Edward Wong
Si sono presentati per le elezioni del 15 dic. circa 230 gruppi o individui, in parte raccolti in 19 coalizioni.
Alcuni gruppi arabi sunniti hanno formato una coalizione religiosa, l’Iraqi Consensus Front.
I sacerdoti sunniti hanno invitato i fedeli a votare;
la suddivisione per provincia dei 275 seggi parlamentari può consentire alle regioni sunnite di essere rappresentate,
ed avere un peso nella formazione del nuovo governo per costringere sciiti e curdi a scendere a compromessi su autonomia regionale, ruolo legale dell’islam e suddivisione della ricchezza petrolifera.
Nella fase finale della campagna i gruppi sunniti candidati alle elezioni sono stati attaccati
– da altri gruppi sunniti contrari alla partecipazione, con 10 vittime tra i candidati;
– dalle forze di sicurezza del governo a guida sciita, unità formate da miliziani, che sembra attuino sequestri e omicidi. Dopo costituzione della coalizione elettorale sunnita, sarebbero stati arrestati 400 membri dell’Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP).
L’IIP, fondato negli anni 1960 come derivazione della Fratellanza islamica, ha 435 sedi nel paese. Nel 2003 gli americani gli hanno assegnato 1 dei 25 seggi del Consiglio di governo; il partito ha boicottato le elezioni di gennaio denunciando l’assedio americano di Falludja.
A fine estate ha respinto la Costituzione assieme ad altri politici arabo sunniti, dopo che sciiti e curdi ne hanno ignorato le richieste.
Gli attentati contro l’IIP sono iniziati quando esso ha dato indicazioni ai suoi elettori di approvarla, dopo aver ottenuto, pochi giorni prima del referendum sulla Costituzione, una clausola che ne consente la revisione da parte del parlamento.
L’IIP è una delle maggiori coalizioni arabo-sunnite in lizza, ha forti alleati negli altri due principali gruppi sunniti dell’Iraqi Consensus Front.
Uno dei leader della coalizione, Adnan Dulaimi, ha forte influenza nella moschee sunnite, ed ha invitato centinaia di sacerdoti ad appoggiare la coalizione, con la promessa di ricostituire l’esercito iracheno, di lottare contro il sistema carcerario e di cercare di fermare le purghe sciite contro gli ex baathisti nel governo.
Allawi, ex primo ministro sciita è un forte concorrente per i voti arabo sunniti per la fama che si è fatta di duro e per il ruolo avuto in presenza nel partito baathista.
Un altro candidato popolare tra i sunniti è il baathista Saleh Mutlak.
————————-
NYT, 26.11.05
Edward Wong
- Al Sadr (sui 30 anni), è molto popolare tra gli sciiti impoveriti; questo ne fa un alleato ricercato dai partiti sciiti al governo, il Dawa Islamic Party e il Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
- Secondo il modello degli ayatollah maggiori, chiamati marjaiyah, Al-Sadr non ha dichiarato la propria adesione ad alcuna coalizione sciita; anche il grande Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, che ha dichiarato di non appoggiare nessun gruppo particolare.
- Gli sciiti attorno a Sadr rappresentano il maggiore gruppo della comunità sciita, secondo un portavoce turco sunnita del governo di transizione, se si presentassero da soli alle elezioni conquisterebbero la maggior parte dei seggi.
- Sadr ha già negoziato con i partiti sciiti nel governo di transizione ministeri e cariche nell’esecutivo del prossimo governo.
- I suoi seguaci si sono candidati per il governo di transizione, ma non come candidati ufficiali del movimento Sadr, ottenendo due dozzine di seggi, e tre ministeri.
- I sadristi hanno dimostrato fiuto politico sponsorizzando, pur senza riuscire a farla approvare, una proposta di legge che chiede il calendario del ritiro delle truppe occupanti.
- I leader ordinari sciiti hanno bisogno dell’appoggio di al-Sadr, come dimostrato dalla solidarietà che gli ha dichiarato il presidente del Consiglio Supremo, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim (sono figli entrambi di ayatollah, le cui famiglie si sono combattute).
- Questo benché in agosto il Madhi ha attaccato gli uffici del Consiglio supremo nel Sud Irak.
- Al Sadr non intende smobilitare la propria milizia, l’esercito del Mahdi, forte di migliaia di uomini.
