A woman exits the Ayoon al-Maha Nurs­ery School, in the Jadhriyah neigh­bor­hood, a mostly Shi’ite area in Bagh­dad. Copy­right 2005 Yas­sar al-Ali

BAGHDAD — Well, well… The Sun­nis might sur­prise us all on this one.
If you’re a reg­u­lar reader of this blog, both of you, that means you know (“from other sources”:http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1118269,00.html) there was a ref­er­en­dum yes­ter­day. With none of the gid­di­ness of Jan­u­ary, but all the secu­rity, Iraqis voted for the sec­ond time this year, this time on the pro­posed per­ma­nent Iraqi con­sti­tu­tion. It’s a doc­u­ment sup­port­ers say will secure the country’s future and unite the coun­try while oppo­nents say it will lead to dis­so­lu­tion and civil war.
Con­sid­er­ing the sec­tar­ian divi­sions on dis­play between Iraq’s Shi’ites and Sun­nis, it’s unsur­pris­ing issues of reli­gion and national iden­tity are what decides people’s vote. What is sur­pris­ing is the num­bers that Sun­nis showed up.
Shi’ites over­whelm­ingly sup­port the doc­u­ment, in part because of the instruc­tions from the pow­er­ful Shi’ite cler­i­cal body, the _merjariya_, led by the ven­er­ated Grand Aya­tol­lah Ali al-Sistani. He called for a “yes” vote on the doc­u­ment. Most Sun­nis, how­ever, say it’s a ter­ri­ble con­sti­tu­tion and bad for Iraq.
“We are fol­low­ing our supreme _merja_, Sis­tani,” said Jafar al-Khazali, a 29-year-old day laborer as his daugh­ter, Sou’ad, clung to his leg. “I will not lose my rights again like before.“
“This is bad for the Iraqis,” coun­ters Saleh Mut­laq, an influ­en­tial mem­ber of the National Dia­logue Coun­cil, a Sunni group which includes many for­mer Ba’athists. “This con­sti­tu­tion will break up this coun­try.“
Under the for­mer regime of Sad­dam Hus­sein, Shi’ites were often dis­crim­i­nated against and oppressed while Sis­tani was under vir­tual house arrest. The con­sti­tu­tion, writ­ten largely by Shi’ites installed in power by the United States, would secur­ing their place as the country’s new rulers. With 60 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, demo­graph­ics trans­late into polit­i­cal des­tiny.
Fur­ther cement­ing their power, the document’s fed­er­al­ism pro­vi­sions, bit­terly opposed by most Sunni politi­cians, would allow the for­ma­tion of pow­er­ful regions — mini-states, in effect — with con­trol of Iraq’s future oil wealth and the abil­ity to ignore the cen­tral gov­ern­ment in Bagh­dad. Sun­nis say this will lead to the breakup of Iraq, with oil-rich regions in the Kur­dish north and Shi’ite south and a bar­ren desert for Sun­nis in the mid­dle.
But back to yes­ter­day. The giddy enthu­si­asm of the Jan­u­ary elec­tions, in which Iraqis voted in rel­a­tively free elec­tions for the first time in their his­tory, was absent, and instead an air of res­ig­na­tion was felt. Rather than hang around the polling places gos­sip­ing, as they did nine months ago, Iraqis came, voted and left quickly. There were fewer chil­dren out with par­ents, too, indi­cat­ing a height­ened sense of the dan­gers present on the empty streets.
