MO: Technically what is being elected is the National Assembly. It's a parliamentary system, which means that the National Assembly has to choose the president and prime minister, and the prime minister has to form the cabinet. Those are the technical processes.
Politically they need to form a cabinet that gives some representation to groups that have not participated much in the elections—and that is the Sunnis. One of the most difficult tasks for the government is to convince the Sunni population that they have a future in Iraq as it is constituted now. So far I don't think the Sunnis are convinced this is the case.
LB: The prime minister has to take the question of security first thing. He has to respond to security concerns, rebuild the army in order to defend the borders, and help stop the infiltration of foreign terrorists inside Iraq.
They have to fight terrorism inside the country. All this assassination, kidnapping, suicide bombing, and so on—they have to go and fight. Inside Iraq there are a lot of cases of corruption among the officials inside the country. This is not something new. This started during the time of Saddam and continues now, so they have to stop this.
They have to answer the question of the form of government—how much Islam will play a role in Iraq. Is it going to be an Islamic type of state like Iran, or will it be a more secular type of state?
My impression is that most of the people who are participating in the elections are not very keen on supporting the Iranian model and implementing it into Iraq. But this will be a conservative government for sure, and religious. It will not be a secular government like what you have in Turkey.
So you have this question to deal with—rights of women and how much women will get rights in the new regime. According to the interim constitution, which is in effect now, one-third of the deputies should be women. It is very important that we have the largest representation of women in any national assembly in the Arab world.
Are people confused by the campaigning? For example, withholding the names of candidates and the use of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's picture on campaign posters without his permission.
MO: I don't think they are confused, for a very simple reason: Few parties are truly competitive. I'm basing this on the experience of other countries that had transitional elections. There are a lot of parties, a lot of lists that are participating in this election. But most of those lists do not count for anything.
The real competitors are a handful of parties. There are the Kurdish parties, the cleric alliance, and the party headed by Ayad Alawi, the interim prime minister appointed by the U.S. Those are essentially the real competitors. All the others are little groups that might get a few votes from their family and friends.
So while it looks like an overwhelming ballot with far too many lists, in the end it's only a few that count. In terms of the candidates, it does not make a difference, because people vote for a list and not for a candidate, and it's known who the leaders of the various lists are.
LB: They shouldn't be very confused. Each group knows their candidates. The Shia know their candidates and their positions, as do the Sunnis and Kurds. … The Iraqis may not know the candidates themselves, but the main personalities and policies of the groups are known. Voters will put their confidence in the list itself.
It is not exactly the way elections should be conducted under normal circumstances. But these are not normal circumstances in Iraq, and the Iraqi government is doing the best they can.
Do you think people will accept the election results or will there be conflict, possibly civil war, if the various groups (especially the Sunnis and Kurds) don't feel they're properly represented?
MO: I don't think there will be conflict in the sense of people saying that they challenge the election results. I think there will be a lot of people who will emerge from the elections feeling very disenfranchised, especially the Sunnis.
But how can they challenge the results? Having called for a boycott, the Sunnis are not in a position to challenge the results of the election. They simply did not want the elections to be held at this time.
LB: No, I don't think there will be conflict, but the acts of violence will continue, because the people who are opposing the elections will not stop once the elections are held. So they are going to continue to try to change things by force and stop the normal activities of the government and paralyze the country.
How do people in Iraq feel about the Iraqi diaspora voting? Will this group have much of an impact?
MO: I have no idea how they feel. Let me point out that it's turning out that the vote of the diaspora is not going to be particularly important, because there is very low registration of members of the diaspora, so in the end it will be unlikely that it will emerge as a major factor in the election.
LB: It is only about 290,000 Iraqis registered to vote in the United States, Iran, Sweden, the Netherlands, and other countries. It is less than what was expected.
The people inside Iraq are not upset that people outside can vote, except probably the extremists and the people who are opposing the election. They might resent that fact that these people are voting.
Will the newly elected leaders have the power to kick out U.S. troops, and do you think they will?
MO: Yes, they will have the power. I think the position that the new government takes towards the U.S. troops will depend a lot on who dominates this government, because if it is a government which is completely dominated by the Shia clerics, it will try to reduce the role of U.S. troops quite a lot.
I don't think they will ask the U.S. to leave from one day to the other because they would be afraid of the consequences. But certainly they are going to try to restrict the role of the U.S. right away. If Alawi has a good showing in the election, and he or his party remain an important player in the situation, then I think he might be more favorable to a greater U.S. presence.