- Nelle ultime settimana questa milizia ha attaccato e sequestrato arabi sunniti, gruppi sciiti rivali, giornalisti e forze britanniche nel Sud Iraq, dove ha la sua roccaforte.
- Numerosi soldati dell’esercito del Madhi sono entrati nelle forze di polizia mantenendo la fedeltà ad al-Sadr; al Sadr dispone di un suo settimanale, Al Hawza.
- La milizia di Sadr sarebbe legata a centinaia di poliziotti a Basra, in una forza armata illegale chiamata Jameat, che perpetra omicidi e torture.
- Come riferito da un generale britannico, continua la violenza degli sciiti contro altri sciiti, foraggiati per la preparazione di bombe anche dall’Iran.
- Non è chiaro quanto controllo esercitino al-Sadr e i suoi su alcune fazioni della milizia.
Secondo uno specialista dell’Islam sciita, i sacerdoti seguaci si Sadr fanno da interfaccia con le gang di giovani dei quartieri, che si atteggiano a guerriglieri, per avvicinarle a Sadr.
Nyt 05-12-05
Sunni Candidates in Iraq Find Enemies on All Sides
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 4 – The car swerved in front of Sheik Ayad al-Izzi’s sedan as he was crossing a bridge, on the way back to the capital after he had delivered a campaign speech in a western farming town rife with insurgents.
Another car pulled alongside, and men with Kalashnikov rifles fired into the sheik’s vehicle.
His candidacy in the coming parliamentary elections ended abruptly on that concrete span. The attack on Nov. 28 instantly killed Sheik Izzi and two colleagues from the Iraqi Islamic Party, one of the country’s mos
t prominent Sunni Arab political groups. The assassins have not been found.
"Day after day, our people are sacrificing themselves for their beliefs," Ayad al-Samarraie, a party leader, said after hundreds of mourners marched out of the party headquarters in western Baghdad last week, raising the sheik’s wooden coffin. "There are many groups trying to wreck the political process."
With just a little more than a week before the vote on Dec. 15 for a full, four-year government, the Bush administration sees Sunni Arab participation as the most crucial aspect of this final stage in the political process it created after toppling Saddam Hussein.
But perhaps no one has more enemies than the Sunni Arab politicians who have committed themselves to taking part in the elections. Claiming to speak for factions in the insurgency, they campaign by denouncing the Shiite-led government and American forces, yet are hounded by zealous Sunni militants like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who reject any involvement in the political process and brand the politicians as traitors.
Many of the administration’s hopes for helping Iraq build a stable government that can fight its own battles – and for extricating the United States from a politically unpopular war – are pinned to election day. If large numbers of Sunni Arabs vote, the thinking goes, the strength of the insurgency may be diverted into the political process, and the American military can begin withdrawing its 160,000 troops.
Many Sunni Arabs, who ruled Iraq for decades, boycotted the vote last January for a transitional National Assembly, but say they now regret that because they ceded too much power to the Shiites and Kurds.
The Shiite Arabs, who make up at least 60 percent of the population, see the coming election as their chance to enshrine majority rule of the country, denied them since Iraq was formed by colonial powers during the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire.
The Kurds, one-fifth of Iraq, want enough say in the new government to protect the autonomous status of their northern homeland, and to stem the growing religious influence of the Iranian-backed Shiite parties.
Everyone knows that much is at stake. Nearly 230 groups or individual politicians have registered, with some of those having banded together into 19 coalitions. Campaign posters and television advertisements are proliferating.
Sunni Arab parties are expected to make a strong showing in the elections for two reasons: Sunni clerics have issued a widespread call for their congregations to vote, and the electoral system divides most of the 275 parliamentary seats by province, guaranteeing that Sunni-dominated regions will get representation.
Even if it is unclear exactly how many seats the Sunni Arab parties will win, they will wield significant leverage in the formation of the new government, and no doubt use this to try to force the Shiites and Kurds to compromise on major issues like regional autonomy, the legal role of Islam and the sharing of oil wealth.
But in the final days of campaigning, the path to power is beset with dangers. Sheik Omar al-Jubouri, the head of the human rights office of the Iraqi Islamic Party, said at least 10 party members had been killed since the party announced in October the formation of a religious Sunni Arab coalition called the Iraqi Consensus Front to run in the election.
In early November, gunmen seriously wounded a well-known Sunni Arab candidate, Fakhri al-Qaisi, as he was driving in western Baghdad.
