In
the two articles below Dal LaMagna, the founder of Progressive Government,
and Faruq Ziada, a former Iraqi Ambassador, raise the question of whether
there is really a Sunni majority population in Iraq.
Is
There a Sunni Majority In Iraq?
By Dal LaMagna
28 December, 2006
Countercurrents.org
If
you follow the sectarian and political situation in Iraq you’ve
heard about the 80% solution. Robin Wright explains it in her Washington
Post December 1, 2006 article “U.S.
Considers Ending Outreach to Insurgents.” She explains that
since the Sunnis represent only 20% of the 26 million Iraqis, the U.S.
administration is considering “…abandoning reconciliation
efforts with Sunni insurgents and instead giv[ing] priority to Shiites
and Kurds, who won elections and now dominate the government.”
(Note: According to many, the Shiites and Kurds represent 80% of the
Iraq population.)
Helene Cooper, in the December
17, 2006 New York Times’ Week in Review's lead story The
Whispers and the Why Nots reports that “…Washington
should stop trying to get Sunnis and Shiites to get along and instead
just back the Shiites, since there are more of them anyway and they
likely to win in a fight to the death. After all, the proposal goes;
Iraq is 65% Shiite and only 20% Sunni. The other 15% are the Kurds.
But, hey wait a minute! Not
everyone agrees with these numbers, particularly the Sunnis who feel
they have been under-counted.
Listening to Iraqis is a
good step towards resolving their crisis. I’ve made two trips
to Amman, Jordan to listen to them. (The
first trip was in early August when I traveled there with the GLOBAL
EXCHANGE/CODEPINK peace delegation. The second trip was the day after
the recent U.S. elections when I accompanied Congressman Jim McDermott.
During that trip, we met and listened to people from the Mid East region
including Iraq Members of Parliament, sheiks from the Dulaym Tribe,
and Faruq Ziada who has collaborated with me on this blog and who was
the former Counsellor, Permanent Mission of Iraq to the United Nations.
On my first trip back in
August, we didn’t hear too much complaining about the count of
the Shia, Sunni, and Kurds; rather the Iraqis were concerned that the
world erroneously thought that Sunnis and Shia were at each other’s
throats. They weren’t. And, there wasn’t a civil war going
on, but instead, there were outsiders trying to foment a civil war.
Jabir Habir Jabir, a Shia Member of Parliament, even joked about it.
He said, “For example, I don’t need Americans to protect
my wife from me. She is a Sunni and I am a Shia.”
In November though, on the
listening trip with Representative McDermott, we heard often about faulty
counts. Faruq Ziada, who was also an ambassador in Iraq’s Foreign
Ministry from 1992 to 2000, claimed throughout his interview with us
that the numbers had been played with and manipulated for the past 10-15
years. His premise is that the Sunnis represent a majority of the population
in Iraq!
We asked him to prepare an
analysis of the numbers to prove it. If Faruq is right, and he does
present a compelling case, even if the Sunnis aren’t a majority
but comprise much more than the 17% to 20% we hear all the time, the
administration is making decisions on an erroneous assumption –
that the Shiites are the majority. Then the 80% solution is wrong. The
Constitution which excludes the Sunnis needs to be fixed. The U.S. administration
needs to recognize that the Sunni insurgency could be larger than presently
assessed. It should start negotiating with them. And new elections that
are not boycotted by Sunnis need to be conducted.
Here is what Faruq has compiled,
complete with links to back-up his research.
Dal is founder of the Progressive
Government Institute. He was also the founder and CEO of TWEEZERMAN
Corporation in Port Washington, New York. Dal served on the Advisory
Board of Directors and was chair of the Best Tools & Practices Committee
of the Social Venture Network. He is a member of Business Leaders for
Sensible Priorities. He is part of the Founder’s Circle for The
Positive Future Network, the publisher of Yes Magazine. He serves on
the Dean’s Council for the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Is there a Sunni
Majority in Iraq?
By Faruq Ziada
The United States based its
policy on Iraq on two primary so-called facts:
1. The Sunnis are a 20 %
minority.
