Iraqi nationalism is reasserting itself. The main winners in January’s provincial elections are those with an openly nationalist message who support a strong centralised state. The main losers are those who favour decentralisation of power and are closely associated with the discredited politics of sectarian identity.
Concretely, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has successfully re-branded himself as a nationalist strongman – no small feat given that he leads a small Shi’ite Islamist party (Dawaa) which has hitherto lacked a mass following. Maliki’s supporters now dominate the country’s two main cities, Baghdad and Basra. And in the Shi’ite heartland of the south, they have supplanted their main rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), which had previously run many of the provincial councils.
The voters had several reasons to punish ISCI: its support for radical decentralisation (including a so-called Shi’ite “super-region” comprising half the country’s 18 provinces and potentially controlling most of its oil reserves); its close relations with Iran; and its poor record in providing local services.
Sunni areas north and west of Baghdad – which had largely boycotted the last provincial elections, in 2005 – likewise saw the emergence of a new balance of forces. The main loser was the Islamic Party of Iraq, an Islamist party which had previously been the dominant political force. The Islamists were pushed into third place behind the party of Sunni nationalist Saleh al-Mutlaq (a former Baathist) and a tribal party that forms part of the Awakening movement (tribal militias armed and paid by the Americans to fight Al-Qaeda). Tribal leaders proved badly divided among themselves, however; and there has been some nervousness as to whether the losers would accept the results.
What do the elections mean? They may help to dispel the illusion, current since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, that Iraqis are loyal only to family, tribe and sect, and not to the nation. On the contrary, having come perilously close to sectarian civil war in 2006-2007, they now see clearly the dangers of division and sorely want a strong leader who will ensure law and order and hold the country together. This explains why the previously-despised Maliki has managed to transform his fortunes so dramatically.
Much now depends on what he does with his election victory – and whether he can repeat it in parliamentary elections scheduled for December. Will he build on his nationalist credentials, or lapse back into the old identity politics of Shi’a versus Sunni and Arab versus Kurd? The election has not solved Iraq’s problems: indeed one of them – the Kurds’ desire to expand the area they now control – may have been exacerbated. There were no elections in the Kurdish autonomous region, but Kurdish candidates fought hard in the disputed areas that lie just to the south of it – and did worse than they had expected. In one province, Nineveh, with its provincial capital Mosul, the Kurds lost power to a Sunni party which fought on an openly anti-Kurdish platform.
As American forces begin to withdraw, the balance of political forces in Iraq is shifting and will go on shifting. The transition is likely to be messy.
JIME Center.All rights reserved.