Days later, the head of the Iraqi Islamic Party branch in Ramadi, the capital of hostile Anbar Province, was accosted as he began pulling down anti-election posters that Mr. Zarqawi’s group, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, had plastered in a central mosque. Insurgents dragged away the politician as worshipers watched, said Alaa Makki, the party’s campaign manager. The man later was found dead.
Tarik al-Hashimi, the head of the party, said he began receiving threats in October. He carries a handgun in his briefcase, he said, and travels with armed bodyguards.
"I’ve gotten letters," Mr. Hashimi, a businessman and former army officer, said as he reclined in his office. "There have been messages circulated in mosques, e-mails and telephone calls. They say, ‘Your name is atop the assassination list. You’re an infidel now.’ "
But only some of the dangers involve Sunni militants. Party officials say they are equally fearful of the Shiite-led government’s security forces, units made up of militiamen who some believe to be carrying out abductions and killings. Sheik Jubouri said 400 members of the Iraqi Islamic Party had been wrongly arrested since the formation of the religious Sunni coalition.
Some people blame Shiites rather than Sunni fighters for the assassination of Sheik Izzi. Last week, the Islamic Army of Iraq, a militant Sunni group, denounced the murder in an Internet posting. "We were stunned by the bad news," the militants wrote. Al Qaeda also denounced the killing on Sunday.
More than any other Sunni group, the Iraqi Islamic Party, which says it has 435 offices across Iraq, has tried to straddle the line between engaging in the political process and siding with what it considers the legitimate resistance, meaning nationalist guerrillas. It was founded in the 1960’s as an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood. The group has regular contact with American officials here – the Americans even gave it one of 25 seats on the Iraqi Governing Council in 2003. But the party boycotted last January’s elections, denouncing the American-led siege of Falluja.
In the late summer, it joined other Sunni Arab politicians in rejecting the proposed constitution when Shiite and Kurdish leaders ignored their demands. Then just days before the constitutional referendum in October, the party broke ranks with the Sunni establishment by asking voters to approve the document, after having negotiated a clause that would allow revisions by the new Parliament.
"That was one of the hardest decisions," Mr. Hashimi said.
That is when threats against the party increased. Offices were firebombed in Falluja and Ramadi. Gunmen ambushed clerics with ties to the party.
In recent weeks, the party has made an effort to strengthen its street credibility among the Sunnis. It made a flurry of announcements saying vote fraud had probably taken place during the referendum. It has also come out more vocally than ever against mass arrests by the Iraqi government and American forces.
Hatem Mukhlis, a Sunni Arab who heads a rival secular party in the election, the Assembly of Patriots, said the Iraqi Islamic Party had made the wrong decision by supporting the constitution, and was now desperately trying to salvage its reputation
.
"They were generally considered to be traitors," said Mr. Mukhlis, a doctor who lived in the United States for 20 years. "They were really holding the stick in the middle, trying to do both things at once."
But the Iraqi Islamic Party has formidable allies in the two other prominent Sunni groups that are part of the Iraqi Consensus Front, the religious coalition expected to be the Sunni Arab front-runner in the elections. The alliance, which takes as its symbol the Islamic crescent and a palm frond, even has celebrity endorsements – Iraq’s most famous soccer player, Ahmad Radhi, said at a news conference last week that he supported the coalition.
At a recent indoor rally in western Baghdad, one of the coalition’s leaders, Adnan Dulaimi, who wields enormous influence in Sunni mosques, called on hundreds of clerics to tell their congregations to back the coalition. He promised it would help bring back the old Iraqi Army, take a stand against the detainee system and try to end the Shiite-led purges of former Baath Party members from the government.
"I’ve already called on people in Friday Prayer to support this list," said a slim, white-turbaned imam from Diyala Province, Sheik Ayad Ahmed Dulaimi, as he stood outside the hall. "We’ve suffered oppression. In order not to be marginalized, we need power in the National Assembly."
This access to mosques gives the coalition a huge advantage over more secular candidates like Mr. Mukhlis. The Iraqi Islamic Party has also begun advertising on television and putting up posters. The party has a campaign budget of $700,000, much of it raised through minimum donations of $200 from each member, said Mr. Makki, the campaign manager.
But to win Sunni Arab votes, these parties have to campaign in the most perilous parts of Iraq, where Mr. Zarqawi and other jihadists also hold sway.
