US HOPES AND THE IRAQI ELECTION ( Washington Post)

[Zlatko Waterman]

Iraq Winners Allied With Iran Are the Opposite of U.S. Vision



By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 14, 2005; Page A08



When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq two years ago, it envisioned a quick handover to handpicked allies in a secular government that would be the antithesis of Iran's theocracy -- potentially even a foil to Tehran's regional ambitions.

But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base -- and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is the last thing the administration expected from its costly Iraq policy -- $300 billion and counting, U.S. and regional analysts say.

Yesterday, the White House heralded the election and credited the U.S. role. In a statement, President Bush praised Iraqis "for defying terrorist threats and setting their country on the path of democracy and freedom. And I congratulate every candidate who stood for election and those who will take office once the results are certified."

Yet the top two winning parties -- which together won more than 70 percent of the vote and are expected to name Iraq's new prime minister and president -- are Iran's closest allies in Iraq.

Thousands of members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite-dominated slate that won almost half of the 8.5 million votes and will name the prime minister, spent decades in exile in Iran. Most of the militia members in its largest faction were trained in Shiite-dominated Iran.

And the winning Kurdish alliance, whose co-leader Jalal Talabani is the top nominee for president, has roots in a province abutting Iran, which long served as its economic and political lifeline.

"This is a government that will have very good relations with Iran. The Kurdish victory reinforces this conclusion. Talabani is very close to Tehran," said Juan Cole, a University of Michigan expert on Iraq. "In terms of regional geopolitics, this is not the outcome that the United States was hoping for."

Added Rami Khouri, Arab analyst and editor of Beirut's Daily Star: "The idea that the United States would get a quick, stable, prosperous, pro-American and pro-Israel Iraq has not happened. Most of the neoconservative assumptions about what would happen have proven false."

The results have long-term implications. For decades, both Republican and Democratic administrations played Baghdad and Tehran off each other to ensure neither became a regional giant threatening or dominant over U.S. allies, notably Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich Gulf sheikdoms.

But now, Cole said, Iraq and Iran are likely to take similar positions on many issues, from oil prices to U.S. policy on Iran. "If the United States had decided three years ago to bomb Iran, it would have produced joy in Baghdad," he added. "Now it might produce strong protests from Baghdad."

Conversely, the Iraqi secular democrats backed most strongly by the Bush administration lost big. During his State of the Union address last year, Bush invited Adnan Pachachi, a longtime Sunni politician and then-president of the Iraqi Governing Council, to sit with first lady Laura Bush. Pachachi's party fared so poorly in the election that it won no seats in the national assembly.

And current Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, backed by the CIA during his years in exile and handpicked by U.S. and U.N. officials to lead the interim government, came in third. He addressed a joint session of Congress in September, a rare honor reserved for heads of state of the closest U.S. allies. But now, U.S. hopes that Allawi will tally enough votes to vie as a compromise candidate and continue his leadership are unrealistic, analysts say.

"The big losers in this election are the liberals," said Stanford University's Larry Diamond, who was an adviser to the U.S. occupation government. "The fact that three-quarters of the national assembly seats have gone to just two [out of 111] slates is a worrisome trend. Unless the ruling coalition reaches out to broaden itself to include all groups, the insurgency will continue -- and may gain ground."

Adel Abdul Mahdi, who is a leading contender to be prime minister, reiterated yesterday that the new government does not want to emulate Iran. "We don't want either a Shiite government or an Islamic government," he said on CNN's "Late Edition." "Now we are working for a democratic government. This is our choice."

And a senior State Department official said yesterday that the 48 percent vote won by the Shiite slate deprives it of an outright majority. "If it had been higher, the slate would be seen with a lot more trepidation," he said on the condition of anonymity because of department rules.

U.S. and regional analysts agree that Iraq is not likely to become an Iranian surrogate. Iraq's Arabs and Iran's Persians have a long and rocky history. During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, Iraq's Shiite troops did not defect to Iran.

"There's the assumption that the new government will be close to Iran or influenced by Iran. That's a strong and reasonable assumption," Khouri said. "But I don't think anyone knows -- including Grand Ayatollah [Ali] Sistani -- where the fault line is between Shiite religious identity and Iraqi national identity."

Iranian-born Sistani is now Iraq's top cleric -- and the leader who pressed for elections when Washington favored a caucus system to pick a government. His aides have also rejected Iran's theocracy as a model, although the Shiite slate is expected to press for Islamic law to be incorporated in the new constitution.

For now, the United States appears prepared to accept the results -- in large part because it has no choice.

But the results were announced at a time when the United States faces mounting tensions with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons ambitions, support for extremism and human rights violations. On her first trip abroad this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iran's behavior was "something to be loathed" and charged that the "unelected mullahs" are not good for Iran or the region.

One of the biggest questions, analysts say, is whether Iraq's democratic election will make it easier -- or harder -- to pressure Iran.

[Zlatko Waterman]

A follow-up on the story I posted above: ( The Guardian)

(paste)


Mosque And State: Just How Close?
Iraq's new government may be more influenced by Islam than the U.S. hoped




Is Iraq on its way toward becoming an Islamic state? As the vote-counting winds down from the country's Jan. 30 election, the broad outlines of the outcome seem clear. The largely Shiite group called the United Iraqi Alliance, blessed by Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, will be the largest by far in the 275-seat National Assembly. That puts the Shiites in prime position to influence the choice of a new government and the writing of Iraq's permanent constitution. Advertisement

But don't expect an Iran-style government dominated by mullahs-turned-politicians. The reclusive 74-year-old Sistani comes from the Quietist school of Shiite scholars, who think it's a mistake for clerics to run the affairs of state -- a view reinforced by the shortcomings of the regime next door in Iran. But the degree to which religion will govern future Iraqi society is still far from decided. Even if the clerics stay out of politics, Iraq may be on the way to a system where religion and religious laws play a bigger role than U.S. policymakers anticipate, possibly thwarting cherished American goals such as broadening women's rights and creating a freewheeling capitalist economy. "The main goal in political Islam hasn't been clerical rule. It has been the replacement of civil law with Shariah, or Islamic canon law. And that is where Iraq is headed," says Juan Cole, professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan. "The only question is how wide-ranging the substitution will be."

