Iraqi Vote Sustains U.S. Plans

Submitted by Narayan24 on Tue, 09/03/2010 - 1:56pm

Nearly two-thirds of Iraq's eligible voters cast ballots in Sunday's national elections, in a strong turnout and relatively smooth poll process that gave U.S. officials confidence that troop-withdrawal plans could proceed on schedule this summer.

Significantly, voters in Sunni areas turned out in higher percentages than in Iraq's Shiite areas, a shift that could redraw Iraq's political map by challenging Shiite parties' monopoly on power and signalling a greater stake in the political process for a community that has been previously been reticient to participate in the democratic process.

Iraq's electoral commission said 62.9% of Iraq's 19 million eligible voters participated in the election, despite sporadic violence in the early hours of voting that left at least 30 Iraqis dead.

Ballot counting began Monday morning at the headquarters of Iraq's Independent High Election Commission, with the race too close to call.

The first official preliminary results from the tight race to fill Iraq's 325-seat parliament, a contest that sets up who will be the country's next prime minister, are expected on Wednesday, once 30% of the votes in each province have been tallied.

Officials from several parties said early unofficial tallies showed incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was leading in southern Shiite majority provinces, while former prime minister Ayad Allawi led in predominantly Sunni provinces in northern and western Iraq. The critical battleground of Baghdad remained a toss-up.

Another variable is the electoral strength of the Iran-backed Shiite slate, the Iraqi National Alliance, which includes the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and the party of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The slate is widely expected to fare well in the Shiite south, and in certain parts of Baghdad.

Turnout in Sunday's vote was higher than it was in the January 2009 provincial elections, but well below the 2005 level of 75%. In that vote, Shiites and Kurds turned out in droves, but many Sunnis stayed home from the polls.

By contrast, in Sunday's vote, turnout was generally higher in Sunni areas of Iraq than in Shiite areas. The heavily Sunni provinces of Salaheddin, Ninevah and Kirkuk had the highest turnout in the elections, after the three Kurdish provinces in the north.

U.S. officials in Iraq proclaimed the elections a success. Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said on Monday that he was on pace for a rapid drawdown of nearly 45,000 U.S. troops between May and August. The 96,000 troops currently in Iraq are the lowest number of troops since the U.S. invasion in 2003.

U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered all but 50,000 troops to leave Iraq by Sept. 1, with the rest scheduled to leave by the end of 2011 under an Iraqi-American security agreement.

"Everything is on track for that to happen," Gen. Odierno said. "Unless there's a catastrophic event, we don't see that changing."

The drawdown won't begin in earnest until May, so the U.S. can maintain maximum troop strength over the next few weeks and months, as rival parties struggle to negotiate the makeup of the next governing coalition.

There are some indications a new government could be formed more quickly than in 2005, when it took 156 days. The major factions have been in close contact behind closed doors about potential coalitions in the run-up to the elections.

In Iraq, political turmoil has often been accompanied by upticks in violence. It was during the interregnum following the 2005 parliamentary elections that Sunni extremists bombed a Shiite shrine in the central Iraqi town of Samarra, setting off a spiral of violence that nearly plunged the country into an all-out civil war.

It also remains an open question whether the losers in Sunday's vote will accept defeat or raise fraud claims, which could provoke further unrest.

The process of forming a government will be "very hotly contested," said a senior Obama administration official before Sunday's vote.

"This is something we're watching very, very, very carefully because it has the potential to be a dangerous and volatile period," he said.

The official said the U.S. has been pushing senior Iraqi politicians to form a new government quickly and urging the current government headed by Mr. Maliki to prepare to stay in place as a "caretaker government" for several months following the vote and to continue to administer the country in a responsible way.

Source: The Wall Street Journal