"It’s all dangerous, the work we’re doing," Haider Khalil Hamid, 24, said as he worked with a dozen men to plaster posters for the Iraqi Islamic Party on a Baghdad boulevard. "The most important thing is to change the current government. The Sunnis don’t feel comfortable with this sectarianism. Under Saddam’s regime, it was good. Even in the time of Ayad Allawi, it was better than now."
Mr. Allawi, the former prime minister and a secular Shiite, will be a strong contender for the Sunni Arab vote because of his image as a tough leader and his former role in the Baath Party. Another ex-Baathist, Saleh Mutlak, has also emerged as a popular candidate among Sunnis. But whoever is their favorite politician, many Sunni Arabs say they must turn out to vote this time around.
"We will not let anyone marginalize us, and we will take our political right in administering Iraq," said Ibrahim Musleh al-Muhammadi, 40, a businessman in Falluja. "We say ‘no’ to the occupier and ‘yes’ to the freedom of Iraq."
Sahar Najib contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Falluja.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 26 – Men loyal to Moktada al-Sadr piled out of their cars at a plantation near Baghdad on a recent morning, bristling with Kalashnikov rifles and eager to exact vengeance on the Sunni Arab fighters who had butchered one of their Shiite militia brothers.
When the smoke cleared after the fight, at least 21 bodies lay scattered among the weeds, making it the deadliest militia battle in months. The black-clad Shiites swaggered away, boasting about the carnage.
Even as that battle raged on Oct. 27, Mr. Sadr’s aides in Baghdad were quietly closing a deal that would signal his official debut as a kingmaker in Iraqi politics, placing his handpicked candidates on the same slate – and on equal footing – with the Shiite governing parties in the December parliamentary elections. The country’s rulers had come courting him, and he had forced them to meet his terms.
Wielding violence and political popularity as tools of his authority, Mr. Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has defied the American authorities here since the fall of Saddam Hussein, is cementing his role as one of Iraq’s most powerful figures.
Just a year after Mr. Sadr led two fierce uprisings, the Americans are hailing his entry into the elections as the best sign yet that the political process can co-opt insurgents.
But his ascent could portend a darker chain of events, for he continues to embrace his image as an unrepentant guerrilla leader even as he takes the reins of political power.
Mr. Sadr has made no move to disband his militia, the thousands-strong Mahdi Army. In recent weeks, factions of the militia have brazenly assaulted and abducted Sunni Arabs, rival Shiite groups, journalists and British-led forces in the south, where Mr. Sadr has a zealous following. At least 19 foreign soldiers and security contractors have been killed there since late summer, mostly by roadside bombs planted by Shiite militiamen who use Iranian technology, British officers say. The latest killing took place Nov. 20 near Basra.
"The fatality rate is quite high, much higher than it was a year ago," Maj. Gen. J. B. Dutton, the British commander in southern Iraq, said in a briefing to reporters.
Members of the Mahdi Army have also joined the police in large numbers, while retaining their loyalty to Mr. Sadr. Squad cars in Baghdad and southern cities cruise openly with pictures of Mr. Sadr taped to the windows. On Nov. 17, the American Embassy demanded that the Iraqi government prohibit private armies from controlling the Iraqi security forces, after American soldiers had found 169 malnourished prisoners, some of them tortured, in a Baghdad police prison reportedly under the command of a Shiite militia.
Mr. Sadr’s oratory is as anti-American and incendiary as it has ever been. A recent article in Al Hawza, a weekly Sadr publication that the Americans tried unsuccessfully to close last year, carried the headline: "Bush Family: Your Nights Will Be Finished." Another article explained that Mr. Sadr was supporting the December elections to rid Iraq of American-backed politicians who "rip off the heads of the underprivileged and scatter the pieces of their children and elderly."
Partly because of his uncompromising attitude, Mr. Sadr, who is in his early 30’s, is immensely popular among impoverished Shiites. That has made him the most coveted ally of the governing Shiite parties as they head into the December elections. Mr. Sadr used this leverage to get 30 of his candidates on the Shiite coalition’s slate, as many as the number allotted to each of the two main governing parties, the Dawa Islamic Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Mr. Sadr’s aides have already negotiated with those parties for executive offices and ministry posts in the next government. Bahaa al-Aaraji, an influential Sadr loyalist who was secretary of the constitutional committee, said in an interview that Mr.
Sadr had urged him to take an executive office after the elections.
