Low turnout marks Iraq elections
US lauds vote, calls for ‘inclusive government’
Polls closed across Iraq yesterday evening in the first national election since the country declared victory over the Daesh terrorist group. The vote — the fourth since the 2003 US-led toppling of Saddam Hussain — was marked by reports of low turnout and irregularities.
Results are expected within the next 48 hours according to the independent body that oversees Iraq’s election, but negotiations to choose a prime minister tasked with forming a government are expected to drag on for months.
The US congratulated Iraq and emphasised the importance of forming an “inclusive” government. The newly elected members of parliament “will have the important task of forming an inclusive government, responsive to the needs of all Iraqis,” read a statement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Voting began early yesterday morning in a contest that had no clear front-runner after weeks of official campaigning. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi’s stiffest competition came from political parties with closer ties to Iran. Baghdad’s streets began to fill up with cars before voting concluded yesterday evening after Al Abadi partially lifted a security curfew in an effort to improve turnout.
In an attack linked to the election, three men were killed by a bomb attached to their car in a Sunni Arab region south of Kirkuk.
329
parliament seats at stake with 7,000 candidates in the fray
Polls opened across Iraq yesterday in the first national election since the declaration of victory over Daesh. After hours of low voter turnout, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi partially lifted a security curfew to encourage more people to come to the polls.
After weeks of official campaigning, no clear front-runner has emerged as Al Abadi faces stiff competition from political parties with closer ties to Iran.
In militia bases across Iraq, leaders who spent the past four years in military fatigues are wearing clean-cut suits and welcoming guests. Posters of martyrs lost in the fight against Daesh adorn meeting room walls, but the photos of the living on the streets outside have taken on a new prominence.
Among banners of candidates’ faces lining every main road in the Iraqi capital are the main protagonists of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), an organisation widely credited with defeating the terror group and which is determined to parlay its battlefield wins into electoral gains in Iraq’s first national election since 2014.
Of all the candidates, party lists and organisations contesting the poll, the PMF, or Hashd Al Shaabi as they are known locally, stand to gain, or lose, most. Its leader, Haidar Al Ameri, and the incumbent prime minister, Haider Al Abadi are viewed as the preferred candidates of Iran and the US respectively. The PMF itself has become a microcosm of the tussle for influence between both powers.
The shape of a postwar PMF has, to many Iraqis, become just as important as the fate of the country itself. Some senior Iraqi officials say the central issue of Saturday’s ballot was whether the organisation — and its estimated 150,000 members, largely Shiite volunteers — is integrated into the structures of the Iraqi state or instead becomes a powerful autonomous institution.
The poll is being held amid renewed tensions between Iran and the US in the wake of Donald Trump’s decision to revoke the nuclear deal initiated and negotiated by Barack Obama. The move has fed anti-US sentiment on the streets of Baghdad and within the PMF as the vote draws near.
Some Iraqi officials say the withdrawal from the deal will probably make Al Abadi vulnerable and give Iran more options, because it no longer allows him to balance both sides. It could also give Iran more reason to press its will in Baghdad, eschewing an attritional creep for a more robust push, with an autonomous and powerful PMF effectively acting as a Trojan horse.
“It is almost existential,” said a current minister in regards to the shape of the PMF after the election. “They want to set themselves up as a Praetorian guard, just like the Iranian Revolutionary Guards model. They want a parallel state structure. And this would fundamentally change the way Iraq is governed.” Shaikh Qais Al Khazali, a senior member of the PMF and leader of perhaps its most dominant faction, Asa’ib Ahl Al Haq, whose political bloc is contesting the poll, said fears of a PMF takeover of Iraq were misguided.
In an interview in his Baghdad headquarters, Al Khazali said the PMF as an organisation remained loyal to Iraq. Khazali, like Al Ameri, and the PMF’s second in command, Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis, receive significant backing from Iran, and have sent fighters to support Iran’s activities in Syria and elsewhere in the region. But he insisted that Baghdad, not Tehran, sets terms.
“There has clearly been a misunderstanding of the role of our neighbouring states in Iraq,” said Al Khazali. “Some people think that the Shiites of Iraq belong to the Iranians and our loyalties lie with them. This is extremely false. The Shiites of Iran are not Sumerians [Iraqis]; they have a different culture and society. They have different values. The movement we have here has absolutely nothing to with Qom [a centre of Shiite Islamic teaching in Iran, which rivals Najaf in Iraq]. What happens to the Hashd Al Shaabi will be framed by Iraqis, not Iran.”
Throughout the fight against Daesh, and in the three years before the group took over five cities and at least one third of Iraq’s territory, Asa’ib Ahl Al Haq had been one of the country’s most powerful non-state actors. The group was responsible for the kidnap of the British IT technician Peter Moore and four of his bodyguards in Baghdad in 2007. He was released two years later, in return for the release from a US-run prison of Al Khazali, his brother Laith, and a senior member of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Moore’s four British bodyguards were killed.
PMF fighters — young, battle-hardened and impatient for what comes next — are all over Baghdad. Many offer up videos of clashes with Daesh that they keep on their phones. All expect this election to provide clarity, in one way or another.
“The government has been lying to us for ages saying they will incorporate us with the army,” said Baqer Jamal, a PMF fighter. “That we will receive the same wages and privileges. But the government is a liar and a thief. We will not get anywhere.”
They [Popular Mobilisation Forces] want to set themselves up as a Praetorian guard, just like the Iranian Revolutionary Guards model. They want a parallel state structure.”
Current Iraqi minister