Welcome to Florida

Well, the Iraqis had their referendum. The Sunnis participated in large numbers, with a much greater percentage than the Shiites or Kurds, which stands to reason since they had more at stake. I've been on record as saying that the best thing for the country, in my opinion, would be to reject a referendum that would only encourage sectarian violence and civil war. In addition, democratic participation that yields a favorable result would actually help derail the insurgency. If change can be brought about peacefully, the Sunnis have no need to support violent overthrow.

The votes haven't been counted, but don't worry, says our Secretary of State, we'll take care of the counting:

As the ballots in Iraq's landmark referendum on a new constitution were dispatched yesterday to Baghdad for an official tally, disputes erupted over the likely result [...]

In London, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters that early indications suggested that the constitution had "probably passed," provoking a storm of outrage from Sunni Arab leaders who seized on her words as evidence that the result had been fixed.

"We think that this statement by Condoleezza Rice is astonishing because it is trying to mask the big rejection that this draft has faced all over Iraq," said a statement by the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni group that was leading a campaign for a "no" vote.

She might have some inside information. Juan Cole points us to some, shall we say, inconsistencies:

Al-Hayat reports that 643,000 votes were cast in Ninevah Province (capital: Mosul). At the time it filed, 419,000 had been preliminarily counted, and the vote was running 75 percent in favor. Ninevah Province was the most likely place that Sunni Arabs opposing the constitution might be able to get a 2/3s "no" vote.

Several of my knowledgeable readers are convinced that the Ninevah voting results as reported so far look like fraud. One suspected that the Iraqi government so feared a defeat there that they over-did the ballot stuffing and ended up with an implausible result.

One of my Iraqi-American correspondents compared the turnout statistics from Ninevah and Diyala provinces last Jan. 30 to those coming out now, and found the current numbers completely unbelievable. He pointed out that the Iraqi Islamic Party had not garnered many votes in Ninevah last January, and its support of the constitution could not hope to explain the hundreds of thousands of "yes" votes the constitution appeared to receive on Saturday.

There's more. The SF Chronicle is reporting that parts of Iraq looked eerily familiar to African-American areas of Pensacola, FL on Saturday:

Ishaki, Iraq -- Less than two hours after polling stations opened Saturday morning, potential voters in the Sunni town of Ishaki were convinced the Iraqi government had rigged the referendum in favor of Kurds, Shiites and Iran.

Dozens of locals, all planning to vote against the draft constitution, had been turned away from the single polling station in town. Lying 40 miles north of Baghdad and just south of Samarra, Ishaki is in the middle of Iraq's Sunni central region, Saddam Hussein's old heartland.

According to election officials here, all those rejected were registered at another polling station 3 miles away -- the only place they would be allowed to vote under the referendum's stringent rules. But a driving ban inside all urban areas, designed to stop suicide bomb attacks, meant these Sunnis, entering the democratic process for the first time, had effectively been disenfranchised.

Never mind that a significant portion of Iraqis voting had not read any of the Constitution they were voting upon, or even knew what the voting was about (hey, we ARE exporting American-style democracy!). The point is that everyone in ower needed this referendum to pass: the Iraqis in the government who want a burgeoning Islamic republic (as this Constitution mandates), the White House officials who want good news they can tout, the Kurds who want their own country, for all intents and purposes. I don't see how a vote with wide Sunni rejection, that nevertheless passes amid credible reports of voter fraud, will do anything to slow down the insurgency; if anything, I'd imagine it would heat it up. Sunnis can now say "We tried to save our country peacefully and it was stolen from us. We have no choice now."

Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post has this to add:

For the Bush administration, the apparent approval of Iraq's constitution is less of a victory than yet another chance to possibly fashion a political solution that does not result in the bloody division of Iraq.

Publicly, administration officials hailed the result but privately some officials acknowledged that the road ahead is still very difficult, especially because Sunni Arab voters appeared to have rejected the constitution by wide margins. As one official put it, every time the administration appears on the edge of a precipice, it manages to cobble together a result that allows it to move on to the next precipice.

Indeed, there are more parliamentary elections in only 8 weeks, which will be especially crucial, since the last-minute deal on the Constitution (which allowed it to have some small manner of Sunni support in selected areas) allowed for amendments and rewrites. I still don't see how the Shiite majority, which will stil be a majority come December, would allow any amendments that would dilute the strong federalism and control over oil wealth they worked so long to achieve:

Martin S. Indyk, a former Clinton administration official who directs the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, Martin S. Indyk, a former Clinton administration official who directs the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, said the administration's scenario of greater Sunni participation is plausible. But he said it is also plausible the Sunnis will conclude that because they failed to block the constitution, the political process is stacked against them [...] the Kurds and Shiites could continue to maneuver to use the political process to protect their interests, and thus the Sunnis will forever find themselves receiving the bad end of the bargain. "We could be fooling ourselves," he said. "If they [Shiites and Kurds] in fact engage in the process in order to destroy it, the administration theory could be very wrong."

It's time to acknowledge that the alleged joy of purple fingers and the political process could actually be firing the insurgency rather than stopping it. And vote fraud has the potential to turn the whole country into a fiery cauldron.