Early this month, the leader of the Supreme Council, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, went to the holy city of Najaf to visit Mr. Sadr in a gesture of solidarity. Mr. Hakim and Mr. Sadr are sons of deceased ayatollahs whose families have feuded. In August, the Mahdi Army stormed the offices of the Supreme Council across southern Iraq. Mr. Hakim’s recent visit showed how much the mainstream Shiite leaders needed the support of Mr. Sadr, no matter how much they abhorred him.
"They are the largest group in the Shiite community," said Hajim al-Hassani, a secular Sunni Turkmen who is speaker of the transitional National Assembly. "They will be a force to deal with in the elections. If they run separately, they would get most of the seats in the south."
Mr. Sadr is also trying to use the elections to elevate his stature as a spiritual leader. Though his political group has joined the Shiite coalition, he has yet to endorse anyone. That is apparently because he wants to emulate the top ayatollahs in Iraq, collectively known as the marjaiyah, who usually stay above day-to-day politics. The most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has said he will not back any single group in the elections.
"Moktada doesn’t support any list," said Sheik Abbas al-Rubaie, Mr. Sadr’s senior political aide. "He has coordinated his opinion with that of the marjaiyah. They say they support everyone, but not any specific list."
Mr. Sadr’s support for the elections, though, is a marked change from last January, when he criticized the political process as a tool of the occupiers. Followers of Mr. Sadr at the time ran for transitional assembly seats, but not as official candidates of the Sadr movement. They won about two dozen seats and later got control of three ministries.
A Western diplomat said the Sadrists exhibited political acumen once in power. They recently sponsored an assembly bill demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops. The bill did not pass, but its development "showed an evolving political maturity," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid the appearance of foreign interference in Iraqi politics.
But greater Sadrist participation in governance has done little to curb the activities of the Mahdi Army. Iraqi and British officials have suggested that Mr. Sadr’s militia is tied to hundreds of policemen in Basra who form a shadowy force called the Jameat, a group involved in killings and torture. General Dutton, the British commander, said Shiite-on-Shiite violence was continuing. In addition, sophisticated material from Iran for making bombs is going to "breakaway" militiamen, he said.
It is unclear how much command Mr. Sadr and his top aides have over some factions of the militia.
"I think the Sadrists are a social movement, not really so much an organization," said Juan Cole, a specialist on Shiite Islam at the University of Michigan. "So you have these neighborhood-based youth gangs masquerading as an ‘army.’ Then you have the mosque preachers loyal to Moktada who try to swing their congregations, and who interface with the youth gangs."
On Nov. 12, after a car bomb killed 8 people and wounded at least 40 others in a Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, dozens of gun-wielding Sadr loyalists sealed off the area, only occasionally admitting Iraqi policemen. A militiaman pulled up in a bulldozer to clear the debris. Others detained a man whom they accused of helping in the attack. They told a reporter they had gotten a confession out of him, and then they shoved him into a sedan and drove away.
Last month, militiamen near the Sadr City neighborhood in Baghdad abducted Rory Carroll, an Irish reporter for The Guardian. Senior Shiite officials said in interviews that the militiamen, acting without Mr. Sadr’s approval, wanted to trade Mr. Carroll for a Mahdi Army commander imprisoned by the British in Basra. The kidnappers eventually released Mr. Carroll because of political pressure. Sheik Rubaie, Mr. Sadr’s political aide, later said the Mahdi Army had nothing to do with the abduction.
Sadr officials are quite open, though, about the Mahdi Army’s role in the deadly battle on Oct. 27, when the militiamen assaulted a Sunni Arab kidnapping ring in the farming area called Nahrawan, east of Baghdad. The Sunnis had abducted and mutilated a Sadrist and left his body parts strewn atop a car in a thicket of trees. When the Mahdi Army went to retrieve the body, the Sunnis opened fire with mortars, said Sheik Ghazi Naji Gannas, a local Shiite leader.
The militia retreated, then returned the next day with policemen for a final showdown. Sadr officials say the incident shows that the Mahdi Army can play a positive role in helping to secure Iraq. "We coordinated with the government, and we acted with their acknowledgment," Sheik Rubaie said.
But Sheik Gannas said the Mahdi Army was also carrying out abductions in the area. The militia was as unruly and dangerous as the Sunni extremists, he added, and nothing but trouble lay ahead if the Iraqi government failed to rein it in.
"Thank God," he said, "for this battle between the two sides."
Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi and Joao Silva contributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
