A Chance at Having Their Say

The anticipation is palpable. After more than 80 years on the margins, the Shiites of Iraq will finally get their due: a controlling stake in the government commensurate with their majority status.

Beyond the ubiquitous posters bearing the image of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the United Iraqi Alliance slate, which the leading Shiite Muslim cleric helped assemble, there’s little in the way of active campaigning in Najaf just a week before the national election. With the power of Sistani, there’s no need.

Most expect the alliance list to grab the lion’s share of votes in the country’s Shiite-dominated south, with the slate led by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, coming in second. Few in Najaf can think who might come in third.

But if there’s confidence, there is also awareness among Shiite leaders that, for the sake of national unity and stability, they will have to be graceful winners, despite their decades of subjugation under Sunni Arab rule and the insurgency that has left hundreds of Shiites dead. They must reach out to the Kurds in the north and the Sunni Arab minority, whose refusal to accept the new political order has fed the bloody insurgency.

“Yes, there is fear. There is fear among the Sunnis. There is fear among the Kurds,” said Salah Battat, head of the Basra office of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, one of the top Shiite religious parties on the alliance slate.

Efforts to placate leery Sunnis are underway. In the southern province of Basra, SCIRI has focused on encouraging voter turnout in the largely Sunni town of Zubayr. Even if residents avoid the polls in mass numbers, as local Sunni politicians predict, Battat said, the next provincial council will make it a priority to appoint Sunnis to prominent positions.

“It’s part of our patriotic duty,” he said. “We cannot rebuild Iraq without our Sunni sons.”

Shiite religious leaders also have joined the inclusiveness campaign. In a sermon this month, Sadruddin Qubanchi of Najaf endorsed the still-controversial idea of granting extra postelection seats in the new national assembly to Sunni leaders if Sunni turnout was low.

“We think that it is important for them to participate, to respect their votes, and to offer them multiple choices if they couldn’t vote,” Qubanchi said.

In the run-up to the election, the Shiites have been models of patience and forbearance, shrugging off provocations, insurgent attacks on their mosques and political offices and accusations that their parties serve as stalking horses for sinister Iranian ambitions.

“To a certain extent, they’ve been more graceful than I would have expected,” said a U.S. official with an international organization advising Iraqis on political party development.

With the numbers on their side, the Shiites can afford to be magnanimous. But Western diplomats have also worked steadily behind the scenes to keep Shiite leaders on the high road.

“We urge them to show restraint, which they have,” said a senior Western diplomat in Iraq. “Their response is always: ‘Trust us. We will do this. These are our brothers.’ They say all the right things.”

Now the question is: What will the Shiites do when they finally ascend to power? King Abdullah II of Jordan and interim Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Shalaan, a Shiite, have warned of a hidden agenda: establishing an Iranian-style theocracy, which they say will become clear only when it’s too late.

Shiite politicians dismiss the charges as either unfounded hysteria or cynical electoral scare tactics.

“Elections are a competition. It’s normal for parties to use accusations to weaken other parties. We saw it in America with Bush and Kerry,” said Sheik Ali Merza, head of the Najaf office of the Dawa Party, a member of the alliance slate. “It is not possible to achieve an Islamic republic in Iraq.... The fear is built on something imaginary.”

Fears of a monolithic Shiite hegemony do seem unlikely, largely because the Shiites are far from unified. The alliance list gathers a diverse and probably incompatible cross-section of the Shiite political spectrum, including SCIRI, two competing wings of the Dawa Party, several candidates loyal to radical cleric Muqtada Sadr and former Pentagon favorite Ahmad Chalabi, who embraced a populist persona after his falling-out with Washington.

A far more probable prospect than Shiite dominance is Shiite infighting. Tellingly, many of the parties that are standing side by side for the national assembly campaign are in direct competition in the simultaneous election for the Najaf provincial council.

“The Shiites will always be a powerful group in parliament on the issues on which they are united. But I’m at a loss to tell you what those issues are,” said the international party development official.

Although the Shiite front appears united, there are signs that patience is wearing thin on Sunni resistance to the new, inevitable political reality.

Merza, the Dawa Party official, expressed little sympathy for the plight of Sunni voters in unstable regions such Al Anbar province and the northern insurgent bastion of Mosul.

If Sunni citizens and politicians really wanted to take part in the political process, he said, they would do something about the insurgents in their midst.

“That’s not the fault of America or the Iraqi government,” Merza said.

“Maybe they prefer that the Americans will rule them and not the Shiites.”

Times special correspondent Saad Fakhrildeen contributed to this report.