Bagh­dad was rel­a­tively calm, despite vio­lence in the last 19 days that killed more than 450 Iraqi civil­ians. Saturday’s quiet could indi­cate that the dra­con­ian secu­rity mea­sures that banned almost all vehic­u­lar traf­fic, inter­na­tional travel and move­ment between provinces were effec­tive in curb­ing insur­gents’ attacks. Or it might mean the insur­gents just decided to keep their pow­der dry until a more polit­i­cally oppor­tune time. The night before the vote, insur­gents sab­o­taged an elec­tri­cal tower, plung­ing the city and north­ern towns into dark­ness, and there were reports of gun bat­tles between insur­gents and com­bined U.S. and Iraqi troops in Ramadi. In Abu Ghraib, police sources said insur­gents had attacked a polling place, killed the super­vi­sor and made off with five bal­lot boxes. Despite all that, the vio­lence was much less intense than on Jan. 30, which saw more than 100 attacks, includ­ing sui­cide bomb­ings, killing at least 40 peo­ple.
Because of the secu­rity restrictions,I was unable to visit Sunni neigh­bor­hoods where atti­tudes toward the con­sti­tu­tion dif­fered. Res­i­dents of these areas, reached by phone said there were many peo­ple in the streets all ready to vote against the con­sti­tu­tion, but this could not be inde­pen­dently con­firmed. I was able to walk to nearby polling areas with no prob­lem, but they’re all Shi’ite neigh­bor­hoods, and the response is pretty much what you’d expect: They love the con­sti­tu­tion, love Sis­tani and believe all Iraqis are broth­ers and love one another.
Excuse me while I sing “Kum­baya” with my Iraqi hip­pie broth­ers.
The Sun­nis I reached, how­ever, say — again — exactly what you’d expect them to: This is ter­ri­ble and bad for Iraq. Oh, and by the way, screw the Ira­ni­ans, er, Shi’ites. Broth­ers, our col­lec­tive asses.
Thafir Aga, 38, a taxi dri­ver and Sunni in the Sadiya neigh­bor­hood, said he voted against the con­sti­tu­tion because “This con­sti­tu­tion is divid­ing Iraq,” he said. “The gov­ern­ment is only Kur­dish and Iran­ian, it is not a Sunni or Shi’ite gov­ern­ment.” Many Sun­nis, who ben­e­fited under Saddam’s reign, regard the Shi’ites in gov­ern­ment as pawns of Iran because politi­cians such as Prime Min­is­ter Ibrahim al-Jaafari spent the war in exile there.
Aga also had lit­tle faith in a fair vote and said the gov­ern­ment would fix the elec­tion in its favor. “They just want to let the peo­ple feel they are prac­tic­ing democ­racy,” he said. “Peo­ple in the gov­ern­ment are just instru­ments for Amer­ica and Israel. If I accept this con­sti­tu­tion, then I will be like them.” He added that the con­sti­tu­tion was un-Islamic and against Iraq tra­di­tions because it was cre­ated under for­eign occu­pa­tion.
A neigh­bor, Mustafa Hamdi, a 35-year-old bar­ber also rejected he doc­u­ment. “They imported this con­sti­tu­tion from abroad,” he said. “This is only for Kurds and other par­ties,” mean­ing Iran.
How­ever, the Sun­nis seem to have come out in droves in sev­eral swing provinces, such as Nin­eveh, and there’s a real chance this might go down to the wire. Anbar and Sala­hadin provinces — con­tain­ing the cities of Fal­lu­jah and Tikrit, Saddam’s home­town, respec­tively — will almost cer­tainly vote against the doc­u­ment. But Ninevah is home to Mosul, a mixed city of about 2 mil­lion Sunni Arabs and Kurds. If the Kurds stayed home out of com­pla­cency — and I’m hear­ing that Kur­dish and Shi’ite par­tic­i­pa­tion was lower than expected — the Sun­nis might just pull off a huge upset.
That will change every­thing. The Sis­tani coali­tion, made up of mainly of reli­gious Shi’ite par­ties, will be crack apart. The sec­u­lar par­ties involved, includ­ing Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Con­gress, will split off. One pos­si­bil­ity is to see them ally with for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Iyad Allawi and the National Dia­logue Coun­cil, who are seek­ing an alliance to run for elec­tions in Decem­ber. The reli­gious par­ties will be unable to go to the vot­ers with a sin­gle accom­plish­ment. They haven’t deliv­ered power, water or secu­rity. The econ­omy is still in sham­bles and unem­ploy­ment is high. If the con­sti­tu­tion passes, at least they’ll be able to say to their con­stituents, “At least we secured our seat of power and put the Sun­nis in their place.” If it doesn’t, what can they offer?
