06 February 2009

Iraqi Elections Big Losers: Sadr and Iran

Sadr's Campaign Ad Fell Flat

The results for the Iraqi provincial elections are mostly in, and the NYT Baghdad Bureau has the results broken out by province. The big winner is Prime Minister Maliki's Dawa party, which won in Baghdad and most of the southern provinces. The Iraqi Islamic Party won in some northern Sunni provinces like Salahuddin and Diyala, but the winner in the largest Sunni province (Anbar) was won by the secular Iraqi National Project. The awakening tribes finished in a close second and they are satisfied with the results and backing off on their initial call to arms amidst fraud allegations. Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (with very close ties to Iran) and everyone's hero, Muqtada al-Sadr, lost big too...even in Muthanna and Basra.

Not bad. This is much more reassuring than our election results, where I was in an emo-like funk for 9 days crying myself to sleep, haha. Go democracy!

12 comments:

Skye said...

I borrowed this post for MidnightBlue, except for the emo part :)

Anonymous said...

Since our country's political system upsets you so much, perhaps you could rent a house in the Anbar Province. Face it, McCain lost, and WE won.

Anonymous said...

Don't cry, emo kid. Your unicorn is in the mail.

Anonymous said...

I'm assuming you knew that was me.

Wek said...

Muqtada doesn't even update his blog anymore.

http://muqtadaalsadr.blogspot.com/

Nixon said...

Wek,

They must have connectivity problems in Qom, Iran.

subrookie said...

Interesting that the Dawa party beat Sadr in the southern provinces. Cities like Najaf and Basrah were pretty strong Shite cities since we sold them out in Gulf War 1.

Where is Sadr anyway? Busy deciding where his next goofy conquest is?

J. said...

We better keep 100,000 troops in Iraq for another three or four years, just in case democracy doesnt work.

Anonymous said...

J and Anonymous -- keep in mind that not every single person that voted was voting for Obama. He won, okay.

But I'm allowed to be unhappy with that, just as you were unhappy with the Bush administration.

Kath

MezzoCO said...

oooh. I want a shitte pet! maybe my local dollar store . . .

good news, though! (for the moment...)

Nixon said...

Who's advocating to keep troops in Iraq now, J.? That argument is so 2006/2007, when pulling troops out would have led to inevitable genocide. Something the Democrats didn't give a shit about.

Anonymous said...

One Democrat did...and still does.

In 2006/7, the problem was that more troops in the absence of a political strategy was not the best approach, shall we say.

And, if troops are pulled out now - absent a sustainable political settlement among the various Iraqi factions and sub-factions - then I shudder to think how this will all end.