[sam h]

They now have preliminary results from 11 of the 16 provinces, making up about two thirds of congressional seats. Allawi is indeed getting trounced, winning only 14% in Baghdad province, where he is strongest by far. Chalabi did even worse, winning only 1% in Baghdad. Some news sources suggest that while the count in the majority Sunni provinces isn't done yet, the Sunni religious parties are doing much better elsewhere than Sunni secular parties.

So it looks like:

(a) Big win for religious parties in general. Leaving aside the Kurds for the moment, secular groups may only win something like 10-15 percent of the seats. Probably zero chance for the secular coalition of secular Shiites, secular Sunnis, and the Kurds that the Bush administration was reportedly hoping for.

(b) Perceived proximity to the US looks like an electoral curse, as both Allawi and Chalabi got hammered.

(c) Not exactly clear what the Sunni results are, but there are indications that they are voting heavily for religious parties. I don't really understand the various Sunni political factions very well, but at least one of the most prominent religious parties was reported before the election to be closely connected to the insurgency and to have blanketed Sunni areas with posters featuring dead insurgents labeled as martyrs.

(d) It's still unclear whether the Shiite religious parties will win a majority and be able to form a government on their own. It's also unclear what the breakdown of power within the Shiite religious coalition looks like, especially between the Muqtada al-Sadr faction and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution. The leaders reportedly hate each other, some bad blood that goes way back.


To come back to the question of what we do if the government asks us to pull out: I'm not saying this will happen but it seems possible. Its easy to fall into the assumption that the government wouldn't want us to leave because it would risk destabilizing the country. On the other hand, let's take a look at the main players emerging. Muqtada al-Sadr's strength within the Shiite coalition is uncertain, but he is likely one of the two biggest players and he has made no bones about wanting us gone from day one. If the Sunnis are indeed voting heavily for religious parties, and those religous parties either have ties to the insurgency or represent many insurgent-friendly areas, then they may want us out too. What the other Shiites groups want is totally uncertain. But they certainly aren't secular pro-western types, and at some point they may decide that they have certain plans for the Kurds and Sunnis that we are only going to obstruct, giving them some incentive to also tell us to scram.

This is all speculation, but I don't think its unreasonable. This year is going to be a serious test and I'm not sure anybody really knows what's going to happen.