Amid mounting fears of a renewal of sectarian tensions in Iraq hundreds of Sunnis have been banned from taking part in the country's parliamentary elections, writes Salah Hemeid One week after the barring of Saleh Al-Mutlaq, the leader of a key Iraqi Sunni group and prominent politician, from running in the country's forthcoming legislative elections, an Iraqi vetting committee has banned some 500 mostly Sunni candidates from the March elections on the grounds that they have links to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, sparking concerns that this may lead to a widespread Sunni boycott and trigger a new political crisis in the violence-torn country. Faraj Al-Haidari, the head of the electoral commission, said on Monday that the candidates were to be barred in accordance with a blacklist the commission had received from the country's justice and accountability committee, which vets candidates for the elections. Commissioner Hamdiya Al-Husseini later said that the list included 522 names and would not be published for fear of reprisals. Executive director of the Justice and Accountability Committee Ali Al-Lami said that the committee, previously known as the de-Baathification commission had acted in accordance with the country's constitution, which prohibits former Baathists from holding public office. "We have firm evidence that these candidates were Baathists," Al-Lami said, adding that the commission's rules prevented him from releasing this evidence. The de-Baathification commission was originally set up by the coalition administration established in Iraq following the US-led 2003 invasion with the aim of preventing former Baathists from regaining power. This week's decision has created uproar across the country, underscoring the fact that Iraq's seven-year national reconciliation process is now in deep trouble. It has also threatened to damage the forthcoming legislative elections, risking turning them into a battleground where past quarrels will be exposed rather than healed as part of the stumbling political process. Sunni leaders across Iraq warned that the move could push the country towards a "dark unknown" only two months before the crucial elections. Many of them considered the bans as being sectarian in motivation and designed to target Iraq's Sunni minority, charging that both the head of the committee, the one-time US ally Ahmed Chalabi, and its director, Al-Lami, are themselves candidates of the Iraqi National Alliance, the main Shia coalition. Among those banned from presenting themselves as candidates in the elections are Iraqi Defence Minister Abdel-Qader Jassem Al-Obeidi, who was on the list of candidates of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki's State of Law Coalition, and prominent Sunni lawmaker Dhafir Al-Ani, a persistent critic of the government. Other banned candidates include Sunni members of the current Iraqi parliament. The greatest beneficiary of the banning orders, the country's Shia groups, hailed the committee's decisions despite the outcry from the Sunnis. Al-Maliki threw his support behind the decisions, saying in a statement that the rulings must be respected "without exception" and cautioning against the "politicisation" of a process intended to weed out supporters of the former ruling Baath Party. However, the banning orders have infuriated the Obama administration, which had hoped that the upcoming elections would stabilise the violence-torn country and facilitate US troop withdrawals next year. US Vice-President Joe Biden immediately summoned Iraqi politicians to Washington for talks on how to resolve the crisis, and his office said that he was in touch with the country's top three political leaders, Al-Maliki, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and parliamentary speaker Iyad Al-Samaraai, on the issue. In a statement, Biden's office said that he had encouraged the Iraqi leaders to ensure that the March elections were transparent, fair and inclusive. Al-Samaraai's office later disclosed that Biden had also urged the Iraqi leaders to postpone any purging of former members of the Baath Party until after the elections, suggesting that instead of being banned from contesting the elections the vetoed candidates be asked to denounce the Baath Party and sign a pledge never to rejoin it. Al-Samaraai's office said that Biden had shown little confidence in the committee's decisions and expressed concerns about possible bias. The banning orders against the 500 candidates are also expected to worsen relations between Iraq's Shia-led government and Sunni Arab countries that have been trying to renew ties with Baghdad, with an Arab League official who flew to Iraq last week to try to resolve the dispute indicating that his mission has not been fruitful. In a statement, Ahmed Ben Helli, deputy secretary-general of the Arab League, said upon his return to the organisation's headquarters in Cairo on Sunday that the forthcoming Iraqi elections should be as inclusive as possible. "Everyone should be allowed to take part in the political process and the elections," Ben Helli said, summing up Arab governments' re-emerging opposition to the Shia domination of Iraq. For their part, Iraqi Shia leaders warned that the US, the United Nations and Arab governments should not interfere in the dispute, with Al-Maliki's spokesman Ali Al-Dabagh saying that US intervention would not affect the rulings. The special representative of the UN secretary-general for Iraq, Ad Melkert, who has been trying to broker a solution, has also been told that his efforts are counterproductive. In addition to threats from some Sunni leaders that they would boycott the March elections, the country's Sunni groups have shown little sign of being willing to wait in the wings and have immediately moved to counter the ban. On Saturday, a group of largely Sunni politicians announced the formation of a new coalition to contest the elections that they hoped would crack the dominance of Shia parties in the country's government and would constitute strong competition to the two main Shia alliances, the State of Law Coalition led by Al-Maliki and the National Iraqi Alliance led by powerful Shia cleric Ammar Al-Hakim. The new coalition, led by former prime minister Iyad Allawi, himself a Shia, called on all Iraqis to participate in the elections in order to move "from uncertainty and confusion to steadiness and certainty." Among those joining the new group were Sunni `vice-President Tariq Al-Hashimi, Deputy Prime Minister Rafie Al-Issawi and other lawmakers and community leaders. Despite such calls for unity, the dispute has already triggered confusion and accusations of blame in an already volatile political situation. Shia leaders have expressed concerns that the furore over the banning orders is part of a conspiracy to dislodge them from power, with some accusing the US, the UK, the Arab countries and Turkey of wanting to restore the Baath Party to power. The Baath Party is blamed for marginalising the country's Shia during the rule of Saddam Hussein and of committing widespread violence against them, particularly in the conflicts that followed the 2003 US-led invasion. As might have been expected in an already highly polarised country, the Shias have also moved to counter the new Sunni coalition by calling for a broad-based national front to form Iraq's next government after the elections. Al-Hakim first proposed the idea of such a front to the country's Kurdish leaders and is reportedly planning to discuss it with other Shia groups, such as Al-Maliki's Daawa Party, and with Sunni groups such as the Iraqi Islamic Party. Hadi Al-Ameri, a leader of the Badr Organisation, an affiliate of Al-Hakim's Supreme Islamic Council, said that the proposed front should include all those who opposed Saddam's regime. In the absence of a solution to the crisis triggered by the banning orders, Iraq may be heading toward a more dangerous national crisis, with the exclusion of such a large number of Sunni candidates leading to a significant Sunni boycott that will undermine the election's legitimacy. If the Sunnis choose not to boycott the elections in order to avoid a repeat of the January 2005 elections, when a Sunni boycott handed power to the Shias, those Sunnis who have been disqualified might join the ongoing Sunni resistance, leading to another
