Iraqi nationalists must deliver

Despite mortar attacks and bombings, mainly in Baghdad and mostly by Sunni Islamists, which killed 38 people and wounded 110 more, the Iraqi general election took place as planned on March 7. About a million security personnel were deployed. The turnout was about 62 per cent. The electorate of 19 million, including 1.4 million outside the country, had the opportunity to elect a 325-seat Council of Representatives from 18 provinces. Under the law, a quarter of Council seats must be held by women, and the Council serves a four-year term. The campaign front-runner was the State of Law coalition led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party. The coalition faced strong competition from former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's secular-nationalist Iraqiya List, and from the Iraqi National Alliance, a Shia-majority grouping. For their part, the provinces that fall within, or partly within, the autonomous northern region of Kurdistan saw a challenge mounted by the Kurdish Gorran (Change) party against the Kurdistania Alliance, which comprises President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party.

Counting has been delayed by technical problems and by the complicated nature of the ballot. The shape of the government may not emerge for several weeks. But initial results reveal significant political issues. Mr. Maliki's group leads narrowly, with strong support in Baghdad and five other provinces, including Basra in the south-east. The Iraqiya List leads in another five, including Sunni-majority Anbar to the west and the part-Kurdish province of Kirkuk. Mr. Maliki has already commenced talks with the Kurdistania Alliance leaders, who have trounced their Gorran rivals and are potential kingmakers. Predictably, Iraq's neighbours are watching closely. Iran, which has an admirably pragmatic attitude to this, wants Iraq to be stable and free of ethnic conflict, but neither Iran nor Turkey, with their significant Kurdish minorities, will want the demand for a Kurdish state revived. Saudi Arabia, which is nervous of potential Shia strength in Iraq, and Syria, which has a substantial Shia minority, also have a stake in post-election developments. For the region, and above all for the 31 million Iraqis, everything will depend on Mr. Maliki's and Mr. Allawi's capacity to prove the claim that they are primarily Iraqi nationalists.