Posted on 12/06/2004 7:12:02 PM PST by crushelits
BAGHDAD, Dec. 6 -- Under the stewardship of the country's most powerful religious figure, Iraq's fractured Shiite Muslim majority has closed ranks and produced a unified list of candidates for the parliamentary elections set for Jan. 30.
The United Iraqi Alliance, organized under the auspices of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has brought together mainstream Shiite religious parties allied with the interim government and a junior cleric who until two months ago was committed to armed rebellion, recasting the politics of Iraq's majority population.
The names of the 240 candidates will be released later this week, said Hussein Shahristani, the nuclear scientist charged by Sistani with organizing the list. But the slate of candidates immediately assumes center stage in an electoral process widely anticipated by Iraq's Shiite population, which has embraced the prospect of gaining power at the ballot box after decades of oppression by the government of Saddam Hussein, which was dominated by Sunni Muslims.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I see troubled waters ahead. The Shias are going for absolute control. It is going to freak the Sunni's out. That said, in a new regime, will the Kurds play ball with the Shias or not? If they do, that might help matters.
I expect an Iran style Theocracy to be the result, if not immediately, then within 5 years. The elected will be essentially told what to do by the clerics, and the country will go backward in time 100 years. Still, they will not be paying for suicide bombers in the near future. I guess its their choice.
Fine. Let them duke it out. At least they will be de-populating the country of anyone who feels strongly that religion is a good basis for running a government. And they will probably not be messing with their neighbors in the mean time.
Sooner or later the population will realize the Islam is NOT the way. It mak take 100 years.
Um, wrong...
240 names on the list and 30 are al-Sadr.
Sistani's party is SCIRI. If SCIRI does this successfully they have effectively absorbed the al-Sadr faction.
That means some fire breathers in the ranks but they are a minority.
THIS IS GOOD NEWS.
Democracy naturally moderates things ... you Torie of all people should know how democratic politics tends to migrate the balance of power to the middle.
The 'middle' here is the balance between religious and secular parties. in local Iraqi elections, the religious parties didn't do so hot, so dont be over-worried by the announcement.
As for absolute control, that too is a misnomer. The assembly gets to write the constitution but ratification requires approval from all 3 sectors of Iraq.
The guy created a "grand national coaltion" of Shias, including those associated with a wanted murderer and terrorist on the lamb. Why were not other ethnic groups included? Granted, it would be interesting to see how high on the list the Sadr militants are. Maybe it is window dressing. In any event, I don't take it as a positive sign myself, except that it does suggest, unsurprisingly, that the Shias are committed to the election process.
Good points all. When good points are made, I just have to acknowledge it - because that is the way I am. :) Cheers.
The Shia are about 60% of the population but have been out of power since Jesus was baby(or is that since Mohamed was a baby.)It seems obvious and just that around 60% of the parliamentarians are Shia. But it also seems that Sistani has created a grand national coalition.That is the best possible outcome.Of course the Sunni are not going to be happy and they will freak out.When minorities lose long held power that is what usually happens.But there will be a grand coalition government that will have the authority of popular consent to fight back.
My guess is that little by little Sunni leaders will be coerced or bribed into playing ball.
Kind of like what the demoncrapts are going through right now...............hahahahahaha
I don't, after all Saddam is behind bars and the dictatorship in Iraq has been stifled.
There most certainly will be more troubled waters - the issue is whether they will get more troubled, or less troubled, than they are now? I certainly hope for the best, I really, really, do. The stakes are very high as to what the ultimate outcome is, in so many ways, for Bush and the US policy or preemption and the robust support for spreading the word about liberty and a just civil society, for Israel, for the reformation of the Arab world, for the message it sends to existing and would-be tyrants and mass killers everywhere.
"Slots are also held for the Fadhila group loyal to Mohammed Yaacoubi, a cleric with a following in Basra; a group from Iraq's Turkish-speaking Turkmen minority; and a party representing Shiite Kurds.
"Most Kurds are Sunnis, and the community's two main political parties have announced their intention to draft a separate slate that will probably command most of the votes in the Kurdish-dominated north.
"Shahristani said the United Iraqi Alliance list will include independents from the northern city of Mosul, with its large Sunni Arab population, plus Sunni tribal representatives. Among them are the Shamar, one of the most powerful tribes in Iraq.
"We tried to include as many groups from various communities as possible," Shahristani said. "Everybody is happy with their share of the cake."
In short, not to put too fine a point on it, you are correct, and I was not.
To me this is not unexpected. My priest, who has travelled extensively in the Middle East, knows personally most of the priests of our Archdiocese (now self-governing, though still tied to the Partiarchate of Antioch, whose cathedral is in Damascus thanks to the 'model secular Muslims' of Turkey banning Christian clergy from Asian Turkey), as well as knowing the Orthodox Metropolitan of Baghdad (whose office is in Kuwait, even though his cathedral is still in his titular city), says "The Shi'ites are a mob, but a disciplined mob. You can trust them because they will follow their leaders."
A curious statement with a flipside. He also says "Never trust the Sunni. No matter how secular they seem, they cannot be trusted." He points out that it was the secularized Sunni who desacrated churches during the Lebanese civil war, while the Shi'ites respected them.
I think the dynamics of in Iraq will be very different than in Iran: al Sistani's every move since the invasion has been objectively pro-American (even though his fatwas always have a neutral tone to avoid siding with infidels against Muslims). The calculus is very different in a Shi'ite ascendancy backed by American arms than in a Shi'ite ascendancy against an American Cold-War client-regime.
In fact, since bin Laden's supporters have proclaimed him Caliph, al Qaeda linked groups have been perpetrating attacks agains the Shia in Iraq and Pakistan, and al Qaeda has been spouting the Sunni canard about Shi'ite Islam being a Jewish plot to corrupt true Islam, objectively the Shia should be our allies (not friends--the enemy of my enemy is often not my friend, but he is my ally).
Half the Sunnis are participating in the election in order to parley with the Shiites. It is the rebellious Sunnis who will be in trouble. When the Shiites get control of the Army and add their militias into it. Sunni rebels (many are former Republican Guards) are better organized and trained, but the Shiites have the fervor and numbers. Fighting in the Sunnis triangle is going to get more brutal because the Arab world accepts Arabs beating on Arabs, but they will not tolerate infidels beating Muslims. The Kurds are smart, they will be like the monkey sitting on the rocks watching two lions fight.
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