US embassy cable - 05BAGHDAD4438

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BAGHDAD 004438 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/28/2015 
TAGS: PGOV, PINS, IZ, Elections 
SUBJECT: CANDIDATE LISTS ANOTHER VICTORY FOR IDENTITY 
POLITICS IN IRAQ 
 
 
Classified By: Charge David Satterfield, reason 1.4 (b) 
and (d) 
 
1.  (C)  Summary:  As the October 28 deadline closes for 
political parties to register electoral alliances and 
candidate lists, the shape of the December 15 national 
election is clear.  A broad Shia Islamist unity list, a 
Kurdish unity list and a Sunni Arab unity list will head 
the political groups competing for power in the next 
national assembly.  There are some political lists that 
cross sectarian and ethnic lines, most notably Ayed 
Allawi's Iraqi National List.  However, fear and distrust 
still mark relations between Iraq's major communities and 
sectarian identification shapes the tectonic plates of 
Iraqi politics.  The October 15 referendum is a reminder of 
how polarized Iraqi society still is; Kurdish and Shia 
areas overwhelmingly supported the constitution, while 
Sunni Arab areas strongly opposed it.  The tension between 
the communities makes group solidarity and identity 
politics the strongest political dynamic, just as they were 
in the January 2005 elections.   Instead of reaching out 
across ethnic and sectarian lines, political parties focus 
on dividing election spoils among themselves as a means of 
ensuring minimally acceptable election results.  End 
Summary. 
 
--------------------------------------------- ------------- 
Fear Drives Iraqi Politics - and Fundamental Political 
"Revolution" is Underway 
--------------------------------------------- ------------- 
 
2.  (C)  The biggest factor driving Iraqi politics now is 
fear.  The Shia and Kurds recall their historical 
persecution.  Shia TV often highlights the mass graves of 
the South, while the Kurds last week highlighted the return 
of the bodies of victims from the Barzan tribe to be buried 
in Kurdistan.  Now Shia and Kurds fear Sunni Arab 
terrorism.  The Kurds also distrust the Shia Islamists, 
both because their leaders reject heavy religious influence 
on the state and because they fear the return of another 
strong Arab authority dominating Iraq.  The Shia perceives 
the Kurds as impugning on their right to rule as the 
majority.  The Shia also harbor real fear of a return of 
Baathists to power and - with a history of betrayals 
informing their community narrative - are seeking to 
eliminate any chance of reversal of their current fortune. 
VP Abd' al-Mahdi told Charge October 27 that a 
"revolutionary transition" was underway, with an 
historically deprived Shia community "only naturally" 
taking its share of power in governance and displacing the 
previous Sunni ruling class.  This had produced excesses, 
including militia presence in ministries, Abd' al-Mahdi 
acknowledged - but he argued this was "understandable" as 
Shia sought to right the wrongs perpetrated upon them by 
hundreds of years of Sunni dominance, culminating in 
decades of Baath tyranny. 
 
3.  (C)  Large segments of the Sunni Arab community, 
meanwhile, are fearful of militia death squads.  More 
broadly speaking, they also worry about political 
exclusion, whether by Kurdish annexation of Kirkuk and 
Mosul or by Shia domination of the central government aided 
by Iran. 
 
--------------------------------- 
No Shared Vision of the State Yet 
--------------------------------- 
 
4.  (C)  Beyond the lack of trust in other communities in 
Iraq, there is no shared vision yet of what the state of 
Iraq should be.  The Kurdish vision of confederation is 
greatly at odds with the Sunni Arab preference for a more 
centralized state.  Shia Islamists, led by Ayatollah 
Sistani, ultimately came out in favor of stronger regional 
authorities.  The Kurdish leadership and the Shia Islamist 
leadership agree on federalism, but disagree about the role 
of religion in the state. 
 
------------------- 
A Polarized Society 
------------------- 
 
5.  (C)  The Shia and Kurds have hammered out a minimum 
modus vivendi, but the Sunni Arabs have never come to such 
an agreement.  This lack of trust and a shared vision has 
robbed Sunni Arab inclusion of much of its meaning.  The 
U.S. convinced the Shia and Kurds to bring Sunni Arabs into 
the transitional government, but apart from Defense 
Minister Duleimi, none of the Sunni Arab cabinet ministers 
had much responsibility.  Similarly, we convinced the Shia 
and Kurds to accept Sunni Arabs into the constitution 
negotiations.  The most important discussions, however, 
involved top Shia and Kurdish leaders that largely excluded 
the Sunni Arabs until the last moment, and only then 
brought them in under American pressure. 
 
6.  (C)  The referendum itself demonstrated how truly 
polarized Iraqi society is.  The Shia and Kurdish provinces 
voted for the constitution in overwhelming numbers - over 
90 percent in every instance.  (The Iraqi election 
commission and its UN advisors thought these lop-sided 
numbers indicated fraud, but they found that the fraud was 
relatively minor.)  Similarly, the mainly Sunni Arab 
province of Anbar voted 97 percent against the 
constitution, and 82 percent of the voters of predominantly 
Sunni Arab Salah ad-Din voted against it. 
 
----------------------------------- 
Natural Outcome:  Identity Politics 
----------------------------------- 
 
7.  (C)  This polarization produces a drive for the 
political leaders to rally their own communities.  The 
Sunni Arab Iraqi Islamic Party spurned an electoral 
alliance offer with Ayed Allawi in favor of running with 
competitors from the National Dialog Council and another 
loose Sunni Arab grouping, Adnan Dulaymi's Conference of 
Iraqi People.  The Shia Islamist Fadhila Party and the 
Sadrists also spurned Allawi's alliance offer, preferring 
instead to run as part of the Shia Islamist list despite 
their real differences with the group leader, the SCIRI 
party.  The Kurds made no effort to reach outside of 
Kurdish parties to run a cross-ethnic slate. 
 
8.  (C)  These sectarian/ethnically-based parties coalesce 
because their leaders see their own communities, narrowly 
defined, as their only political base.  Iraqi Islamic Party 
(IIP) leader Tareq al-Hashemi told PolCouns in mid-October 
that they had to ensure their Sunni Arab support before 
they could move into more inclusive coalitions.  Deputy 
Prime Minister al-Jaburi, a Sunni Arab, told PolCouns 
October 27 he didn't share the Islamist goals of his IIP 
election allies, but he wanted to be on a solid Sunni Arab 
list. Deputy President and Shia Islamist leader Adel Abdel 
Mehdi told Charge October 28 that this form of identity 
politics is a problem in Iraqi society.  He opined that it 
would take at least two electoral cycles before people 
would begin to feel enough confidence to cross sectarian or 
ethnic lines.  Cross-sectarian/ethnic coalitions, such as 
that of Ayed Allawi, are at a disadvantage because they 
fundamentally call for compromise between Iraq's competing 
sects and ethnic groups - hard to sell in communities 
dominated by fear. 
 
 
Satterfield