Needlenose

The Associated Press reports today from Iraq:

Iraqi officials acknowledged Sunday that there was some fraud in last month’s provincial elections but not enough to force a new vote in any province.

Faraj al-Haidari, chairman of the election commission, said final results of the Jan. 31 voting would be certified and announced this week. Voters chose members of ruling provincial councils in an election seen as a dress rehearsal for parliamentary balloting by the end of the year.

. . . Al-Haidari told The Associated Press that ballots in more than 30 polling stations nationwide were nullified because of fraud but that was not enough to declare the election a failure.

He gave no further details. But one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to talk about the vote to media, said the most widespread fraud appeared to have occurred in Diyala province, which has large Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish communities and an ongoing insurgency.

A coalition including the Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni political group, led in Diyala with 21.1 percent of the vote followed by a Kurdish alliance with 17.2 percent, according to preliminary results.

Al-Maliki’s coalition finished fourth in Diyala with 9.5 percent.

I have to admit, I’m impressed with the fragmented voting results, which really do suggest a lack of voting fraud (especially contrasted with the frequent 90%-plus provincial majorities common in the national parliamentary elections).  If the worst fraud led to a 21%-to-17% victory, that’s progress.

At the same time, things could easily revert to form in the next national elections, which are scheduled to come at the end of this year (but could be postponed, as the provincial voting was).  This round of voting featured Shiite parties competing against one another in Shiite-dominated provinces, and the same in predominantly Sunni provinces.

When the ability to form a national government is on the line again, the incentives to build sectarian coalitions — and manipulate the vote for maximum “support” — will be back.

With all the hubbub about the inauguration, it took me a few days to catch up with overviews by Reuters and Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post regarding the coming provincial elections in Shiite-dominated southern Iraq.

Visiting areas where various factions are strong, Shadid interviews supporters of Moqtada as-Sadr in Nasiriyah and notes that they also govern the province of Maysan (whose capital is Amarah).  Further, he notes dissatisfaction with the religious parties of the national government in Basra, where as Reuters explains, “the Fadhila Party is in charge.”

All this was in the back of my mind when I read yesterday’s Reuters story about the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison, and caught these passages:

[Deputy Justice Minister Busho] Ibrahim said the newly renovated prison would house just 13,000-14,000 prisoners, including 3,500 with long sentences who would be gathered from all over Iraq. . . .

“This prison will solve many problems for us — huge problems,” he said.  “We are suffering from inflation of the prison population in Nassiriya, Basra, Amara and some Baghdad prisons. All those people will be brought to this prison.”

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the places Ibrahim described as having overflowing prisons were pockets of opposition political support.  Or maybe it just falls under the heading of how the national government is “preparing” for the upcoming elections.

From the Los Angeles Times today:

In a move to separate mosque and state, the Iraqi government said Thursday that Islamic houses of worship should be off limits for campaigning in provincial elections scheduled for the fall.

Government spokesman Ali Dabbagh also said that photos of anyone but the candidates would be banned from campaign advertising.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s administration issued the recommendations in the hope of preventing a repetition of the use made of the country’s revered religious figures in the 2005 election campaign.

Shiite Muslim political slates plastered their campaign literature with images of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s most influential religious leader, and some mosques sent out cars with loudspeakers promoting candidates.

. . . Even before the announcement, Iraq’s religious leaders appeared to be voluntarily backing away from the practice. Sistani this week prohibited the use of his name or image by any groups.

Of course, if Sistani’s edict came before the Maliki government’s ruling, it’s pretty clear that this is less a matter of “separating mosque and state” than it is of complying with the grand ayatollah’s wishes.

Given the well-deserved flak Sistani & Co. have received from ordinary Shiites for their unsubtle 2005 endorsement of a government that has turned out to be largely corrupt and incompetent, it’s no surprise that they would seek to step back this time around so as not to tarnish themselves any further. Â

It’s also in keeping with the grand ayatollah’s tendency to involve himself only when necessary — the national elections determined not only who would try to run the country but who would write the new constitution, so the victory of a Shiite-dominated slate was very important to him. Â Even in previous voting, though, he allowed the various factions within the alliance to compete with each other on a provincial level.

Note that the ruling was phrased in way that also banned Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement from using his image to identify candidates that it supports. Â I’m not sure I believe his loyalists’ claims that they endorse the decision, but in a way I guess forcing them to operate below the radar could help to protect them (given the ongoing U.S./Iraqi government crackdown that has already blocked the Sadrists from contesting the elections directly). Â

If Mookie’s grass-roots support is as genuine as it’s purported to be, then his people should still be able to communicate to voters who he’s backing… as will the Shiite religious hierarchy through its extensive local networks. Â They’ll just be less visible and thus a bit harder to blame, that’s all.

Just when you might have been thinking you could, oh, “relax” a bit and just worry about Afghanistan going to hell, there’s more bad news from Iraq today. As Alissa Rubin reports for the New York Times:

Two insurgent bomb blasts struck at pro-American Iraqi targets in Anbar province just west of Baghdad and in the northern city of Mosul on Thursday, and the police said at least 30 people were killed and 80 wounded.

Iraqi police officials said three American marines were among the dead in the Anbar attack, which came just as the American military command was preparing to hand control of the province, once considered the hotbed of the insurgency, over to Iraqi forces.

The bombings extended a pattern of multiple-casualty attacks in recent days that are clearly intended to kill local Iraqi leaders, in particular those who are believed to have collaborated with American forces against insurgents.

Both attacks on Thursday raised questions about assertions that Al Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni extremist groups had been largely vanquished.

As Rubin notes, these attacks are by the folks the Bushites and their dwindling fan club thought we might have actually defeated in Iraq, as opposed to those who we bought off or who temporarily stood down for their own reasons as part of the pretend accomplishments of the “surge.”

Those latter groups — the Sunni tribes involved in the “Bribing” “Awakening,” and the Shiites loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr — have stayed quiet in part because they are hoping to pick up some opportunities for graft political clout in Iraq’s long-delayed provincial elections… which, um, continue to be delayed.Â

How long will they continue to pursue the carrot of political legitimacy before they realize there’s a stick attached that never gets any shorter? And as their patience frays, and the U.S. ultimately has to begin bringing home the extra brigades that were sent to Iraq last year, what’s going to keep the violence from spiraling further?

And what will happen if all this unraveling occurs right in the middle of a U.S. presidential campaign?

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)