite candidates, they would win a majority.
"If this is the result of the vote, how can anyone be angry?" he asked hopefully.
Some residents like to call Diyala a miniature Iraq and, indeed, much of its turmoil reflects the country writ small. Northeast of Baghdad, its fertile land of dates and citrus, watered by the Diyala River, stretches to the Iranian border. Its Sunni Arab majority numbers 55 percent and perhaps far more. Shiites are the second-largest group, possibly a third of the population, with a sizable Kurdish minority toward the province's northern end.
At the peak of Iraq's sectarian bloodshed, al-Qaeda in Iraq controlled swaths of the province, its bombings stoking more sectarian strife. Villages became islands, roads from them too dangerous to travel. The council barely functioned; eight of its members were assassinated. Tens of thousands fled the province, many from Baqubah. Given the turmoil, Shiite and Kurdish politicians tried unsuccessfully to delay the elections.
"Sukhna" was the word often used to describe the province. It means hot.
Iraqis often lament what they see as a culture that embraces a strongman. One resident in Diyala called it "a state of mind." In some ways, it is nostalgia for an order some believe the days of Hussein represented. But it also speaks to the coups and revolutions of modern Iraq, where power was sometimes captured in coalitions, sometimes by force, but usually then monopolized. Dissent became sedition -- by its nature, a threat.
Politics are still existential in Diyala. A party's background, whether Sunni or Shiite, determines the Iraqi flag it displays -- the new one brandished by Maliki's government, or the old one, emblazoned with three stars, borrowed from Hussein's era.
Sunnis complain that security forces in the province, their ranks filled with Shiites and Kurds, are still directed by the Badr Organization, the ostensibly disbanded militia of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, created in Iran and arguably Iraq's most ardently sectarian party. Abu Talib puts the number of officers loyal to Badr at 70 percent. To him, they are no more than a transparent cover for plots from Iran, which Diyala borders.
"You have to repay the person who raised you," he said darkly.
After voting Saturday, his finger stained with purple ink, he said those forces were still holding more than 1,000 of his men, detained in an offensive by Maliki's government last year that he said unfairly targeted his forces and Sunni regions. Even with a victory, Abu Talib said he doubted Badr would surrender control of the security forces.
"Definitely not," he said. "The obstacle that faces Iraq now is Badr."
Shiites worry that the Popular Committees loyal to Abu Talib are infiltrated by former insurgents, who are eager to become part of the security forces but still bent on sectarian strife. A new government, some warned Saturday, could ensure their entry, with the unintended consequence of making men like Abu Talib warlords in uniforms.
"There's fear," said Saif Amr Shaker, a 21-year-old student outside a polling station in Hawaider, which lost hundreds of residents in the fighting. "The majority of them are al-Qaeda, and we know that. If they come, we're going back to square one."
Nearly all the parties in Diyala, whatever their religious background, go to lengths to avoid sectarian language. Each sensing victory, all can afford to.
The key players, on the Sunni side, are a group aligned with Saleh al-Mutlak, a deputy in parliament who has courted the still-substantial support of Hussein's Baath Party, and a coalition built around the Iraqi Islamic Party, an heir of the Muslim Brotherhood that chose to participate in the 2005 elections, delivering it the 14 seats Sunnis hold. Among Shiites, Maliki's party is competing with the Supreme Council and another Islamist group, called Fadhila, that has tried to broaden its appeal. Ayad Allawi, a former prime minister, has sought the secular vote. Kurds are expected to win a few seats.
"It's democracy. It's a political process. It's not a war in which you have to surrender. It's about the peaceful transfer of power," said Abdel-Jabbar Ibrahim, an Islamic Party candidate, sitting in an office adorned with beach scenes and party slogans.
His headquarters felt like a fortress. Days before, a man riding a bicycle carried explosives that Ibrahim said he believed were intended for the underside of his car. The man was shot to death. Unrattled, Ibrahim promised to move Diyala beyond the vocabulary of violence and sect.
But his own language suggested otherwise. He spoke of "taking control" and "imposing policies." He envisioned 20 seats on the new provincial council for Sunnis, leaving six for Shiites and three for Kurds. Even the office suggested the war was not over. "Our martyrs live with God and live in our consciences," read a banner inside.
"They can't keep the political and military power they have," Ibrahim said.
Graffiti scrawled on a checkpoint before the village of Hawaider pleaded, "Patience, my beloved Iraq." And, indeed, some politicians urge that. Time, they say.
"Elections aren't a magic wand that will change everything," said Ali Mehdawi, a candidate on Mutlak's list. "It's simply not going to change the situation 100 percent."
"We're inheriting a past that we've had to endure," he said. "It's a heritage."
But Saturday, among residents bearing ink stains, patience was not the conversation.
Soldiers still crouched, fingers on triggers, at the checkpoint of Gatoun, a neighborhood in Baqubah that was once a stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq and is still too dangerous for any Shiite candidate to enter. The rubble of houses bombed by U.S. forces cascaded over barren lots. Election posters were sparse. No one was playing soccer in the street.
"This is the last chance to create trust between the government and people," said Mohammed Majid, a 21-year-old resident, standing with friends outside a store there.
"If we lose, we'll conclude this was all theater," Thaer Zaidan Khalaf said.
Another friend spoke up. "It means that democracy is a lie," Abdel-Wahid Ahmed said. "If it doesn't grant me my rights, then I'll take them another way. Call it what you want. I'll take them with my hand, with a stick, with a gun or by any other means."
Half an hour away, in the Shiite town of Hawaider, where a monument is inscribed with the names of 232 people killed in Diyala's bloodshed, two youths stood outside a polling station. One bore scars of a drive-by shooting while he was on his way to Najaf in 2006. The other was wounded in a car bombing next to a mosque the same year.
"They can't do anything to us," said one of them, Hassan Jassem. "Nothing."
He offered expletives about the sisters and mothers of Gatoun's men. His friend, Nouhad Safa, soon joined in. "We'll take care of them," he insisted.
"We won't sleep at night to make sure that we do."
WaPo
posted by madtom at 11:11 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home