Compare the Guardian coverage of the Iraqi election to the NYT. The Guardian is much better! Actually fair and balanced! Go figure.
First results show victory for Iraqi constitution
· Sunnis end boycott to challenge Shias and Kurds
· Fears of backlash as defeat increases resentment
Rory Carroll in Fallujah
Monday October 17, 2005
The Guardian
Iraq appeared last night to have approved a constitutional referendum despite overwhelming opposition from Sunni Arabs. Initial tallies suggested that Kurdish and Shia yes votes swamped the Sunnis in Saturday's poll, inflicting another political defeat on the disaffected minority driving the insurgency.
If approval is confirmed the constitution will be ratified and elections in December will replace the transitional administration with a four-year parliament and the first permanent government since the 2003 invasion.
Sunnis ended a political boycott by voting in their millions to kill the document, ushering in a strategy of using the ballot box as well as the bullet to register protest.
The show of strength appeared to have failed in its immediate aim but it shifted the political landscape, creating opportunities and dangers for the Iraqi government and US involvement in the country.
"The key here is the Sunnis have voted in large numbers. One way or another, the Iraqis will be in a position to move forward," said the US secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice. "You defeat an insurgency politically as well as militarily."
The high turnout in three of the four largely Sunni provinces exposed a serious split in the insurgency and marked the community's first attempt to use peaceful means to challenge the hegemony of Shias and Kurds.
Failure to kill the charter could produce a violent backlash by making Sunnis, resentful at losing power since Saddam Hussein's fall, feel even more marginalised.
In contrast to the parliamentary election in January, when few Sunnis voted, they packed polling centres in Salahaddin, Nivevah and Diyala, with turnout said to have exceeded the national average of 63%. Insecurity kept turnout low in Anbar but in the province's symbol of Sunni resistance, the city of Falluja, more than 90% of registered voters cast ballots and had their right index finger inked purple, said local election officials.
With Shias and Kurds overwhelmingly backing the constitution, a majority yes vote was inevitable. Respectively they comprise about 60% and 20% of Iraq's 27 million people.
Sunnis, about a fifth of the population, could have stopped the constitutional process if two-thirds of voters in three of the country's 18 provinces had voted no. Salahaddin and Anbar appeared to have cleared that hurdle but not the other two provinces.
Sunnis fear the charter will break up Iraq by ceding too much regional autonomy to their sectarian and ethnic rivals.
Some leaders denounced the initial tallies as evidence of a rig but others welcomed the fact that the community had mobilised for the first time since the invasion, paving the way for participation in December's poll.
Voters in Falluja said they would continue supporting the insurrection. "The resistance will go on," said Hamid Jassim, 60, queueing to vote at al-Khansa primary school. Those within earshot nodded vigorously. "God willing it will go on," they said.
Amir Ismael, 45, a former army colonel, said the ballot box was a complement, not a substitute, for armed revolt. "The resistance is legitimate."
Sheikh Kamal Shakur, the head of the city council, said violence would continue while Iraqi and US troops continued to raid homes and detain suspects. "Tribal sheikhs here say there is a legitimate national resistance," said Lt Col Patrick Carroll, a US marine political officer.
One year ago Falluja, a city of 300,000 an hour's drive west of Baghdad, symbolised resistance when US marines levelled the city, destroying or damaging almost every single home, during an effort to flush out insurgents. Now the flashpoints have migrated to other parts of Anbar - a bomb killed five American soldiers in Ramadi on Saturday - and Falluja is relatively quiet, with residents requiring special badges to enter and leave.
Drones and helicopters buzzed overhead but the marines lurked mostly out of sight, leaving security to Iraqi police. New Iraqi flags distributed by the Americans gleamed amid the dust and rubble.
Most voters had not received copies of the constitution and some were allowed to cast ballots for relatives. Uday al-Hatib, the supposedly neutral director of one polling station, made his feelings plain. "I pray everyone votes no."
There was no doubting the enthusiasm and sincerity of the no vote, the dawn of a strategy some homegrown insurgents have consciously modelled on Sinn Fein's "ballot box and Armalite" policy in the 1980s, though in their case an AK-47.
Ahmed Mohammad, a 26-year-old furniture-seller, was the sole resident who told journalists he voted yes, citing his impatience for stability and a job.
The turnout was a stinging rebuke to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq and other extremist groups which had called for a boycott of the vote. But the question is whether those who endured decades of oppression under Sunni dominance will share power now that Sunnis have signed up to politics.
guardian.co.uk |
