JEDDAH, 8 November 2004 — Everyone has heard of the Iraqi “Sunni Triangle”, currently regarded as a hotbed of rebellion where the nation’s fate may be decided. But it is, perhaps, the “Shiite Triangle” that might decide the future of Iraq as it moves toward elections in just over 10 weeks’ time. The “Shiite Triangle” does not refer to a place, but to three men who, drawn together by a series of coincidences, could emerge as a power bloc in Iraq.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Muhammad Sistani represents one angle of this triangle, which is, in fact, a triumvirate, the primus inter pares of Shiite clerics in Iraq. By all accounts, the 75-year-old Sistani is currently the most powerful political voice in Iraq. Had it not been for his constant pressure the US-led coalition would not have agreed to elections as early as January 2005. Paul Bremer, the US diplomat who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority until the end of last June, had fought hard to postpone elections until the end of next year. He lost the battle to Sistani who enhanced his political prestige when he brokered an end to violence in Najaf and the Sadr City suburb of Baghdad last summer. With the established Shiite parties and powerful upstarts feuding over who gets what, Sistani is trying to pull them together to make sure that they clearly dominate the future government of Iraq.
The second member of the unofficial triumvirate is Ahmad Chalabi, maverick politician who was once regarded as Pentagon’s choice to rule Iraq. Last spring, however, Chalabi fell off with the Americans, had a big row with Bremer, was accused of espionage for Iran, had an arrest order issued against him, and was shut out of the interim government headed by Iyad Allawi. Since then, Chalabi has recast himself as a pious Shiite and is pursuing a coalition with Moqtada Sadr, a junior cleric who has a zealous following. Both men have concluded that an anti-American platform would have widespread support. Shiite Arabs, who are the majority, crave the power that has long been denied them, most recently during the era of Saddam Hussein. Making up at least 60 percent of the population, they could easily dominate the elections, marginalizing the Sunni Arabs, who have governed the region since the Ottoman Empire.
But internal rifts could allow other parties, including the secular party of the interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, to win voters who otherwise support the religious Shiites.
For months, Sistani has been demanding that all the Shiite parties form a single coalition dominated by religious parties. The biggest stumbling block to a single slate is that election law dictates that the groups determine before the vote how to share power afterward.
If they are unable to agree, the main Shiite elements could split. Anxious to herd them together, Sistani has formed a commission to broker deals, once again selectively intervening in post-invasion politics. “Maybe the dialogue will come up with a unified list,” said Adnan Ali, a deputy in the Dawa Islamic Party, a top Shiite religious party. “There’s an intention to see one list.” It is becoming clear that the elections, to be held in late January, will be contested along established ethnic and religious lines, though the Americans are counting on a national assembly united enough to allow the government to address the challenges Iraq will face in the next four to five years.
In the political jostling, the two main religious Shiite parties have agreed to form a coalition to run in the elections and are competing for the support of Sistani, say officials of both groups, the Dawa Islamic Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, better known as SCIRI. The two parties want the ayatollah’s commission to endorse the parties as the main body of a unified Shiite slate.
But so does Chalabi, who leads a rival faction called the Shiite Council, which consists of 42 smaller parties, including his own Iraqi National Congress. Chalabi is competing for the commission’s endorsement and a guarantee of a significant share of any assembly seats won by the Shiites, at the expense of the more established parties.
Seen as a carpetbagger by some Iraqis, Chalabi is relying on Moqtada Sadr to strengthen his credibility. Senior officials in the groups of the two men have discussed how they would divide assembly seats if they were to offer a single list of candidates. An organizer of the Shiite Council, Ali Faisal Al-Lami, recently traveled to Mosul with Ali Smesim, Sadr’s top aide, to speak to Sunni tribal leaders about their possibly joining a predominantly Shiite coalition led by Sadr or Chalabi or both.
“It’s not about competition of parties and division of spoils,” Chalabi says of the Shiite talks. “There are no spoils to divide, only disaster to share at this time.”
Sistani favors an umbrella Shiite slate that includes not just the two major parties but also independent politicians, mostly from the south. The aim is to minimize friction among the Shiites and show the world that the religious Shiites are organized enough to govern. While the Shiites bicker, the main Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, both players in the interim government, have agreed to put forward a unified national slate.
“The core group will be Kurdish elements,” said Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister and a senior official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. “The Shiite house has a similar approach.” The Sunni Arabs are divided about even taking part in the elections. Some groups like the Iraqi Islamic Party, which sat on the Iraqi Governing Council and is part of the interim government, say they will field candidates. Other powerful groups like the Muslim Scholars Association, a group of Sunni clerics that claims to represent 3,000 mosques, have said they will not take part and have threatened to call for a boycott if the Americans invade Fallujah. If politicians emphasize ethnic and religious differences during campaigning, or insist their groups are entitled to certain seats, tension could grow. At the least, the new assembly might be too weak to confront the country’s vast problems. At the worst, a Yugoslav-style dissolution into chaos could ensue.
A Western diplomat said American officials had noticed the divisions and had advised parties to form more diverse coalitions. Otherwise, the political splits “could create acrimony,” he said. “We don’t need more acrimony.” But some scholars are more hopeful, saying it is natural for the parties to align along religious and ethnic lines. Once elected, the parties might paper over their differences.
“The various political figures and parties are using ethnic and sectarian themes to win votes,” Manuchehr Badii, an Iranian expert on Iraq. “But they all know that Iraq cannot be ruled by a single group alone. After the election there will be a lot of horse-trading and power sharing.”
Another dark prospect for the Americans is the possibility that the loose alliance between Chalabi, whom the Americans now regard with suspicion, Sadr, the man who can revive his thousands-strong militia, may unite and emerge as the dominant Shiite coalition. Sadr may be drawn more to Chalabi than to Daawa and SCIRI because of long-standing feuds between Sadr’s prominent religious family and that of Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, a leader of SCIRI.
