Visit by Ban reaffirms strong UN ties to Iraq, says Maliki

UN SECRETARY general Ban Ki-moon yesterday paid an unannounced visit to Baghdad where he met Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, who presided over last Saturday’s generally peaceful provincial polls.

Mr Maliki’s spokesman Yassin Majid hailed the close collaboration between the UN and Iraq in these elections and said that Mr Ban’s visit reaffirmed the “strong relationship between the world body and Iraq”. Many Iraqis are eager to cultivate this relationship at the expense of the connection, regarded as uncomfortable, between their country and the US.

Mr Maliki has other good reasons to celebrate the outcome of these elections. First and foremost, voters made it clear that they want a strong central government by weakening the grip on power of the federalist Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) and the separatist Kurdish Alliance.

Mr Maliki has staked his premiership on the policy of central rule and has fought both fellow Shias in the SIIC and the Kurds to maintain Baghdad’s grip on the 15 Arab-majority provinces outside the three-province Kurdish autonomous region.

Secondly, the elections transformed Mr Maliki’s own Dawa party from a minor to a major player on the Iraqi scene. Dawa and its allies secured 38 per cent of the vote in Baghdad and 37 per cent in Basra, the country’s largest and second largest cities.

Mr Maliki’s bloc also took between 23 and 11 per cent in seven provinces previously dominated by the SIIC, Dawa’s main rival. The SIIC did not come first in any province and won only 5.4 per cent of the vote in Baghdad and 11.6 per cent in Basra. Although another Dawa rival, the Liberal Independents, endorsed by radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, came second in three key provinces, including Baghdad, the Sadrists cannot challenge Dawa’s dominance.

While Dawa will have to form coalitions in order to govern at provincial level, it is set to run councils in the nine Shia-majority provinces. Dawa’s success has given Mr Maliki a boost ahead of national assembly elections later this year.

While there has been a reshuffle in the positions of parties, the Shia provinces remain firmly within the fundamentalist fold.

Founded in 1957, Dawa, governed by Shia laymen such as Mr Maliki, is Iraq’s oldest Shia religious party and is committed to transforming the country into an Islamic state. Dawa and Mr Maliki personally are closely tied to Iran. SIIC, the Sadrists and smaller Shia groups that did well are also fundamentalist and sectarian.

By contrast, Sunni fundamentalists in the bloc led by the Islamic Party won narrowly in only two northern provinces, Salahuddin and Diyala, where their nearest rivals are Kurds and secular nationalists.

The Sunni Hadba bloc, comprised of tribal elements and nationalists, won by the largest margin in the country – 48.4 per cent – in strife-ridden Ninevah province. This is almost double the percentage secured by the Kurds, in power there since 2005. In the west, nationalists and tribal volunteers who fought against al-Qaeda won control of Anbar, Iraq’s largest province, which had been governed by the Islamic Party.

These elections reveal two quite different tendencies. Shias have remained loyal to fundamentalist parties while Sunnis have turned toward secular, nationalist parties and tribal groups, some connected with the country’s ousted Baath party.

These trends could lead to confrontation and conflict if parties representing the Shia majority attempt to impose fundamentalism on Sunnis who have made a decisive shift away from the Islamic Party and its allies.

A more imminent danger is posed by the SIIC and the Kurdish Alliance who could react violently to their loss of power in the south and northeast respectively.