Iraq's Provincial Elections & Moves Into Secularism.

The first test, however, will be Iraq's provincial polls due on Jan. 31. The outcome of this election will help set the course for the future of Iraq. Iraq's Shi'ite PM Nuri al-Maliki is building up his own power base for this election, having established the isnad movement. (Isnad in Arabic means support). Isnad councils (ICs) were formed of armed Shi'ite and Sunni Arab tribal forces initially to back government troops in a campaign against rogue members of Jaysh al-Mahdi (JaM), the private militia of young Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, in the south and in Baghdad's Shi'ite slums including the huge "Sadr City". Maliki launched that campaign in March 2008 and forced Sadr to declare a unilateral ceasefire. But since then, JaM has been transformed into a social welfare organisation - though since 2006 JaM had been split into different groups with some armed and trained by the Quds Force, the external branch of Iran's IRGC.

The ICs, now spread throughout Iraq, have become Maliki's own force, with his critics calling them a militia. The ICs are also loyal to Maliki's faction of al-Da'wa al-Islamiya, a huge Shi'ite movement formed in the 1960s and now consisting of at least four different groupings.

The ICs are also a counter-weight to the US-founded awakening councils (ACs), formed since 2006 of Sunni tribal forces who turned against the Neo-Salafi groups including al-Qaeda and pushed them out of the Sunni heartland. But Maliki is shifting away from sectarian into secular trends, turning against Shi'ite federalism advocated by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) which is Iraq's largest Shi'ite religious party of senior cleric 'Abdul-'Aziz al-Hakim. The alliance between Maliki's Da'wa and the SIIC is thus ending.

After having helped Maliki become PM in May 2006, the SIIC now is in a power-struggle with his Da'wa as the two are competing to win votes in the provinces, implicitly accusing each other on a number of issues including federalism. This has led to closer relations between the SIIC and the secular Kurdish coalition of the north, with both insisting on federalism. But the SIIC, too, is shifting to secularism.

Iran is angered by the Iraqi Shi'ite parties' shift to secularism. This was evident from a statement made on Jan. 4 by the theocracy's Supreme Leader Ayatullah 'Ali Khamenei at a meeting with Maliki who was then visiting Tehran. Khamenei warned: "Iraq will not calm down as long as it is occupied by foreign forces". This was a direct warning to Maliki who on Dec. 14 signed the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with President Bush during the latter's visit to Baghdad. The SOFA allows the US to maintain its military presence until end-2011, with vague indications that there must be an extension of the US presence in Iraq beyond 2011.

It is said the US has a role in the current shift back to secularism by Iraqi politicians - Saddam's regime was secular and the now-defunct Arab Ba'th Socialist Party of Iraq has been a secular movement in the region and has called for pan-Arab nationalism. The Syrian regime follows the same Ba'thist/pan-Arabist ideology, despite its being part of the Iran-led axis, which is one of the contradictions partly explaining the powerful effects of taqiyah in the GME.

Khamenei's Jan. 4 statement was another sign that the Shi'ite theocracy of Iran will continue to play a major role in Iraqi politics. Iran still has many proxies in Iraq which can be manipulated to serve Tehran's regional ambitions. Iraq, in fact, is one of the strong cards the Shi'ite theocracy is holding in its bargaining or confrontation with the US - the other cards being Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, the GCC region, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, as well as in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Iran has extended its influences to North Africa, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, etc. But these cards cost Iran's treasury a great deal. Together with its nuclear ambitions, these are draining the theocracy's financial resources at a time the country is isolated internationally by US and UNSC sanctions.

The Sunni Arabs of Iraq still have not formed real political parties of consequence to reflect their secular and tribal tendencies. Tribal chiefs usually resent religious leaders - whether Sunni or Shi'ite - because the latter tend to compete with them in winning influence among the people and because of the taqiyah, which the chiefs believe is a license for the religious leaders to lie and deceive.

All politicians, whether tribal or otherwise, Sunni, Shi'ite or Kurdish, want to win on Jan. 31; and most of the prominent ones among them want to have their own armed force, such as Maleki's ICs and their mainly Sunni AC rivals led by tribal chiefs. Nearly all are "one-man-show parties". Even the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), the main Sunni Arab component of the Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF) - the largest Sunni Arab bloc in the Council of Representatives (parliament) - is a one-man-show party. The IIP, an evolution of Iraq's Muslim Brotherhood (MB), uses the taqiyah to control the IAF. But the IIP is a sectarian group and, as such, is losing popularity in the Sunni heartland. Even the IAF seems to be on the brink of collapse as most of its components are sectarian.

With secularism and Iraqi nationalism on the rise among both the Sunni and Shi'ite Arab communities and tribes, anti-Iran sentiment is growing rapidly in the Arab part of Iraq. As a result, Sunni and Shi'ite religious leaders are losing much of their popularity - though Grand Ayatullah 'Ali al-Sistani remains deeply respected not only as the most senior authority in Ja'fari Shi'ism in the country but also in view of his refusal to be involved in politics. In the autonomous Kurdistan, Iran is deeply resented, as in the case of Turkey; but Turkish investments in Kurdistan are extensive. Turkey is Kurdistan's main trading partner.

At the same time, rivalries among Shi'ite religious leaders are deepening. For example, the young Sadr and his followers resent Sistani not only because the latter is of Iranian origin but also because he was despised by Sadr's father, the late Ayatullah Muhammad-Sadeq al-Sadr (killed in 1999 by Saddam's Sunni/Ba'thist dictatorship) who called himself "the most learned of all" Ja'fari religious authorities and used to call Sistani an "idiot".

Likewise, rivalries among Sunni religious leaders are deep. The main Sunni Arab religious activist group is the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), now a mostly under-ground movement deeply resented by the secular Iraqis. The AMS, which still claims to control over 3,000 Sunni mosques throughout Iraq, backs the Sunni insurgent groups - both the Neo-Salafis and the Ba'thists loyal to Saddam. These Ba'thists are now called al-'Awda Party (meaning the party of its return to rule Iraq). 'Awada members are being hunted down by both government forces and the AC and IC groups, as well as remaining armed elements of JaM, Fadhila and other Shi'ite gangs armed and funded by Iran's Quds Force.

Neo-Salafi and 'Awda groups, however, co-operate in their insurgency. This is despie the Neo-Salafis' alliance with Iran and despite deep enmity towards Iran by the AMS. The AMS activists, mainly radical mosque imams, are deeply suspicious of the Iranian theocracy's ulterior motives throughout the GME. They call the theocracy and its Iraqi Shi'ite backers "Safawis". Many members of the AMS used to be secret informants for Saddam's Sunni/Ba'thist dictatorship.

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