Machine-style politics being put to the test

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq — The Kurdish security forces who have made northern Iraq an oasis of comparative safety must be vigilant and brave on the job, says the 19-year-old policeman. And, of course, in Sulaymaniyah they must be members of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

"They have to know who you are and where you're from," says Awjin Salaheddin, who owes his job on the police force to the political party.

In the Kurdish north, as well as the Shiite-dominated south of Iraq, old-fashioned machine-style political systems have been grafted onto the existing tribal, family and ethnic structures. Patronage and influence-peddling are so systematic that they are not even considered corrupt.

The effectiveness of those machines will be tested in Thursday's national elections as Kurdish and Shiite tickets look to maintain their dominant roles in Iraqi politics.

To a large extent, machine tactics are simply the way business and politics are done in the Middle East. The ruling parties in Egypt and Syria, for example, are basically patronage systems backed by security services.

The idea of using power to benefit a small circle of friends, relatives and loyalists is so entrenched in the regional culture that there are a half a dozen words in Arabic that mean patronage or cronyism.

The Kurdish political machine is expected to dominate the north, where the PUK and the Kurdish Democratic Party exert near total control.

But in the southern Shiite heartland, a much younger, less organized and in some cases more violent machine has bred popular resentment. Unhappiness with the ruling United Iraqi Alliance could result in large-scale defections, especially by moderate Shiites.

One building contractor in the Shiite holy city of Najaf complained bitterly about the sweetheart construction contracts doled out to loyalists of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI.

"You can't work without pleasing them," said Alaa, the 35-year-old contractor, who asked that his full name not be published. "There are common faces that get all the contracts, and new contractors like me can only get subcontracts and share the profits with the whales."

Similar complaints ring out in southern cities such as Hillah and Basra, where control is split between Alliance partners such as SCIRI, the Dawa Party of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and loyalists to populist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The factions have stocked civil-service rolls and the security forces with their cadres. They've also waged turf wars in Basra and Nasiriyah, targeting critics and former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

"In focus groups again and again, people in the south describe [corruption] as a cancer eating into our society," said an official with an international organization working with Iraqi political parties.

The official, speaking on condition that neither she nor her organization be named, said the Kurds have a fairly mature ward-style machine entrenched after nearly 15 years of self-rule. The Shiite system in the south is less refined.

"It's too violent. It's like Chicago in the '20s, instead of Chicago in the '50s," she said. "The Kurds can get away with it for a few more years. But not the Alliance."

Former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, is fighting throughout the south to peel away disaffected Alliance voters.

Mufid al-Jazairi, head of the Hillah office for Allawi's coalition, said southern residents are fed up with the government after eight months in office.

"Many people cannot get jobs because they are not from the party of the prime minister," he said.

Al-Jazairi, a former minister of culture under Allawi, acknowledged that the Allawi government had handed out its own share of patronage positions.

"It's very normal that every new government brings in the people they believe in," he said. However, he said the Alliance's behavior has been "beyond the natural borders" of Middle Eastern favoritism.

Complaints about corruption and patronage have become commonplace in the Kurdish press. The KDP, which controls the western half of Kurdistan including the city of Irbil, is known for doling out jobs to the clansman of its leader, Massoud Barzani.

In the last provincial elections in 2000, the Kurdish Islamic Union captured 20 percent of the vote. That was partly viewed as a protest by Kurds, who take pride in their secularism.

The Islamic Union took part in a combined Kurdish slate in the last parliamentary elections in January, but is running solo against the major parties this time.

Los Angeles Times special correspondent Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf contributed to this report.