KurdistanObserver.com

ANALYSIS-Election Results Accentuate Iraq's Three-Way Split

By Gideon Long

LONDON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - As graphically as any census, Iraq's newly-confirmed election results portray a nation deeply divided along sectarian lines and dominated by three distinct peoples with differing aims, ideals and beliefs.

The certified final results, announced on Friday after weeks of waiting, suggest voters in the Dec. 15 parliamentary poll overwhelmingly cast their ballots along religious and ethnic lines.

All were Iraqi by nationality but, when they dropped their voting slips into the ballot boxes, they were above all Shi'ite Muslims, Sunni Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen or Christians.

In the three Kurdish provinces of the north, for example, about 90 percent of voters backed the Kurdish Alliance, which has vowed to push for greater autonomy for its people, many of whom want full independence from Iraq.

In contrast, the Islamic Union of Kurdistan, campaigning on a less overtly federal ticket, was crushed. Its party offices were attacked by Kurdish nationalists in the run-up to the election and it took only around five percent of the vote.

In the south, the success of the main Shi'ite Islamist list, the United Iraqi Alliance, was no less emphatic.

In the provinces of Maysan, Muthanna and Dhi Qar, the alliance picked up over 85 percent of the vote -- around 20 times as much as its nearest rival.

After largely boycotting the previous election last January, Sunni Arabs proved how dominant they are in western Anbar province, the heartland of the insurgency.

SUNNIS ENTER POLITICS

The main Sunni coalition, the Iraqi Accordance Front, took about 74 percent of the vote while the Iraqi National List, a broad secular coalition, mustered only three percent.

The list's leading light, Iyad Allawi, viewed by Washington before the election as a potential prime minister capable of uniting Iraq, was pummelled at the polls, and his bloc will have only 25 seats in the new 275-seat parliament.

In only five of Iraq's 18 provinces -- Baghdad, Mosul, Diyala, Salahaddin and Kirkuk -- was there much of a contest between parties. In the other 13, landslides were the norm.

In a sense, the results should come as no surprise. Since it was created in 1920 out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, Iraq has always been a divided nation.

The British and French colonialists who carved up the Middle East following World War One paid scant attention to natural frontiers or traditional tribal and ethnic boundaries, and modern Iraq is essentially an amalgam of three Ottoman fiefdoms

-- Mosul, Baghdad and Basra.

But the results suggest the extent to which many Iraqis, now they have a chance to vote freely, have turned their backs on the centralised government imposed on them for decades, first by the British and the monarchy and later by Saddam Hussein.

When viewed as a snapshot of the country, the election results confirm findings from a U.N. census of 2003.

Based on information from food distribution cards used under U.N. sanctions in the 1990s, the census suggested how starkly most of the country was divided into Shi'ites and Sunnis.

In the southern provinces of Najaf, Qadisiya and Maysan, for example, Shi'ites made up between 98 and 99 percent of the population, while in Anbar and Salahaddin the picture was reversed -- 99 percent of people were Sunnis.

None of this bodes well for the review of the Iraqi constitution, set to start sometime after the new government and parliament is formed.

The Shi'ites, who will have a majority in the new assembly, have already insisted their can be no major changes to the charter, which was approved in October and envisages a federal Iraq with considerable autonomy for the regions.

Sunni Arabs, fearful that will allow the Kurds and Shi'ites to exploit Iraq's oil reserves, concentrated in the north and south, want major amendments.

With Iraqis increasingly entrenched in mutually fearful sectarian and ethnic camps, the talks promise to be tough.

But negotiations on the constitution seem like a distant prospect. The United Iraqi Alliance voted only on Sunday to nominate incumbent Ibrahim al-Jaafari as candidate for prime minister, after weeks of wrangling highlighted divisions.