On the Sun­nis side, you’ll see newly resur­gent polit­i­cal groups — and the end of the Iraqi Islamic Party, which sup­ported a “last-minute deal”:http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1116781,00.html to amend the con­sti­tu­tion after the elec­tion of a per­ma­nent Assem­bly in Decem­ber. For­merly united with the National Dia­logue Coun­cil and the Asso­ci­a­tion of Mus­lim Schol­ars opposed it, the IIP switched last week with the announce­ment of the deal and called for its peo­ple to sup­port it. If the con­sti­tu­tion fails because of Sunni “no” votes, that will show the IIP to be tooth­less and it will lose sup­port. The Asso­ci­a­tion of Mus­lim Schol­ars, at the same time, will be shown to have the real juice among the Sun­nis, as it has been a long-time oppo­nent of the inva­sion, the occu­pa­tion, the Iraqi gov­ern­ment and the con­sti­tu­tion. The National Dia­logue Coun­cil is fairly new, and will also ben­e­fit, but from what I’m hear­ing it was the Sunni mosques, not the sec­u­lar­ists of the NDC, that got the vote out.
As for the Amer­i­cans, they’ll have a a new polit­i­cal real­ity to deal with. The AMS has deep ties to the insur­gency, and a no vote and infu­sion of polit­i­cal cap­i­tal will, iron­i­cally, allow the Amer­i­cans to start deal­ing seri­ously with the Asso­ci­a­tion — and thus, the insur­gency. That could actu­ally be the start of peace talks.
If the con­sti­tu­tion wins deci­sively, how­ever, the Sun­nis will grum­ble but likely work within the sys­tem. Sunni mem­bers of the con­sti­tu­tional com­mit­tee, from Fal­lu­jah no less, have said as such. They promised to run a slate of can­di­dates that can actively shape the con­sti­tu­tion when it’s up for amend­ments in April.
The absolute worst-case sce­nario is if the Sun­nis come close to defeat­ing the con­sti­tu­tion, but fail. There will be accu­sa­tions of vote-rigging and any polit­i­cal momen­tum the Sun­nis felt was mov­ing their way will be spent. The Shi’ites will have con­sol­i­dated their power and those Sun­nis on the fence might be moved into active oppo­si­tion. The insur­gency might even worsen, if such things are pos­si­ble, or a close vote might be the trig­ger for “open civil war”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2005/09/civil_war_is_he.php.
So, it will def­i­nitely be inter­est­ing to watch the results come in. So far, we’re hear­ing noth­ing but rumors. They range from the intrigu­ing — I heard that the polling sta­tions in the Green Zone, the seat the Iraqi Gov­ern­ment, went over­whelm­ingly against the con­sti­tu­tion; make of that what you will — to the absurd: Al-Firat, an Iran­ian chan­nel, is report­ing that instead of vot­ing “no,” Sala­hadin province, con­tain­ing Tikrit, voted 75 per­cent in favor of the con­sti­tu­tion. If that result turns out to be true, there will be no doubt the vote was fixed, and in a stu­pidly clumsy man­ner.
I do think that defeat­ing the con­sti­tu­tion might be best in the long run. It will embolden the Sun­nis and give them a polit­i­cal win, moti­vat­ing them to fur­ther involve them­selves in the polit­i­cal process. This will force the Shi’ites and Kurds to deal with real elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives instead of appointed ones. Will this spell and end to vio­lence? Of course not, but any­thing that allows the Sun­nis to claim vic­tory instead of forc­ing them to eat polit­i­cal table scraps is a big step in end­ing the Sunni-led insurgency.