AMMAN, 2 February 2005 — Iraq’s minority Sunni Arabs mostly spurned Sunday’s election, but they still have the power to block any new constitution not to their liking.
They lost their dominance of Iraq when Saddam Hussein fell in April 2003. They have seen their cities battered by American forces fighting a deadly Sunni-led insurgency. Now they face an election triumph by the Shiites and Kurds Saddam oppressed. Yet they have veto power over the constitution that the new 275-seat assembly is supposed to draft by August. Under rules agreed last year, an October referendum to ratify that draft will fail if two-thirds of the voters in any three of Iraq’s 18 provinces give it the thumbs-down.
Sunnis may form only 20 percent of Iraq’s 27 million people, but their numerical strength in at least three provinces north and west of Baghdad gives them the votes to throw the political process into disarray — unless they can be induced to join it.
Everyone agrees that Iraq cannot know peace and stability unless all its communities feel they have a stake in its future, but talk of involving the Sunnis is easier than achieving it.
Main Sunni groups shunned the election. That left only smaller Sunni groups contesting the poll, such as those led by pro-Western elder statesman Adnan Pachachi and interim President Ghazi Al-Yawar, a tribal chief.
Even without assembly seats, such figures could be drafted into the government or a constitution-writing committee, but question marks hang over their credibility among Sunni masses.
“The Shiites have a clear political and religious leadership, the Kurds have a clear leadership, but not the Sunnis,” said Mustafa Alani, a Dubai-based Iraq analyst.
“You need someone who can legitimately claim to be defending Sunni Arab interests. I don’t see anyone like that,” he said.
While there are rifts within the Kurdish and Shiite communities, the Sunnis appear particularly fragmented, with a wide gulf between those violently opposing the US military presence and politicians willing to deal with the Americans. So far the gunmen and bombers have shown little inclination to talk, relentlessly attacking US-led troops, nascent Iraqi security forces and any Iraqis they view as collaborators.
Shiites already make up the bulk of Iraq’s US-trained military and police, and now political power has shifted to the Shiite majority, a combination likely to grate on Sunni nerves. “How do you bridge the gap between the Sunni insurgents and Shiite control of the state’s means of coercion?” asked Robert Springborg, at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
“The danger is that the election stirs up those animosities, by encouraging a winner and loser mentality,” he said, adding that much would depend on whether Shiite leaders exercised restraint and made genuine efforts to reach out to Sunnis.
