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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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While some Kurdish politicians blame their poor showing on Arab manipulation and upstart Kurdish parties that split the vote, others say the Kurds simply took Kirkuk for granted or ran negative campaigns that kept would-be supporters from the polls.

Results yet to be announced could change the total slightly, but it's clear that Kurds no longer will enjoy full proprietary rights over Kirkuk, despite charges from Arab leaders that Kurds have tried their best to shift demographics in their favor.

"We expected greater participation from the Sunni Arabs in this election, but the results of Kirkuk were totally beyond our expectations and came as a surprise," said Abdullah Ilyawi, a legislator allied with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. "We should have worked harder in Kirkuk to get better results."

In Nineveh, whose provincial capital is the dangerous city of Mosul, Kurds have won just seven seats, compared with the Allawi bloc's 20. Kurdish politicians said they had expected to win 10 seats in Mosul. Until recently, the province's government and security forces were controlled by Kurds.

In Diyala province, Kurds so far haven't won a single seat, another setback in an area with several Kurdish villages and a strong presence of the Kurdish peshmerga militia.

-A militant Shiite group is overtaking its allies for the Shiite religious vote.

Followers of the firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who is currently living in Iran, ran a sophisticated campaign that showed a level of understanding of Iraq's complicated electoral process that was missing among many of their rivals and even allies, Western diplomats and Iraqi monitors said.

As a result, the al-Sadr movement is on the rise to a kingmaker status typically reserved for Kurds, with at least 32 seats and probably several more, as results continue to be announced. In just a few years, the Sadrists have matured from a fragmented militant movement that fought several fierce battles against U.S. and Iraqi forces to one of the most politically astute forces in the country.