LB: Well, the question of the U.S. troops leaving Iraq is very much tied to the situation of security and fighting terrorism in the country and building up Iraqi security forces that could combat the insurgents and terrorist groups who are inside Iraq. Once the security situation is under control, I doubt very much that the Iraqi government would not ask the Americans to leave. I don't know how many months, how many years—it might take some time in order to achieve this.
How will the U.S. administration respond if the newly elected Iraqi leaders are of a Shiite religious party with strong ties to Iran?
MO: Well, they will not like it at all, but I don't think they would be in a position to do much about it. They have insisted on the elections, and they have insisted on this particular process, they have to live with the consequences. I think the U.S. cannot really stand up at the end of the election and say, We don't like the results, and we're not going to recognize this government.
LB: The Americans know these parties; they are in contact with these religious Shia parties. They know who they are. They know their personalities. Some of the personalities have been to the United States and held talks with the Americans, and they are holding talks with Americans inside Iraq, too. So there is no real boycott between the United States and religious Shia groups in Iraq. There are contacts, and judging from the statements of the groups' leaders, they know the situation, and they know the United States is there to stay for some time.
Do you think that's a likely outcome—that a religious Shiite party will prevail?
MO: I think it is very likely that the Shia religious parties will get more votes than any other party. I do not have any possibility of evaluating how many more. Will they get twice as many votes as Alawi's party? Do they get only slightly more votes than Alawi's party? I think they will get substantially more. Particularly in the rural areas they get much more support than anyone else.
The point here is there are two Shia parties, two important Shia coalitions that are competing with each other—Alawi's party and the clerics' party. I don't know how the vote is going to be apportioned between the two of them, although I'm pretty sure more will go to the clerics. In the end, they will have to share power to some extent, and that will reduce the chances of an Islamic republic.
LB: Is Iraq going to be an Islamic type of state like Iran, or will it be a more secular type of state? My impression is that most of the people who are participating in the elections are not very keen on supporting the Iranian model and implementing it in Iraq.
What do you see for Iraq this coming year?
MO: The next year is going to be a really decisive year. I think you can be sure there will continue to be a fairly high level of violence in the country. The insurgency is not going to go away. The key question to me is whether the Iraqis will put in place a true process of negotiations among the various groups leading to a constitution. If that is the case, they might manage to survive as a country and to restore some sort of order.
If whoever wins the election decides to impose their own view of what the political system should be like, without a lot of negotiations with other groups, then we will probably see a secession of the Kurds and a continuing very high, almost uncontrollable level of violence.
LB: It will be an important year, and it will not be a year that is easy. Acts of terrorism and fighting the Americans and fighting the Iraqi government will continue and, of course, countermeasures will continue too, to try to put the situation under control.
The question which is most important is the question of the relationship between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdish area in the north. The Kurds are trying to build a semistate there and divide the country into two identities—one Arab and one Kurd.
The central government, according to these extremists, only have control over defense matters, control of the finances, and control of very few areas. While the Kurds—they have control over all the Kurdish areas in every conceivable way. They are asking to include the city of Kirkuk and the Kirkuk region into the Kurdish area.
The Kirkuk region is an oil-rich part of Iraq. The Kurds want to control that area and have their say in the way the money from the oil is spent. This is disturbing for the rest of Iraqis.
Do you think the Iraqi elections can be a true example of democracy to the rest of the Middle East?
MO: No. I think it's really an example of how you should not have elections. Iraq is doing something which is extremely dangerous. It's having elections before there is any basic agreement on the rules of the game and the character of the political system among the Iraqi factions.
All the experience with the post-conflict elections of the post-Cold War period shows that this is not the right way to have elections, not the right way to carry out transitional elections.
It's very important to have an agreement on basic principles before you have the elections, and that is not happening in Iraq. So I think that the situation in Iraq is certainly not a good example of how you should have elections in a country.
LB: This is like a slogan. If it works, if the Iraqi model of democracy works, it will be very good for the Iraqi people. But it won't be an example for the rest of the Middle East. That will be a lesson each of the countries in the Middle East will have to take itself, or come to understand itself.
The most important thing is that Iraq develops, is rebuilt, and security is everywhere, there is a viable system of government or federation between the south and the north of Iraq—a system that works for the Iraqi people. The other countries of the Middle East can take the lessons that they want from what happens in Iraq.
Marisa J. Larson is Middle East regional editor for National Geographic magazine.
