The Kingmakers

By Edmund Sanders

Jan. 23, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

SULAYMANIYA, Iraq —

In this Kurdish mountain capital, pictures of candidates appear in newspapers. Election day celebrations are being planned. The biggest worry is whether bad weather on Jan. 30 might clog the roads. (A fleet of snow-blowers has been readied just in case.)

It’s all in stark contrast to the rest of the country, where the political hopefuls are afraid to be identified, campaigning is underground and millions of voters are expected to steer clear of the polls in protest or in fear.

“There’s a sense of gathering excitement among the Kurds over elections,” said Barham Salih, Iraq’s deputy prime minister for national security and one of the highest-ranking Kurds in the current government. “Our aspirations are very high. It’s an exciting moment in our history. This is the first time we Kurds have been allowed to take part in deciding the future of Iraq.”

Political experts predict that Kurds will emerge as major winners on election day thanks to a combination of factors working in their favor, including strong voter turnout because of better security in their region and a unified candidate slate that removed any threat of a split vote. Kurds may not get the most votes, but they are likely to win a sizable bloc that should give them a key role in selecting the new government.

“The Kurds are really the ones who could come out on top,” said Hassan Bazaz, a political analyst at Baghdad University.

Such strong prospects mark a stunning turnaround from the recent history of the Kurds, who were brutally oppressed under the previous regime. Fearful that Kurds might break away from Iraq and suspicious of their ties with the U.S. and Iran, Saddam Hussein embarked on a devastating campaign of genocide and deportation that is now a focus of a war crimes tribunal against the former Iraqi president. Protected by a “no-fly” zone imposed by the United Nations in the early 1990s, the Kurds gained semi-autonomy.

Now Kurds are preparing to play a major role in Baghdad. At political offices here, officials and strategists are making optimistic back-of-the-envelope calculations. The only dispute seems to be exactly how well they will do.

Nearly everyone here in Iraq’s Kurdish north expects that they will garner at least the second-highest number of seats in the new parliament, perhaps 65 to 70 of the total 275 seats, or about 25% of the transitional national assembly. Kurds account for 15% to 20% of Iraq’s population.

“We expect to do quite well,” said Imad Ahmed, the deputy prime minister of Sulaymaniya province.

One of the leading Shiite slates is expected to capture the No. 1 spot, but the Shiite vote could split between the United Iraqi Alliance, which is backed by the main Shiite Muslim religious parties, and the Iraqi List, a secular alternative led by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

Low turnout in the rest of the country because of violence could also result in a better performance for Kurdish candidates.

Either way, the Kurds should be in a strong position to help select the next prime minister, draft the constitution and settle such hotly disputed issues as who will control the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk.

Other political parties in Iraq are already courting the Kurds, whose potential parliamentary bloc will play a vital role in forming a coalition to govern. Under the Transitional Administrative Law, major decisions by the new government will need the approval of two-thirds of the assembly. The Kurds are well-positioned not only because they may be among the largest blocs but because their slate is likely to be one of the most cohesive.

“The Kurds will be the kingmaker,” said Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign minister and a leading Sunni Arab politician who heads his own slate of candidates.

A leading Shiite slate is mindful that the Kurds are likely to be critical partners.

“We need the Kurds,” said Saad Jawad, head of the political bureau of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. “We won’t need help getting a simple majority of 50%. We think we can get that alone. But we will need them to get to the two-thirds majority, which is more important.”

Preliminary talks have taken place, but Shiites and Kurds are waiting to see how they do Jan. 30 and how much support they each bring to the table.

Kurds are angling for one of the top two positions in the new government, either prime minister or president. In June, Kurds were bitterly disappointed that they failed to nab either post when the U.S. handed over sovereignty.

“It’s important for us to have one of the top two spots, and we think we can take one,” said Ahmed, the Sulaymaniya official. Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, is being pushed for one of the posts.

Rivals, however, warn that the Kurds could face a backlash if they push too hard for a leadership position or capture a disproportionate number of assembly seats. Tensions and suspicions between Iraq’s Kurds and Arabs date back 100 years.

“It would give a distorted picture of the reality of Iraq,” Pachachi said. “Already Sunni Arabs feel they have been marginalized and not treated fairly. If they were left with nothing -- neither the president nor the prime minister -- this would just make things even worse. People feel that Iraq, after all, is a predominantly Arab country.”

Salih, Iraqi deputy prime minister and a PUK leader, said the jostling over leadership posts would serve as a test of whether Kurds were considered full-fledged Iraqis or “second-class citizens.”

“If a Kurd -- just for being a Kurd -- cannot get a top position, that is tantamount to discrimination,” he said. “Either we are full-fledged citizens or not.”

Kurds note that they have a history of strong voter turnout and more experience than other Iraqis with democratic elections thanks to their semi-autonomous status over the past decade. Kurds are expecting at least a 90% turnout on election day.

In addition to the backup snow-blowers, Kurdish parties are organizing buses to ferry voters to the polls and printing fliers and posters to direct residents to polling places, said Hiwa Jaff, a PUK campaign official.

To achieve a unified slate and improve their chances Jan. 30, the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP, set aside a rivalry that has at times led to bloodshed. Disputes over a 1992 election in Kurdistan ended in a regional civil war.

But under a deal reached last month, the two main parties and nearly every other political organization in Kurdistan joined forces on a single slate.

“We wanted to show voters that we can put aside our differences for the common good of Kurds in Iraq,” said Ari Qaradaghi, a campaign official for the KDP.

Even at the local level, Kurdish parties joined together on a signal slate for the Kurdistan Regional Parliament and for local councils. The move virtually eliminated competition among Kurdish parties.

Kurdish leaders said they feared that even a local contest between the Kurdish parties would distract from the more important national elections and possibly lead to tensions that could disrupt the vote.

“We agreed to do this one time only,” said Bahiz Hussein of the Kurdistan Community Party. “For the sake of our future, we didn’t want our people to be divided by competition.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Election profile

Iraq’s leading political parties

KURDISH

Alliance List

Candidates: 165

Led by: Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Jalal Talabani

Outlook: Expected to draw the bulk of the Kurdish vote.

SHIITE

United Iraqi Alliance

Candidates: 228

Led by: Nuclear scientist Hussein Shahristani