December 22, 2005

Politics inside the UIA (south)


Posted by Helena Cobban at December 22, 2005 01:38 PM

Reidar Vissar is a Norwegian historian whose knowledge of southern Iraq I have admired in the past. Today he has a fascinating new text on his website, in which he analyzes the results as released so far of the elections, as viewed primarily in the south. His work makes a good, much more detailed complement to the post I put up here on Tuesday with some gleanings of info about the politics within the UIA list.

His first big comment is that there, as elsewhere, Allawi's more secular list has lost out big-time to the UIA. (I wonder to what extent Allawi's better showing last January and poorer showing this time are due to the well-known advantages of incumbency? To a large extent, I expect.)

Vissar looks in detail at Basra and two other provinces and writes this:

    the UIA looks set to walk away with 13 of 16 seats in Basra, 10 (possibly 11) of 12 in Dhi Qar, and 6 out of 7 in Maysan. Allawi’s list will probably get 2 seats in Basra and 1 in each of the two neighbouring governorates, whereas an independent Sadrist grouping (list 631) will compete fiercely with the UIA for the last seat in Dhi Qar. Finally, the Iraqi Accord Front, a mostly Sunni party with Islamist leanings, seems certain to get one seat in Basra, where the poor performance of Allawi’s allies may indicate that Sunnis who boycotted in January now have voted largely along sectarian lines. (The more secular Sunni alternative, list 667, could only muster around 1,000 voters across the three southern governorates).
He then turns his attention to the balances inside the UIA:
    It is often assumed that the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) is the leading force within the UIA. A closer look at the affiliations of the representatives likely to represent Basra, Maysan and Dhi Qar shows just how misleading this interpretation is for the south. Only 2 out of the 29 UIA candidates whose seats seem secure have a clear association with SCIRI, and an additional two from the institutionally independent Badr Brigades can be considered as being close to SCIRI. That means that more than 80% of UIA deputies from the south will have other, non-SCIRI, loyalties. Of these, 7 are Sadrists loyal to the radical Islamist Muqtada al-Sadr, 6 are members of the Fadila Party (a competing Sadrist party whose spiritual guiding light is the cleric Muhammad al-Yaqubi) 5 belong to a breakaway faction of the Daawa Party, 3 are from the mother branch of that organisation (also the party of Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the current prime minister), and then there are 4 Islamist independents.
So that would give us:
    SCIRI + pro-SCIRI: 4
    Sadrists (both flavors): 13
    Daawa + breakaway: 8 (don't know if the breakaway might have swung to Sadr or elsewhere, though?)
Vissar goes on to assess the effects of this outcome on the plans the SCIRI leaders have declared, to try to create a Shiite "super-region" out of 9 or so of Iraq's existing provinces (governorates.) He notes that elsewhere in the UIA there is support for other outcomes-- principally, either keeping the powers of the central state strong, or the establishment of a 'small', south-concentrated region of three governorates, rather than SCIRI's favored super-region.

His conclusion is:

    despite the indications of an overwhelming UIA election victory in the south, the tripartite model of an ethnically divided Iraq federation may still get competition from older federal designs. These include the non-sectarian “administrative” federation of 5–7 medium-sized entities (with which the small-sized 3-governorate southern region plan would harmonise) as well as the long-established scheme for a bi-national Arab–Kurdish union. The election results also have implications for Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim and SCIRI: they may yet find themselves facing some quite unexpected obstacles in their struggle for supremacy over the Islamist political scene among Iraq’s Shiites.
I think that in order to get a more definitive picture of the politics within the UIA and their ramifications, we still need to get a breakdown of the votes and UIA candidates in other regions-- especially Baghdad!-- that is as detailed as the one Vissar provides here for the south. But if his figures and analysis are more or less accurate (given that the final results are not yet in), and the patterns he describes in the three southern provinces are representative of what has happened in other strongly UIA parts of the country, then I think his conclusions are sound.

Thanks so much for sending me that link, Reidar! (Nice site you have there, too.)

Does anyone out there have the kind of additional information we need?



Comments

Helena, thank you so much for your detailed discussion of my article. I think you are absolutely right in singling out developments among the Baghdad representatives of the UIA as a key to future developments. I do have some data on UIA members for these more northern areas, and shall definitely try to have a closer look at them during the Christmas holiday. Interesting too is the question you raise about the political orientation of the Daawa breakaway group who call themselves Hizb al-Daawa al-Islamiyya – Tanzim al-Iraq. Before 2003, exiled members of this party were among the most vociferous critics of federalism – any federalism – for a post-war Iraq. But over the past two years, dissenting voices have emerged within the party, particularly in the far south. And in a televised interview last spring, a leading figure, Hashim al-Musawi, openly embraced the 3-governorate federal project for Basra, Maysan and Dhi Qar – and at the same time explicitly distanced himself from any large-scale federal units based on sectarian identity. I suspect that what is going on is similar to things seen within Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement over the past two years: the party leadership (actually in both cases, they are dominated by individuals with personal ties to central Iraq) insist on Iraqi nationalism in traditional terms, whereas individuals in the south become interested in the ongoing local efforts to establish a small and compact federal entity. (It was a Basra Sadrist who in August 2004 threatened with outright separation of the south during the Najaf crisis.) The big question, I guess, is whether these interesting seeds of small-scale local patriotism (perhaps a possible avenue for rapprochement between secular and Islamist forces?) will prove resilient and capable of creating public enthusiasm when challenged by the sectarian ideas underlying SCIRI’s scheme for a Shiite super-region.

Posted by: Reidar at December 23, 2005 10:07 AM

Further to this topic, based on the ”partial results” I think it makes sense to suggest that the UIA may take at least 35 of the 59 Baghdad seats – the final figure could of course be reduced as a result of the investigations into possible fraud, but it could also increase with compensatory seats. An election leaflet distributed to voters by the UIA gives party affiliations of the top 35 Baghdad candidates of the Alliance as follows: Sadrists of all descriptions, 11 candidates; Daawa including breakaway factions, 8 candidates; SCIRI and Badr Brigades, 7 candidates; “independents”, 9 candidates. (At least one of these “independents”, Abbas al-Bayati, has a long record of rather close cooperation with SCIRI, but again others lean towards the Daawa or have chosen to maintain neutrality vis-à-vis intra-Shiite party struggles.) From number 36 to 40 follow two Sadrists, one independent, and then another Sadrist before the next Badr Brigade member appears as candidate no. 41.

To my mind, this would seem to suggest that even in its Baghdad stronghold, SCIRI is not as pre-eminent as many think. Of course, in internal UIA elite politics they may still enjoy the upper hand by virtue of their efficient leadership and long experience – after all they have successfully lured US officials into giving them disproportionate representation and influence ever since the exile meetings of 2002. But ultimately, questions about the establishment of new federal entities are to be settled by referendum, and at that point SCIRI will have to sell its message to a large electorate who in this election voted principally for Sadrists and other non-SCIRI candidates – politicians who so far have shown less enthusiasm about SCIRI's vision of a single Shiite federal entity.

Posted by: Reidar at December 26, 2005 07:01 AM