Most coverage of the outcome of Iraq's March 7 elections has portrayed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's re-election as seriously in doubt, with former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, contending for the position. However, not only is another term for Maliki likely, his only real obstacle is securing Kurdish support. Allawi, on the other hand, does not represent a realistic threat. More generally, the election will result in a parliament that is more polarized between majority Shiite Islamists and opposition Sunni Arab nationalists, with secular Shiite and tribal parties almost entirely wiped out.
Although definitive tallies have not yet been released, a close reading of available region-by-region vote counts suggests that in a 325-seat parliament, Maliki's State of Law Coalition will have about 100 seats, Allawi's cross-sectarian bloc about 85, the Iranian-backed Iraqi National Alliance (INA) about 70, the Kurds 55, and other opposition parties about 10. Although Sunni Arab voters turned out well, Allawi will win less than 10 percent of the approximately 180 Shiite seats.
Once Maliki, as head of the largest bloc, becomes the prime minister-designate, a version of Prisoners' Dilemma will begin: While parties opposing Maliki could stop him if they all refused to join his government, once he starts offering choice ministries, the party receiving the offer will benefit more from accepting than from refusing.
Kurdish support, in particular, is key to Maliki's prospects. With it, his re-election is virtually inevitable. Without it, though, that becomes quite a more difficult task. Maliki realizes this and has stated openly that the Kurds, who helped elect him in 2006, are his preferred coalition partners. Although Maliki's nationalist agenda in 2008 included a harder line toward Kurd ambitions, in 2009 he reversed course, and during the recent campaign, Maliki avoided the anti-Kurdish rhetoric he had used in the previous year's parliamentary elections. Since March 7, he has vocally supported the re-election of Iraq's Kurd president, Jalal Talabani.
As for Maliki's Shiite rivals in the INA, they make for a fractious group, with one wing dominated by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), and the other by Muqtada al-Sadr's faction. ISCI has close ties to the Kurds and will not be left out of a Maliki-Kurd agreement. Also, the ISCI-Sadrist coalition is a marriage of convenience in the face of mutual suspicions and bad blood. So once Maliki's re-election appears inevitable, ISCI will rally to his side. As for the Sadrists, though they hope to weaken Maliki, their leverage will be limited, as he will not need their votes.
Turning to the Sunni Arabs and the secular Shiites that make up Iyad Allawi's base, Maliki will not need a single one of their roughly 100 seats to win the election. Allawi's flawed campaign strategy, based on appealing to former Baathists and Sunni Arabs, gave him huge majorities in Sunni provinces. But Maliki and the INA routed him so thoroughly in Shiite areas that the proportion of Shiite Islamist seats will actually increase from 47 percent in December 2005 to about 51 percent now.
Allawi's uphill climb got even steeper when Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, a key leader in Allawi's bloc, went on al-Jazeera after the election to say that Iraq's president must be an Arab. Kurds reacted with outrage, while Maliki aides fanned out in the media to praise Talabani and deplore the racism behind Arab opposition to a Kurdish president. This aggravated Allawi's liabilities: Though not anti-Kurd himself, much of his bloc is. Al-Itthad, a newspaper published by Talabani's party, did not fail to notice, quoting Maliki representative Safiya Suhayl on March 10 praising Talabani. Allawi and Hashemi travelled to the Kurdish capital of Irbil over the weekend to try to make amends.
The numbers make it clear that the only way an alternative to Maliki becomes plausible is if Kurdish factions oppose him. But the problem with a non-Maliki government is more chemistry than math: There is intense mutual hostility between Allawi's Arab nationalist base and the Kurds on the one hand, and between Allawi's secularist base and the Islamist INA on the other. Meanwhile, the Kurds, who have good relations with the ISCI wing of the INA, have bad relations with the Sadrists -- and in any case a coalition of the Kurds and the INA falls well short of a majority.
Assuming the most likely scenario, the election's outcome will most benefit Arab-Kurd relations on the national level, and Iraq's oil industry. In light of Kurdish leverage over Maliki, the long-awaited national oil law could be near (even if a Kirkuk compromise may be too much to hope for), and Maliki's re-election means the companies that won last December's licensing round will breathe easier. But look for a deterioration of provincial-level Arab-Kurd relations, as Sunni Arabs in Ninawa, Kirkuk and Diyala fear they will be marginalized by another Shiite-Kurd government.
Another term for Maliki could allow Islamists to further solidify their hold on power, but this does not mean Iraq is inevitably headed toward Iran's orbit. Maliki's problems with Shiite rivals derive from having spent the past two and a half years struggling, both militarily and bureaucratically, to weaken the influence of the Iranian-backed parties. He will have to walk a fine line, though. Iran's Dec. 18, 2009, takeover of Iraq's Fakka oilfield, which briefly shocked world oil markets, came just days after Iraq's first successful oil-licensing round, and a month after Maliki's rejection of Iranian proposals for a united Shiite front in the election. Iran also continues to sponsor armed groups in southern Iraq. So while Iran's surrogates in Iraq may have lost politically, Tehran can create instability for Maliki anytime it so chooses.
Maliki will need to do a better job at coalition management if a new government is to be more successful than the past. But having bought at least a partial peace on his eastern and northern fronts, he may now be able to focus on solidifying the Iraqi state under Shiite leadership -- and his own. |