In tight Iraq parliament vote, upsets point to future battles

By MOHAMMED AL DULAIMY AND HANNAH ALLAM | McClatchy Newspapers • Published March 19, 2010

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BAGHDAD – The count in the Iraqi elections isn't yet over, but tallies released this week reveal upsets in restive provinces that portend a weak and fractious Iraq with battles looming on several fronts: Arab-Kurd rivalries, an internecine Shiite Muslim power struggle and what role Sunni Arabs will play in the next government.

Iraq's election commission, under heavy criticism for a tortuous ballot-counting process, now has about 92 percent of votes recorded from the March 7 parliamentary election, the landmark poll that Iraqi and U.S. officials considered a gauge for the kind of nation American forces will leave behind next year.

For all the focus on the extremely tight race between Iraq's top two vote-getters - Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the former interim premier Ayad Allawi - election tallies released this week reveal several smaller dramas unfolding outside the capital. Sunni Arabs have weakened Kurdish leaders in diverse northern provinces, militant Shiites have overtaken their Iranian-backed allies for the religious vote, and many prominent figures will be cast into the political wilderness, according to the near-complete results issued by the Independent High Electoral Commission:

The election for the 325-seat parliament remains too close to call, with results still to come from out-of-country voting and early rounds for security forces and others such as hospital patients who needed special accommodation. Among the noteworthy themes emerging:

-Sunni Arabs have weakened Kurdish leaders in diverse northern provinces.

Iraq's influential Kurdish factions appear to have lost their longtime grip on the ethnically mixed and volatile provinces of Kirkuk, Nineveh and Diyala because of a surge in Sunni Arab voting, a swift undoing of Kurdish gains from the Sunni boycott of the 2005 parliamentary elections.

In the coveted oil-rich province of Kirkuk, Sunni Arab support has earned Allawi's bloc six seats - the same number so far as the archrival Kurdish Alliance, a coalition of the main Kurdish parties. The shock of the close race in Kirkuk fills the talk in taxis, barbershops and supermarkets throughout the mostly autonomous northern Kurdish region.

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