2. The Sunni minority and
Saddam Hussein ruled the Shiite majority in Iraq.
Thus, the U.S. Iraq policy
-- as set by the Bush Administration, and the Neoconservatives –
both before and after the 2003 war and occupation, was based on this
false premise. Because of this, the Sunnis were marginalized and power
was handed over to the Shiite religious parties and Kurdish parties
by the occupation force CPA, Ambassador Bremer, and later Ambassador
Negroponte.
Based on this false premise,
the U.S. policy failed miserably. Still, the Bush Administration continued
and still is continuing this policy. Bush called it "Stay the course…"
For this reason, and to bring to light information that should help
inform a new policy, it is of the utmost importance to correct this
fallacy. We need to put the facts in front of all who will try to correct
the course, find the correct necessary policies to end the bloodshed,
and end the catastrophe that has befallen Iraq.
The Correct Percentages
of Sunnis, Shiites, Arabs, and Kurds
The actual, real percentages
of various groups in Iraq is outlined below. Statistics come from the
Al- Quds Press Research Center, London Study (www.qudspress.c
om) and, with reference to the map on the distribution of religious
groups, from the Baker – Hamilton Committee report page, 102).
As Nationalities:
Arabs 82 - 84%
Kurds, Turks, etc. 16 -
18%
Religions
Moslems 95 - 98%
Christians and others 2 - 5%
Moslem Sects
Sunnis 60 - 62%
S unni Arabs 42 - 44%
S unni Kurds and Turks 16 - 18%
Shiites 38 - 40%
S hiite Kurds and Turks 2 - 4%
Percentage of Sunnis, Shiites, Arabs, and Kurds
The Election of January 31,2005
The results of the elections
on January 31, 2005 provide a very clear indication of Sunni majority
and Shiite minority. For instance:
· The majority of
Sunnis boycotted the elections. Those who voted gave their votes to
the slates of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, or Adnan Al- Pachachi, or
to the Royalist.
· All the Shiite parties
or groups united on one slate, the Unified Iraqi Coalition.
· Ayatollah Al-Sistani
and all other Shiite religious leaders issued an edict (fatwah) that
Shiites must vote and must vote for the Shiite slate. The edict also
stated that if a married man or woman did not vote, they would no longer
be legally considered husband and wife.
· The media showed
long lines of women in southern Iraq, waiting to vote, just as they
depicted ill people in wheel chairs being pushed to the election boxes.
· The Coalition Provisional
Authority (the U.S.) and the Elections Committee claimed that 95% of
Shiites participated in the vote.
· The CPA gave its
full backing to the elections. President Bush hailed the elections as
one of the greatest events in Middle East history, a great democratic
achievement.
However, the election results were a fiasco and a big scandal for all
those who participated in the elections. The results were delayed for
more than five weeks, during which time the United States and the Shiite
filled the media with daily statements about how fantastic they were
and how the Shiites had won more than two-thirds of the seats.
Using convoluted logic, some attempted to use this to prove the Shiites
accounted for more than 60 % of the population.
The Results of the
January 31 Election
According to the official
Election
Committee, the numbers involved in the 2005 voting are as follows:
Iraqis eligible to vote
15,450,000
Iraqis inside Iraq 14,200,000
Iraqis outside Iraq 1,250,000
In addition, the following
numbers were provided:
· Iraqis (Shiites,
Kurds, and a few Sunnis) who participated in the vote = 8,456,266, or
54 %
· Iraqis who boycotted,
primarily Sunnis = 6,693,734, or 46 %
It should be noted that Iraq
was considered as one electoral unit. Therefore, a Shiite voting for
the Shiite slate in the Arab areas, governates, the Kurdish area, or
abroad will be counted for the Shiite slate.. The same for the Kurds
etc. The Kurdish votes in Baghdad (more than a million) went for the
Kurdish slate etc.
