Mick Hartley

In an attempt to increase the participation of women in politics, Iraq’s constitution requires that a quarter of the members of Parliament be female. Six years after that constitution was ratified though, it's far from clear that this has had any noticeable effect in advancing the cause of women beyond mere window-dressing. The main beneficiaries, it turns out, have been the Sadrists:

Perhaps the only political coalition that truly understood how to field female candidates was that of militant Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al Sadr. Many Sadr-allied women won their seats without the quota, according to results released so far by Iraq's election commission. Under the formula for assigning seats to women, female candidates who won their seats outright will be placed ahead of their quota-assisted counterparts.

Under the rules, votes cast for a candidate in excess of a threshold — about 36,000 votes in Baghdad — are redistributed to the next top vote-getter.

For example, the powerhouse candidate Maha al Douri, whose followers said they received instructions passed down from Sadr himself to vote for her, won more than 20,000 votes. Internet message boards were full of male and female Sadrists urging voters to cast ballots for "Sister Maha."

Independent candidates meanwhile, who bravely campaigned in the face of male hostility, were struggling:

"I risked my life and my family's well-being," said Salma al Fatlawi, a schoolteacher from the southern province of Amarah who garnered just 80 votes despite campaigning in dangerous marshlands where smugglers operate. Her only chance of making it is under the quota.

Her political coalition offered her security, but she refused, preferring to trust her constituents rather than show up with bodyguards: "I've been a teacher in this area for more than 25 years, and my pupils remember me with love and respect, as do their parents."

Abidi, a Ph.D. chemistry professor, continued campaigning even through the death of her mother, visiting hundreds of homes in a place where tribal custom keeps women shrouded from society, and militia violence makes residents suspicious of strangers at the door.

[Nada al] Abidi recounted how she once entered a reed hut known as a madhif, where 50 or more tribesmen had gathered. As she made her campaign pitch, her cousin whispered in her ear not to drink the tea, because women in this part of the country can't be seen sipping from a glass without covering their faces. She ignored the advice.

"I was drinking my tea with great joy," Abidi said with a grin. "I was a strange creature."

For all her campaigning, Abidi ended up with about 2,600 votes, far more than most female candidates, but not enough to win her seat outright. She has a distant chance of qualifying for a seat under the quota, but the politics have grown so ugly that her own children tell her they hope she doesn't make it to parliament.

Abidi said her rivals from the Sadr bloc "swallowed" all the votes, even though she never once ran into them on the campaign trail. She said it's hard not to feel bitter when she's learned that one word from a cleric or one big bribe to an influential tribe can undo weeks of honest, shoe-leather campaigning.

Indeed it's the Islamist candidates who've won out in the quota stakes. 

As a result, the hard-line Maha al-Douri may be the most popular female politician in Iraq. And the most powerful:

Douri, known as Sister Maha in her power base of Baghdad’s Sadr City, won nearly 32,000 votes in the March 7 parliamentary vote, making her Iraq's top-performing female candidate and the highest vote-getter from the Sadrist bloc. Her political ascent has been fueled by strong support from the Shia population of Sadr City, and marked by her commitment to education, religious values and the plight of women, widows and orphans.

Yet Douri has also spoken out strongly against the role of the United States in Iraq, saying the American occupation has “left nothing but destruction, broken families and prisoners”. In the past, she has called for the government to enforce Sharia law across the country.

Her critics see Douri’s prominent role in the Sadrist movement as a public relations ploy; as window dressing for the hard-line, Shia movement and an apologist for the controversial Sadr whose Mahdi Army was involved in the sectarian violence of 2006-2007.

Her commitment to education and "the plight of women, widows and orphans" may, one might think, be somewhat compromised by her call for the general enforcement of Sharia law across the country. And, just in case we had any illusions about the nature of her real concerns, here she is giving a public address last month, broadcast on Iranian TV: 

America has failed in finding a way to annihilate Islam. People in various countries have begun to embrace Islam in droves, because Communism, capitalism, and secularism have not succeeded in bringing justice and happiness to humanity. So America resorted to force and military wars against the Muslims. In an effort to justify their terrorism against the Muslims, their massacres, and their defense of Israel, they tried to pin the blame of terrorism on Islam, in order to convince the world, international public opinion, the UN Security Council, and the UN, that they are acting in self-defense, while occupying and destroying the Islamic countries.

So they planned and executed the 9/11 attacks, along with their collaborators, and they recruited and trained several individuals and presented them as "Islamic leaders," in order to display a distorted image of Islam – an Islam that kills, massacres, and blows up Muslims and mosques. Thus, America has planted in the mind of the world the notion that every Islamic leader is a terrorist, who must be eradicated. America is fighting all the national and Islamic leaders.

When the Imam Al-Mahdi appears – may Allah hasten his coming – he will fill the world with equality and justice, after it was filled with oppression and injustice. America will fight him, and this is the reason for its war and occupation of Iraq.

It spread strife between the Islamic countries. The goal is crystal clear: to prevent the formation of popular Islamic platforms, and to prevent any Islamic awakening in preparation for the advent of the Mahdi.

Ahmadinejad must surely be a fan. And the worrying alignment of Iraq with Iran continues.

Good intentions, as I think may have been noted before, don't always turn out quite as we might hope.