Laith Kubba, an Iraqi-American who is a specialist on Iraqi politics at the National Endowment for Democracy, says a Shiite nuclear scientist, Hussein Shahrastani, is emerging as a likely major political force. After the elections scheduled for January 30, Shahrastani could be named president or prime minister in the new government, Kubba says.

United Nations officials had tapped Shahrastani to be Iraq’s interim prime minister last June. But he was passed over for the current prime minister, Ayad Allawi. “He is a religious person, but with a democratic and secular outlook,” Kubba says of Shahrastani.

Of prime concern is the fate of the “third force” in Iraq, Kubba says, made up of secularists and Sunnis, whose political future is in doubt. Kubba fears that there will not be a “third force” political slate to run alongside Shiite and Kurdish slates. What is important, he says, is that even if there is a low turnout of voters in traditionally Sunni areas, seats should be reserved for those regions so that their residents are not disenfranchised.

Kubba was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on December 10, 2004.

There has been considerable publicity about the so-called Shiite slate of candidates. Are there similar major slates representing Kurds and Sunnis?

The slate which is known as the Shiite slate is actually a national slate. But it has a Shiite identity because it has been fashioned, defined, and the candidates selected, more or less, by a committee exclusively of predominantly religious Shiites. That slate [also] has on it Christians, Sunnis, and Kurds. But the identity of the slate is Shiite.

There is another slate that has been put forward by the two main Kurdish parties in northern Iraq. It is not a national list. It has only Kurds, and that slate is a Kurdish slate aimed at winning every single Kurdish vote in the country and increasing the number of Kurdish delegates in the parliament. There are likely to be other ethnic-based slates. [The Iraqi Islamic Party, made up of religious Sunnis, quietly submitted a slate of 275 candidates on December 9.]

Considering the continuing violence and turmoil in the largely Sunni area of central Iraq, will any significant Sunni personalities stand for election?

There are Sunni personalities participating in other slates. The biggest question that faces the middle [of the country], broadly speaking, is whether to include not only Sunnis, but also nationalists and other secular currents in the country. Can they put forward a slate that would have an overall identity that would represent the middle, Baghdad, as well as convey a national outlook?

Amongst the figures who can draw such slates are the [interim] president of Iraq, Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, [interim] Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, [former Foreign Minister] Adnan Pachachi, and others. They are Shiites and Sunnis. They have among them religious and secular elements. They have people from rural and urban areas. And, more or else, they have the same outlook. They have failed to put themselves together so far in one slate, and I think they will miss out in giving the country an option that the country needs badly.

Pachachi has registered a party, but is that different from forming a slate?

All the people I named have registered parties. They are political entities entitled either to stand by themselves and put forward their own slates, or collectively agree to form one slate, as the Kurd and the Shiite Islamic parties have done. They have not done that so far, so we are still waiting. If it is not done today, they have to run separately. [Iraq on December 10 extended the registration deadline to December 15.] What that means is that while they will still capture votes, they will capture far fewer votes because the country does not have a clear third alternative. Many Shiites would be happy to vote for that third slate if it were offered to them in a cohesive way. If it is offered them in a scattered way, most likely they will vote for the Shiite slate.

So we don’t know whether there will be a Sunni or secular slate.

Many Sunnis met recently and debated extensively [whether] to put forward a predominantly Sunni slate. The overall majority are refusing to play the ethnic game and prefer to be integrated into a national slate. That leaves the door very much open for a national figure or group to unify these scattered voices and present them to the country.

Is there any such figure?

There are figures, but with the little time they had and with being burdened with other issues, I do not believe we have reached that threshold of cooperative effort.

If you had to guess, who would you say will be the next president?

I will not be surprised if he is going to be a person agreed upon by the Shiite slate. [Perhaps] Hussein Shahrastani, a nuclear scientist who was initially suggested by Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy, to be prime minister of the interim government. He was pushed aside and the interim government decided to appoint Ayad Allawi instead.

