Reidar Visser on the Iraqi Election Results
Historian and political analyst Reidar Visser begins his recent analysis of the initial results of the Iraqi elections with these words:
The provisional results of the Iraqi local elections, released today, can be summarised in three main points as far as the areas from Baghdad and southwards are concerned: Maliki and his Daawa party are big winners everywhere and particularly so in the big cities of Basra and Baghdad; the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) has been decimated across the country; fragmentation rather than the emergence of a clear secular “third way” is mostly the rule, with the exception of a respectable 9% for Iraqiyya in Baghdad and a couple of local secular successes (including Karbala).
