Still, is anyone really surprised by this outcome? It’s about what a reasonable person would have figured, no? Ba’athism was about as secular as you could get in that part of the world, so what are the Shi’ites going to do, offer more secularism? It wouldn’t make sense.
I am not suprised.
There are now widespread accusations of fraud, the election commissioner has resigned, and today 200,000 people are marching in Baghdad. This is going to get interesting.
Some interesting comments from an Iraqi Blog:
Interesting developments. There are accusations of fraud against the Kurds, who some say stacked the ballot boxes to ensure they controlled the oil-rich regions. Other allegations of election fraud among the Shia.
However, there seems to be a pretty large bloc of people from all parts of Iraq who are generally interested in national unity, and who understand that you can’t allow one part of the government to completely dominate and expect Iraq to survive. Al-Sistani is a major influence among the Shiites, and he’s calling for compromises for national unity. And so far, the people who think they got the shaft are responding not with terror, but with peaceful demonstrations and demands for legal redress, which is a good sign.
Still, it’s early in the process, and this could go in any direction.
Well, that certainly sounds like democracy, US-style!
They should either send all the ballots to be counted in Florida or at least ask for a consultation. I bet the hanging chads guys are still about somewhere…
-XT
What’s that Chinese curse again? 
And I’ll counter that with some good news, best described by This Iraqi Blogger
Basically, it sounds like the UIA (the main Shiite bloc) is promising a unity government, and all the other parties have sort of collected together as a unity platform and are demanding concessions, and they are currently in negotiations. Basically, the Shiites are saying that even though they have the most voting power, they will govern for the good of all Iraq and are promising various protections of minority interests. It may yet be worked out, and in fact it could be this outcome that drives a real unity movement that may not have existed had each faction gotten equal representation.
Of course, it could all blow up and go to hell, too.
Richard Armitrage in an interview in The Diplomat two issues ago described how he thought the big winner out of the invasion and occupation was going to be Iran. Armitrage implied a “Greater Persia” was not outside the realm of possibility. High level exchanges have already occurred between Iran and Iraq. If that happens in fact or in influence, watch out for Turkey joining the EU: the Turks will be under pressure to allow the existence of Kurdistan to create a secular regime in an oil-rich area, and the trade-off for the Turks would be EU membership.
I doubt it will be bad news of the Bush Administration as its unlikely to occur in the near term: I think it would be a problem in the medium-term (assuming you think conservative Islamist theocracies with nuclear ambitions are bad news, and also if you think Iran is unlikely to undergo a liberal social revolution in the next 20 years).