Shahrastani is running on the Shiite slate?

Yes.

He, I assume, would be well-received by the more secular population.

He is a religious person, but with a democratic and secular outlook, so to speak.

The real politics will start after delegates get together after the elections at the end of January. There will be a lot of horse trading. Many candidates will shift their positions depending on the issue. Deals will emerge. And post-election politics will be just as important as pre-election politics.

Which other politicians will emerge with higher profiles after the elections?

Other people would include Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and Adel Abdul Mahdi.

Who are they?

Jaafari is currently the vice president. He heads the Islamic Da’wa Party. Mahdi is currently the minister of finance. He is a senior member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which is led by Hakim. Ahmed Chalabi is also likely to emerge. His name is on that list. He is a broker who will find himself in one of the ministries.

And what about the current president and prime minister? Will they be left out?

If that third current that I mentioned earlier has not put its act together, I think they will lose out in the vote.

Will Prime Minister Allawi run for office?

He has registered a party, and I was told last week, “Wait until the last hour before you speak.” I am speaking now before the last week, but we should know by the end of the day. I don’t expect one slate representing the middle, but at least two or three. But even those two or three are important.

A few months ago, leading Sunni religious leaders called for a boycott of the elections. Has that boycott idea been moderated?

It’s slightly moderated, but, in effect, there will be a low Sunni turnout for a combination of reasons. The impact of this low turnout on a national constitutional assembly will be dramatic. This assembly is meant to negotiate a new social contract for the country. It is possible it will have been negotiated with the absence of one of the strongest communities in Iraq. If this issue is not contained politically by the forthcoming national assembly, then it will feed strongly into political violence and ultimately it might lead to the breakdown of the country.

Are the politicians wise enough to include the Sunni group in the negotiations?

In my judgment, we don’t have that minimum level of maturity.

So you are not optimistic?

If nothing is done to repair the serious deficiency, then I think this country will go through a cycle of violence.

Worse than we have now?

I think so.

Can this be headed off? Should the elections be postponed?

There is a way of heading it off. Not through postponing the elections. What needs to be done is to amend the electoral system in a way that will preserve the relative weight of each province in the country to the national assembly. Currently, provinces that have significant populations but low turnout will be under-represented in the assembly. Provinces that have security and perhaps political parties in charge of the ballot boxes will have 120 percent turnout and will be over-represented in the assembly. In particular, this is relevant to the Kurds and, of course, to the Shiites and will lead to the under-representation of the Sunni provinces.

The way to fix this is not to put seats aside for Sunnis, not to institutionalize these ethnic differences, but to acknowledge that the elective population weight in these provinces must be preserved in the national assembly. That way, at least, you would send a message to the Sunnis that, although there was a low turnout in their areas, their overall representation in the assembly has been preserved.

The whole battle has been about ethnicity in Iraq because people do not know the actual percentages. But people do know the population in provinces, in a quite accurate way. For instance, we do know how many people are in Mosul, but we don’t know the actual percentages of Arabs and Kurds. The 20 or 25 seats for Mosul should be preserved, even if there is a low turnout.

Any chance your idea can be put into effect?

Ordinary people in Iraq do not know all the details. But those who are key players do know the issues. They have left it too late to do anything about it, but I believe a statement in principle making a commitment to preserving this relative weight and trying to address any deficit in the process will go a long way. Otherwise, you have handed to the insurgents hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who had been excluded from this process.

The real strategy must be to isolate the insurgents from the Sunni population, and this must be done politically. If the political discourse and process is heading toward excluding them and marginalizing them, then they will resort to violence.

Can the United Nations or the United States do anything to help?

I think the United Nations and the United States are aware of these problems, but ultimately it is an Iraqi decision and Iraqis who are driving this show. There are Iraqi political groups and players, powerful ones, who want to push on a maximalist position, and my concern is that there is not sufficient maturity to realize the long-term consequences.