Word: sistani
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...virtually every major country around the world." Although Bush and Blair's sentiment was echoed by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, such language was rarer among Iraqi voters, who tended to see the election as the fruit of their own efforts, most notably those of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, whose interventions forced the U.S. to scrap its own plan for a handpicked government to write the new constitution and instead accept Sistani's demand for elections. Indeed, many voters at the polls saw voting as a means of ending ?the occupation,? the collective noun by which many Iraqis - even cabinet...
...Although it may be a week before the results are published, reporters and exit pollsters in Iraq are suggesting that, as expected, the United Iraqi Alliance list backed by Ayatollah Sistani won the largest share of the vote. But don't rush to toss interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi into the trashcan of history just yet: the Shiite parties' ability to translate a UIA win into effective political power depends not only on the scale of their victory, but also on their ability to maintain a strictly disciplined united front, and to reach out and forge agreements with minority parties...
...problem is that most Kurds don't really want to be part of Iraq at all, and are forced by realpolitik to accept affiliation with Baghdad, meaning that they seek the loosest possible federation for a new Iraqi national state, with plenty of minority veto safeguards. But Grand Ayatollah Sistani is strongly opposed to accommodating Kurdish aspirations at the expense of the central state, and if Allawi's showing gives him enough seats in the Assembly, the Kurdish leaders may be more inclined to throw their support behind him. And then there's the challenge for the Shiite alliance...
...also possible now that armed Shi'ite militias-members of the Badr Brigade, for example, who have been providing local security throughout the south-may be more willing to be reorganized and retrained to defend a central government that Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani has blessed. That may be too optimistic, especially in a country where pessimism usually equals reality but, at long last, it is not unthinkable...
...population centers as far south as Basra. In those areas, however, their threat will be countered by the strong sense among the long-marginalized Shiites of the election as an opportunity to claim the power of the majority, and the edict by their supreme spiritual authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani proclaiming voting a religious duty...