SAMAWA, Iraq, 7 October 2005 — Deep in Iraq’s southern Shiite heartland, there is little doubt that next week’s referendum on a new constitution will seal the political rise of the country’s religious majority.

Never mind that few in the city of Samawa appear to have seen copies of the complicated new charter, which are only now being delivered to voters ahead of the Oct. 15 poll.

For local leaders in Muthanna province, which is 97 percent Shiite, the way forward is clear whether or not Iraq’s once dominant Sunni Arab minority wants to take part.

“Many of our Sunni brothers were educated in evil by Saddam Hussein, and so they are afraid of change,” said Shaikh Raysaan Al-Zayad, a local tribal leader who has told his followers to vote “Yes,” though he has not read the constitution himself.

“We want a government that stands against terrorism, and the constitution is a guarantee of that,” he said.

Visiting Samawa to promote the charter, officials from Baghdad were peppered with questions about irrigation, fertilizer and highway construction, issues that seem refreshingly normal after the daily bloodshed further north.

Samawa saw riots and bloodshed two months ago, however, in a mark of the extent of disillusion with the lack of economic recovery despite the election of a Shiite-led government this year and of tensions among armed Shiite groups.

But though the meeting was temporarily plunged into darkness when the electricity failed — a common occurrence in post-war Iraq, which left participants groping by the dim light of their cell phones — officials were upbeat.

“This is a good news story,” said Iraq’s chief government spokesman Laith Kubba, who flew in by US military helicopter to meet local political, religious and tribal authorities.

“Whatever we have done, there is room to do more. This is the first time we have tried to educate the nation about taking responsibility for its own decisions.”

Iraq’s US-backed government, run by Shiites and their Kurdish allies, is pushing hard for passage of the new constitution ahead of elections in December for a full-fledged four-year parliament.

Passage of the constitution, which is widely expected, is also key to Washington’s plans for Iraq, including the eventual drawdown of the more than 149,000 US troops whose deployment is increasingly unpopular with US voters.

Sunni Arabs, who make up about 20 percent of the country’s population and dominated Iraq under Saddam, have joined with foreign militants in a bloody campaign of bombings, suicide attacks and kidnappings to derail those plans.

Sunni Arab leaders have threatened to boycott the referendum if US troops do not halt major operations in western Iraq, where US-led forces are engaged in a sweep against insurgent groups and Islamist fighters.

But Shiite areas like Muthanna, which borders Saudi Arabia, as well as Kurdish regions in the north have seen less bloodshed — a sign, officials say, that parts of Iraq are pulling themselves together despite the Sunni opposition.

“It’s a province where, probably more than any other, there is a will to see that security is maintained,” said Col. Hugh Blackman, commander of Britain’s Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, charged with maintaining order in the province from a base outside Samawa, 270 km south of Baghdad.

Samawa has not escaped Iraq’s turmoil entirely. In early August, police fired into a crowd of hundreds of protesters, killing one person and wounding 40, amid tensions between rival Shiite groups and complaints about government mismanagement.

And despite British assurances the province is one of the safest in the country, the Baghdad delegation was escorted by a convoy of tanks whose battle-ready gunners paused occasionally to wave to stony-faced civilians.

No one waved back.

Kubba and the dignitaries had been due to hold a “town hall” meeting with Samawa residents on the constitution as a gesture of the government’s post-Saddam commitment to dialogue.

But old habits die-hard; the public meeting was scrapped as the local leaders huddled with their visitors.