Only political solution can unite Iraq

The most important coming elections for Americans are not the congressional vote in 2006, but the Iraqi elections taking place on Thursday.

These elections hold the key to whether U.S. troops can leave Iraq without disaster. American military commanders have been saying for months that no military “victory” can be achieved in Iraq, no matter the rhetoric from Washington. Only a political solution will undercut Iraqi violence: Bitterly feuding Iraqi factions must agree on a formula to share power – and oil money.

Without a political solution, Iraq is likely to split apart and sink into deeper civil war, with U.S. troops caught in the middle. After Thursday’s elections we will see whether a political deal can be made.

The crucial weeks will come soon after the voting. The results will depend more on the diplomatic skills of U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad than on all the U.S. troops in Iraq.

Rather than unite Iraqis, the ballot is more likely to split them further. The key political parties are based on religious and ethnic factions. Kurds will vote for Kurdish parties. Shiites, encouraged by their clerics, will vote predominantly for the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shiite religious parties.

Iraqi Sunni Arabs, a 20 percent minority who benefited most from Saddam Hussein’s rule, boycotted the last elections. The good news: They are now joining the political process, are likely to vote heavily this time. The bad news: the emergence of new elected Sunni leaders won’t, by itself, undercut the Sunni-led fighting. The insurgency will lessen only when Sunnis become convinced they have a real role in the new Iraqi political system. I had hoped this might happen in the coming months.

But recent conversations with Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders – some by phone to Baghdad, some in person – have made me more pessimistic. The level of anger and hostility between communities has been rising; these emotions could overcome even leaders who want to avoid all-out civil war.

Shiite Iraqis, persecuted brutally under Saddam, are outraged at the unending series of car bombs that are blowing up Shiite civilians in mosques and markets. These bombs are set by radical Islamist factions of the insurgency, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who wants to provoke civil war.

Shiites have demanded that mainstream Sunni notables denounce the bombing of their civilians. But Sunni leaders have been slow to take up this challenge.

So Shiite militias – often in police uniform – have started taking their own revenge, often murdering and torturing innocent Sunnis. This tit-for-tat killing is still limited, but it could become much, much worse.

The deepening Shiite-Sunni divide has even more dangerous repercussions. Shiite political leaders once wanted to hold Iraq together. Yet they now talk about forming a large Shiite sub-state in southern Iraq out of nine of Iraq’s 18 provinces, a state that would be heavily dependent on Iranian backing. Technically, that state would still be part of a federal Iraq. But in reality, it would mean the breakup of the country – with Shiites retreating to the south, and Kurds withdrawing to their autonomous region in the north.

Iraq’s oil reserves are located in the Kurdish north and Shiite south, and the new Iraqi constitution gives control of future oil to the two regions. Thus, Sunnis would be left with an oil-less, desert area that had no economic basis for survival. This is a formula for disaster.

If Iraq splits, Baghdad and other mixed-population cities will become the scene of brutal ethnic cleansing. Down this road lie the horrors that engulfed Yugoslavia and Lebanon. In such a failed state, Zarqawi’s terrorist bands would find a most convenient training ground.

The hope for avoiding such a dire scenario lies in post-election diplomacy, in which Khalilzad’s role will be central. The vote on Thursday will produce a new body of Sunni parliamentarians. Khalilzad should encourage these leaders to openly disavow insurgent attacks on Shiite civilians.

The skilled U.S. diplomat should also pursue his talks with Sunni nationalist insurgents who oppose the U.S. presence but disavow Zarqawi’s tactics. He should tell these insurgents that their best hope of retaining a unitary Iraq and getting American troops to leave depends on moving from violence into the political arena.

At the same time, Khalilzad must press Shiites and Kurds to give Sunnis incentives to reenter the political system. They must rewrite the constitution to allow Sunnis a fair share of Iraqi oil.

The forces tearing Iraq apart are gathering strength, but Thursday’s elections will temporarily focus Sunnis on politics rather than fighting. The vote provides a brief opening for U.S. diplomacy that may not come again soon.