NAJAF, Iraq — The anticipation is palpable. After more than 80 years on the margins, the Shiites of Iraq will finally get their due: a controlling stake in the government commensurate with their majority status.
Beyond the ubiquitous posters bearing the image of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the United Iraqi Alliance slate, which the leading Shiite Muslim cleric helped assemble, there's little in the way of active campaigning in Najaf just a week before the national election. With the power of Sistani, there's no need.
Most expect the alliance list to grab the lion's share of votes in the country's Shiite-dominated south, with the slate led by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, coming in second. Few in Najaf can think who might come in third.
But if there's confidence, there is also awareness among Shiite leaders that, for the sake of national unity and stability, they will have to be graceful winners, despite their decades of subjugation under Sunni Arab rule and the insurgency that has left hundreds of Shiites dead. They must reach out to the Kurds in the north and the Sunni Arab minority, whose refusal to accept the new political order has fed the bloody insurgency.
"Yes, there is fear. There is fear among the Sunnis. There is fear among the Kurds," said Salah Battat, head of the Basra office of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, one of the top Shiite religious parties on the alliance slate.
Efforts to placate leery Sunnis are underway. In the southern province of Basra, SCIRI has focused on encouraging voter turnout in the largely Sunni town of Zubayr. Even if residents avoid the polls in mass numbers, as local Sunni politicians predict, Battat said, the next provincial council will make it a priority to appoint Sunnis to prominent positions.
"It's part of our patriotic duty," he said. "We cannot rebuild Iraq without our Sunni sons."
Shiite religious leaders also have joined the inclusiveness campaign. In a sermon this month, Sadruddin Qubanchi of Najaf endorsed the still-controversial idea of granting extra postelection seats in the new national assembly to Sunni leaders if Sunni turnout was low.
"We think that it is important for them to participate, to respect their votes, and to offer them multiple choices if they couldn't vote," Qubanchi said.