The Vote for the Slates
: Total Votes - % of Eligible Voters
Unified Iraqi Slate (Shiite/
Sistani) 4,075,295 - 26.3 %
The Kurdish Slate 2,175,551- 14.0 %
Iraqiyah Slate (PM Ayad Allawi) 1,168,943- 7.5 %
Iraqiyon (President Ghazi Al-Yawer) 150,650- 0.9 %
The Communist Party 69,920
Adnan Al-Pachachi Slate 23,302
The Royalists (Shareef Ali) 13,740
It is worth noting here that
the Kurdish provisional government announced that 98% of Kurds participated
in the voting and that the Shiite leadership announced that 95% of Shiites
voted in the election.
The Elections of
the Council of Representatives, December 15,2005
The election of the Council of Representatives (present Parliament)
was on December 15, 2005. Shiites and Kurds participated in the elections
overwhelmingly.
However, Sunnis who supported
the Muslim Scholars Association boycotted the elections. Sunnis who
participated were the supporters of:
· The Islamic Party
(present Vice President Tariq Al-Hashimi)
· The Hiwar National
Iraqi Front (Dr. Saleh Al- Mutlaq)
· Those who voted
for National Iraqi List (ex- Prime Minister Ayad Allawi).
The Results of the
Elections of the Council of Representatives
We shall concentrate only
on the Shiites to show once again that they are the MINORITY in Iraq,
based on the official final report of the Independent Electoral Commission
of Iraq (www.ieciraq.gov)
issued on February 10, 2006.
The number of eligible voters
15,568,702
The number participating
in the vote 11,895,756
The number voting for the Unified Iraqi Coalition 5,021,137
The Shiite Bloc
Percentage of eligible voters
32.2 %
Percentage of those who voted 42.2 %
The announcement of the results
of the elections were delayed for nearly two months (the elections were
held on December 15, 2005, and the results were announced on February
10, 2006), because of accusations of mass forgery in the Shiite governates;
the militias took over the ballot boxes and filled them with ballots.
All other parties threatened that they would boycott the new Council
of Representatives if the situation was not rectified.
Under this pressure, an International
Investigation Committee was set up jointly by the United Nations and
the Arab League to check the accusations. The Committee came under open
threats from the Shiite parties (SCIRI of Abdul Aziz Al- Hakeem, and
Al-Dawah of Al-Maliki). The Committee was also under pressure from the
Bush administration, which was desperate to have the election results
announced, to demonstrate that the democratic process was on track.
Under these threats the Committee
had to announce its findings from Amman, Jordan.
The Committee announced that there were grave violations committed in
the Shiite governates, but also said it could not determine who committed
them. The U.S. then pressured the parties contesting the election results
to accept them, promising that it would exert pressure on the Shiite
coalition to accept changes in the Constitution, etc. The protesting
parties then acquiesced to the U.S. pressures and the results were finally
announced nearly two months after the elections.
Conclusion
With the full backing of
Shiite religious leaders and all efforts by the Shiite political parties,
groups and factions, regardless of whether they were religious or liberal
(Ahmed Al-Chalabi), and uniting under one banner (Shiite), the numbers
that the Shiites could muster were meager. It can be clearly seen that
they are a minority in Iraq, and not a majority:
· They received 26.3
% of the votes of eligible voters in the January 31 2005 elections.
· They received 32.2%
of the votes of eligible voters (regardless of all election
violations, forgeries
and filled ballots boxes) in the December 15, 2005 elections
Therefore, one of the main reasons for the drastic failure of U.S. policy
in Iraq must be attributed to the reliance on the false premise that
the Sunnis are a minority and the Shiites are a majority in Iraq. It
is very clear from the official numbers taken from the results of the
elections of January 31, 2005, and December 15, 2005, that: the Sunnis
are 60 – 62 % of the population of Iraq (42-44% Arab, and 16-18%
Kurd and Turk Iraqis), and only 38 – 40 % are Shiites.
Faruq Ziada served
as an ambassador in Iraq’s Foreign Ministry from 1992 to 2000.
Written in collaboration with Jennifer Hicks
This article was published
by Progressive Government, visit the Progressive
Government Website, or contact Progressive Government at email:
[email protected]
or phone: 206-408-8058.
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