CAMPAIGNING IN SOUTHERN IRAQ: DIRTY TRICKS,

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 02 BAGHDAD 001012

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/26/2026
TAGS: PREL PGOV PHUM KDEM
SUBJECT: CAMPAIGNING IN SOUTHERN IRAQ: DIRTY TRICKS,
DEPLETED COFFERS, AND DEALS WITH THE DEVIL

REF: A. A. (A) 05 BAGHDAD 4958


B. B. (B) 05 BAGHDAD 5003

C. C. (C) 05 BAGHDAD 4906

Classified By: Political Counselor Robert Ford,
reasons 1.4(b) and (d)


1. (S) Summary. The number one candidate in Muthanna
province for the National Peace List (#635, Laith Kubba's
party),Talib Aziz al-Hamdani, acknowledged that his party
made strategic mistakes, and that they got fewer than 5,000
votes nationwide, but said that they were also the victim of
a
campaign of dirty tricks orchestrated by the United Iraqi
Coalition (UIC, list 555). He said he spent USD 18,000 of
his own funds on his campaign in Muthanna, and his party
received about a hundred votes there. He hired his
bodyguards from the Jaysh al-Mahdi, and found them grateful
to be earning four times what they received as militia
members. Prospects for independent Islamist candidates in
the South look limited at present unless they compromise
their principles and join harder line Islamist parties or
band together with other, like-minded independents and
become as ruthless as their opponents -- hardly the choices
we would like them to have. End summary.


2. (C) National Peace List (#635) candidate Talib Aziz
al-Hamdani described to PolOff on March 24 the challenges
of running on a small, independent party ticket in southern
Iraq. Hamdani, who taught political science in California
before returning to Iraq and working in civil society since
2003, ran as number one for his party in his home province
of Muthanna (capital Samawa). Atop the party ticket in
Baghdad was Laith Kubba, previously spokeman for Prime
Minister Ibrahim Jafari, and Hamdani's brother-in-law. The
party performed poorly, winning (according to provisional
numbers) 4,750 votes nationwide, and only a dismal 99 votes
in Muthanna, Iraq's smallest province. In contrast, the
United Iraqi Coalition (UIC, list 555) won about 176,000
votes in Muthanna. (Note: The IECI Web site does not list
certified vote totals for the smaller parties. We will be
raising this gap with them in our next meeting with them
this week. End note.)


3. (S) Hamdani admitted that his party had made mistakes
in their campaign strategy. They had wanted to run as
independents because they did not agree with the Islamist
Shia agenda of the List 555. However, Kubba, their
most visible candidate, did not cease being PM Jafari's
spokesman until too close to the election, denying them the
opportunity to distinguish their program from Jafari's or
the UIC's. Kubba was also insisting that all of his 635
candidates stick to positive messages, and not engage in
negative campaigning against the UIC, Iraqiya (Ayad Allawi,
list 731),the Kurds or other lists. While Hamdani praised
Kubba for recognizing that if 635 got any seats, it would
have to join with other lists to try to form a government,
Hamdani said it left them with no marketable message once
the dirty tricks started.

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Dirty Tricks
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4. (S) During the last few days of the campaign, Hamdani
said, the UIC pulled out the stops to undermine every other
campaign that posed any possibility of a threat to their
victory. For example, they spread rumors that Kubba,
Ahmad Chalabi (on a separate list) and Hamdani himself had
all withdrawn from the campaign and joined the 555 list.
The beauty of this tactic, Hamdani said, is that it left
635's supporters comfortable voting for 555. It forced
635's candidates to spend precious time denying they had
withdrawn, giving them less time to try to get out their
message.


5. (S) Hamdani also said he had heard from a named female
relative in Samawa that she had been visited by "religious
men" campaigning for 555 who told her that if she did not
vote for SISTANI (sic),she would be forcibly divorced from
her husband. The analogy was to an interpretation of
Islamic law that allows a judge to divorce a Muslim spouse
from a spouse who is an apostate, even if the couple does
not wish to be divorced. (Note: Recent court cases in
Afghanistan and Egypt show that some Islamic jurists still
uphold this interpretation. End note.) Hamdani said his
well-educated female relative knew this was an absurd
notion in the context of a vote in the Iraqi election, but
Hamdani said that simple, uneducated people might not have
known better. Women, in particular, were susceptible to

BAGHDAD 00001012 002 OF 002


this campaign dirty trick, Hamdani said, because a divorce
on grounds of apostasy would prevent the woman from
returning to her family, leaving her an outcast, if she
survived at all.

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Depleted Coffers
--------------


6. (S) Hamdani said that he spent USD 18,000 of his own
funds to campaign in Samawa. (Note: USD 180 per vote.
End note.) His party had more to spend than most
independent parties in Muthanna, the smallest and one of
the poorest provinces in all Iraq. His party as a whole
had very little money, and most of that was spent in
Baghdad. In contrast, the Shia Coalition spent far more
lavishly in Muthanna, though Hamdani did not want to
speculate how much.

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Deals with the Devil
--------------


7. (S) Practical aspects of campaigning in Muthanna gave
rise to activities that Hamdani said would probably be
looked at differently in Baghdad or the United States. His
personal security was one such issue. To hire bodyguards,
Hamdani went to the local Jaysh al-Mahdi commander. He
asked for five of their best men. When the men were
produced, he offered them USD 200 a month instead of the
USD 50 a month they were otherwise getting. They were very
simple men, and gave honorable service. As a candidate,
Hamdani had good Islamist credentials, which helped, he
said. He regards himself as having good contacts among
Muqtada al-Sadr supporters.


8. (C) Hamdani found running for office an extremely
encouraging experience despite his party's poor
performance. He enjoyed the personal aspect of
campaigning. When asked whether he planned to run for
office in four years, Hamdani said with a smile it was too
early to say, then cited Richard Nixon as a role model of a
leader who rose from the ashes of a political defeat in
1962 to become President of the United States.

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Comment
--------------


9. (S) Learning democratic norms and standards of
campaign fair play would not be simple in any new
democracy. Thus, it is not surprising that the
December 2005 election campaign was a rough-and-
tumble affair, with the UIC being cited as perhaps the
roughest (Refs A, B and C). Even in their wildest
dreams, the National Peace List could not have won
more than one or two seats. If none of the dirty
tricks had been perpetrated against them, they still
would likely have won no seats. For the UIC to have
felt the need to target small parties like the
National Peace List shows an anti-democratic streak
that is consistent with reports of assassinations of
Allawi candidates and campaign workers (Ref B),for
which, to our knowledge, no responsible criminals have
yet been identified, let alone prosecuted. This
impunity has consequences for the prospects for
democracy in Iraq. Independent democratic Islamist voices
like Hamdani face unenviable choices: (a) stay in politics
with little prospect of doing better in the next election,
(b) compromise their principles to join the more hard-line
Islamist parties, (c) drop out in the face of their
better-funded, more ruthless opponents, or (d) band
together with other, like-minded independents and become as
ruthless as their opponents. These are all tough choices.
End comment.
KHALILZAD