If the Shiite parties allied with Sistani get their way, it's a good bet that religious authorities will gain greater influence. Most specialists think the shift, which is already occurring, will be limited to family and social matters such as marriage, inheritance, and possibly education. It seems unlikely that one community will impose their system on another. Instead, Shiite and Sunni Muslims and Christians may wind up with their own religious family courts.

What's unclear is whether religious influence will spill over into commerce. That would mean measures such as bans on banks charging interest and pressure on those participating in activities considered immoral, such as gambling and the sale of alcohol. The Shiite politicians may want broader strictures on the economy to achieve social justice. Cole thinks they might look askance at the free trading of currencies and the transfer of money out of the country. There's even a text laying out a Shiite view of economics. Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, the founder of Iraq's political Shiite movement who was executed in 1980, wrote a well-known book named Our Economy, which called for regulating the economy by the "moral and ethical values of Islam." Such policy directions, however, will depend on who becomes Prime Minister. One of the leading candidates, current Finance Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, is a free marketer favored by U.S. officials despite his affiliation with a religious party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Other figures may turn out to be skeptical of unfettered capitalism.

REVERBERATIONS IN IRAN?
Among Iraqis, the debate on Islam's role is gathering steam. Since the election, some have released statements pushing for Shariah law to be the sole basis of Iraq's future constitution and legislation. But on Feb. 8, a Sistani spokesman tried to allay fears by saying that the Ayatollah merely wanted the constitution "to respect the Islamic cultural identity of the Iraqi people." Ghanim Jawad, an official of the Al-Khoei Foundation, a Shiite institution in London, says the Najaf clerical establishment just wants Islam mentioned in the constitution. "That doesn't mean the only source for legislation is Islam," he says. Any greater emphasis on Islam will make many Iraqis uneasy. The Kurds, likely to constitute the second-largest bloc in the Assembly, will resist the application of Islamic law in their area.

Should the U.S. be worried about these developments? "We should watch it," says Phebe Marr, an Iraq scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. "I think the red line would be clerical domination of the state." But she adds that social issues -- from the trivial, such as banning alcoholic beverages, to the important, such as limiting women's rights -- are matters for Iraqis to decide. "We said we wanted democracy there," she says. "This is what happens."

A Shiite-led Iraq could be a wild card in a region whose hidebound regimes, mostly led by Sunni strongmen and monarchs, are under pressure from without and within. Such a change might add to the restiveness of downtrodden Shiite minorities, including the one that inhabits Saudi Arabia's oil-rich eastern province. Already, the fall of Saddam Hussein has been a boost to Iran, energizing the pilgrimage and trade traffic between the two countries. Yet if Iraq proves a more successful model of Islamic-inspired rule than Iran, its example could help undermine the Iranian mullahs.

How Sistani plays his cards will be key. So far it's hard to fault his gamesmanship. Since the fall of Saddam in 2003, the Iranian-born cleric has played the Iraqi nationalist, refusing to meet Americans and insisting on the elections that would bring the Shiites to power. Yet he has also urged his followers not to fight against American forces and cautioned against reprisals for attacks on Shiites by Sunni suicide bombers. Sistani obviously sees the wisdom of acting with restraint -- and the Shiites will have to compromise with other groups to keep Iraq intact. The new National Assembly must choose a three- person presidential panel that will select the Prime Minister, the most powerful job. That will require a two-thirds Assembly majority. The Kurdish coalition and Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's secular grouping, which looks likely to place third in the election, may be power brokers.

One problem for Sistani is that his own group is far from monolithic. Two religious parties form its backbone. The Islamic Da'wa Party has agitated for an Islamic state in Iraq since the late 1950s. The other, SCIRI, is a Da'wa offshoot nurtured by Iran in Saddam's era. But it also includes more urbane personalities, such as Ahmed Chalabi, the former Pentagon favorite now making a comeback.

Some Shiite politicians are skeptical that this patchwork group will be able to agree on much beyond protecting the rights of Shiites. "I don't think the Shia are capable of having a unified approach to politics beyond the necessity of removing discrimination," says Ali Allawi, a politician allied with Sistani. "Once the discriminatory structures are removed, the Shia as a politically unified grouping will dissolve." If so, fears of a religious state would ease.

But powerful forces may still keep pushing Iraqi society in a religious direction, whatever shape the constitution takes. Once among the more secular countries in the region, Iraq was taking on a more pronounced religious coloring even before Shiite and Sunni clerics began to fill the postwar vacuum left by Saddam's fall. Militias tied to the religious parties also exert huge influence in some areas. The southern city of Basra, once relatively secular, has come to look a lot like Iran: Women are afraid to go outdoors without headscarves for fear of reprisals from the SCIRI-affiliated Badr brigades, as well as other toughs associated with the firebrand cleric Moqtada al Sadr. For ordinary Iraqis, who rules the streets may for years be more important than what ends up in the constitution.



By Stanley Reed in London

[Dave The Dov]

Oh yeah just like in any other country that the US had meddle with it always ends up going the wrong way and this goverment doesn't care what happens in the end.
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Ferrari 125 S