Iraq: The Politicians, The Clerics, and a Coalition? (Alaaldin)

While EA has been occupied with the post-election tensions and manoeuvres in Britain and Iran, Iraq's own political intrigue trundles on.  There seemed to be some prospect of clearing up the muddle last week with reports of an alliance between two largely Shia blocs, the State of Law list headed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the Iraqi National Alliance including Moqtada al-Sadr and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. That would shut out Iraqqiya, the Shia-Sunni list headed by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, which narrowly won the most Parliamentary seats in the 7 March elections.

Still, it was unclear whether al-Maliki would remain as Prime Minister or give way to another politician such as former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. And speculation continues over the role of Iraq's clerics in contributing to a grand arrangement.

Ranj Alaaldin writes for The Guardian of London:

Last week, Iraq's most powerful Shia-dominated blocs, the State of Law coalition, led by Nouri al-Maliki of the Islamic Dawa party, and the Iraqi National Alliance (dominated by the Sadrist-Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq) joined forces for the purposes of forming the country's next government.



The move leaves them just four seats short of an overall majority, meaning they are almost certainly going to take the reins of power, and at the expense of the leading Sunni bloc of the former Iraqi premier, Ayad Allawi, the marginal winner of Iraq's elections last March. Many will bemoan the move and call it a Shia sectarian manoeuvre that sidelines the Sunnis, but it was the most likely scenario all along. As predicted, Allawi's Iraqi National Movement (INM) will have been considered by the Shia parties (and indeed also by the Kurds) as too tainted by its ultra-nationalist – some would say Ba'athist – elements.

The Kurds have astutely played the waiting game, letting their Arab counterparts rip each other apart in the south and waiting to see which winning horse to back. That horse, right now, is the new Shia coalition just formed. However, this does not necessarily mean the end of the game.

If Iraq's new government is going to have some degree of legitimacy then it needs Kurdish as well as Sunni representation. The next step for the Shia coalition right now is to encourage leading personalities within Allawi's bloc (perhaps Allawi himself) to play some notable role in the new government and offer them major positions like the presidency (largely ceremonial) and speaker of the parliament, or control of one of the main ministries. The Kurds will also be pushing for such positions, knowing that there can be no government without their inclusion.

Even assuming these entities are eventually incorporated, there may still be uncertainty ahead, given the conflicting ideological and political agendas of the various groups within the new Shia coalition. Leading coalition entities –-- Dawa, ISCI and the Sadrists –-- accept this themselves: they have signed up to a pact that gives the clerical establishment the final say over any disputes between them.

The system would work in a similar way to the "collective responsibility" of cabinet ministers in Britain: the highest-ranking clerical authority would make a decision and others would follow. Disagreements would not, therefore, be made public. Thus, the leading authority in this instance would be Grand Ayatollah Sistani who takes advice from a close and select group, including his son and other senior religious figures, such as Ayatollah Mohammad Saeed al-Hakim.

Giving the clerics the final say will come as a shock to many. Since the invasion of 2003, Iraq has had a bloody seven years just to achieve the respectable standard of democracy it now has. The move to refer political matters to the clerics will thus be deemed regression and perhaps an insult to the Iraqi electorate.

However, it is easy to get carried away. The fact of the matter is that most major decisions in the political arena are made with some degree of approval from the religious establishment in Najaf. Sistani is regularly consulted by the country's array of political players and can, in fact, make a positive contribution – it was because of his intervention, for example, that Iraq adopted the open-list system for the elections, much to the dismay of the country's politicians but welcomed by its people.

Little will, therefore, change as a result of this agreement, made between parties rather than between party and clerics. The clergy may well choose to publicly denounce the agreement, lest they face challenges similar to those faced by counterparts across the border in Iran.

It is interesting that Dawa has signed up to it, since it has recently pushed a secularist agenda (the INA, on the other hand, made it clear in their electoral programme that they will adhere to the clerical establishment). Publicly, Dawa may therefore downplay the significance of the agreement and it clearly does not feel threatened by the possibility that the INA may hold greater sway in the south because of its more sectarian composition and since the ISCI and its leadership enjoy a special and blood relationship with Hakim.

Iraq is still a long way away from becoming a theocracy and its multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian diversity ensure that it is unlikely to turn into one. Uncertain, still, is the politics. The new Shia alliance may not hold together as it squabbles over who within it should become prime minister and how to establish a representative and inclusive government.