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RR RUEHBC RUEHDE RUEHIHL RUEHMOS
DE RUEHKUK #0035/01 0441607
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 131607Z FEB 06
FM REO KIRKUK
TO RUEHGB/AMEMBASSY BAGHDAD 0480
RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0517
INFO RUCNRAQ/IRAQ COLLECTIVE
RUEHKUK/REO KIRKUK 0544

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 KIRKUK 000035 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL:  2/13/2016 
TAGS: PGOV KDEM IZ
SUBJECT: (C) SUNNIS ASCENDANT IN DIYALA 
 
REF: BAGHDAD 409 
 
KIRKUK 00000035  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
CLASSIFIED BY: Scott Dean, Regional Coordinator (Acting), Reo 
Kirkuk, Department of State . 
REASON: 1.4 (b), (d) 
 
 
 
¶1. (U) This is a SET Ba'qubah cable. 
 
¶2. (C) SUMMARY:  The announcement of the results of the December 
15 Council of Representatives elections has punctuated a 
scramble by the IIP to put together a coalition of Sunni Arab 
leaders in Diyala that can claim to represent the interests of 
the majority of the province's population.  Sunni leaders, both 
independent and partisan, seem ready to join the nascent 
IIP-led, MARAM-modeled coalition.  Meanwhile, Shi'a contacts are 
beginning to grouse quietly about Sunni "cheating," though 
without any concrete examples.  While new provincial elections 
seem unlikely to occur in the near future, the psychological 
effects of Diyala's election are already having an effect on the 
dynamics of power within the province.  END SUMMARY. 
 
¶3.  (C) On February 10, the IECI announcement of final results 
(Reftel) was greeted with a shrug - Diyala's political elite has 
been operating for weeks on the assumption that Diyala's seats 
would line up as they have now been certified.  The results - in 
which six of ten seats went to Sunni Arabs, and only two to 
Shi'a Arabs - were a clear repudiation of the current structure 
of Diyala's provincial council, where the Sunni Arab-led bloc 
controls just over a third of the 41 seats and the Shi'a bloc 
controls just under half.  Prominent Sunni Arabs have been 
scrambling to align themselves for upcoming provincial elections 
in expectation of a realignment of power. 
 
¶4.  (C) The breakdown of the Sunni's six seats - in which only 
four went to the Tawaffuq Front, while one apiece went to the 
Iraqiyya and National Dialogue lists - indicates that space 
exists in Diyala for secular Sunni representation.  Two boycotts 
in the January 2005 elections prevented secular Sunnis from 
joining the current Provincial Council: a boycott by secular 
Ba'athists, and one by supporters of then-Governor Abdullah 
Rashid al-Juburi, after technicality kept his cross-sectarian 
list off the ballot.  In the December elections, both of these 
constituencies appear to have come out in force to vote for the 
Iraqiyya and National Dialogue lists. 
 
---------------- 
MARAM FOR DIYALA 
---------------- 
 
¶5.  (C) The IIP appears to have noticed this space as well, and 
to be moving quickly to close it.  Diyala IIP Chairman Hamdi 
Hassun al-Zubaydi claims that the IIP will be able to capture 
the votes that went to the Iraqiyya and National Dialogue lists 
by incorporating members of the organizations supporting those 
lists, along with prominent Sunnis not affiliated with any 
party.  The result, Zubaydi believes, will be an absolute 
majority going to a MARAM-like bloc (COMMENT: whose backbone 
would be solidly composed of the IIP). 
 
¶6.  (C) This is not just idle talk.  Khalid al-Sinjari, mayor of 
Ba'qubah and the most prominent Sunni Arab officeholder in 
Diyala not affiliated with the IIP, noted to SET that the IIP 
had already approached him about participation in a potential 
coalition for the upcoming election.  Sinjari suggested that 
others in his circle of independent Sunnis had been in contact 
with the IIP as well.  Like Zubaydi, he pictures the formation 
of a coalition mirroring MARAM, with Sinjari himself in a 
leading role. 
 
¶7.  (C) Party activists appear just as open to inclusion in an 
IIP-dominated list as independents.  Diyala INA Chairman (and 
victorious Iraqiyya list CoR candidate) Hussam al-Azzawi 
reluctantly admits that the INA will not be going it alone in 
the next provincial election - nor will it stake its hopes for 
representation on a coalition that mirrors the Iraqiyya list. 
As for the National Dialogue list, Zubaydi claims that its 
winning CoR candidate in Diyala - Muhammad Katuf Mansur, a 
member of the Arab Democratic Front (ADF) - has already joined 
Tawaffuq; the inclusion of the ADF into Tawaffuq should 
presumably make it easy to secure the adherence of its partisans 
to a MARAM-like coalition in the provincial elections. 
 
¶8.  (C) The lack of any majority bloc in the current provincial 
council has forced all of the various factions to share power - 
a good thing on balance for inter-sectarian relations, though 
with some cost in governmental effectiveness.  Zubaydi claims 
that the IIP would ensure a new government with a Sunni Arab 
bloc majority would include representatives of the other 
sectarian groups in leadership positions in the provincial 
government. 
 
 
KIRKUK 00000035  002.2 OF 002 
 
 
------------ 
SHI'A UNEASE 
------------ 
 
¶9.  (C) Meanwhile, we are hearing more and more grousing from 
our Shi'a contacts about alleged Sunni Arab electoral violations 
in the December election.  Given the vague nature of the 
complaints, the halfhearted way in which they have been pressed, 
and the uniformly positive reaction to the election from Shi'as 
prior to the announcement of the preliminary vote totals, these 
complaints would more accurately be taken as an indicator of 
Shi'a unease at the impending shift of power away from them 
within the province.  The complaints that we have heard have 
involved voter intimidation by Sunni Arab pollworkers, the 
alleged practice by Sunni Arab pollworkers of allowing the Sunni 
heads of households to vote for their entire family while 
ensuring that Shi'as and Kurds could only place a single vote, 
and other vague glosses on the (not entirely unfounded) Shi'a 
conspiracy theory surrounding IIP overrepresentation on the 
Diyala IECI.  (NOTE: A side effect of the reduction of the IECI 
office from 308 employees to 52 should be the end of this 
particular, recurring explanation for Sunni electoral success.) 
 
------- 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
¶10.  (C) The provincial elections are still a long way off 
(though this may not be clear to much of the province's 
political elite), but perceptions are already driving a shift in 
power towards the province's Sunnis, as Shi'a politicians appear 
progressively more willing to compromise with both Sunnis and 
Kurds.  Conversely, the Sunni bloc appears to have become less 
obstructionist in the limited political interaction that has 
occurred since the election.  Perhaps the latter change is a 
result of an increased feeling that their position in the 
province is secure; it also may be a desire on the part of the 
disciplined provincial branch of the IIP not to make any move 
that would affect negotiations for government formation at the 
national level. 
DEAN