Iraq tribes threaten to use arms over polls fraud

Iraq tribes on Monday threatened to take up arms against the provincial government because of what they said was fraud in Saturday's provincial polls, which witnessed Iraqi voters shunning ruling religious parties and voting heavily for secular parties, as early indications showed.

The election was the most peaceful in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, but the west of the country has seen tension between Sunni Arab groups, many of whom boycotted the last provincial ballot in 2005.

Anbar province, Iraq's vast western third, was once the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency against U.S. troops but is now largely quiet, thanks to tribal guard units known as
Awakening councils that helped drive out al-Qaeda militants.

In one of the toughest-fought contests of the election, the tribes have challenged the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), a Sunni religious party which has run the province since 2005.

With the IIP claiming the results will keep it in power, Awakening leaders alleged fraud in the voting.

Turning into an arms wing

"We threatened the electoral commission not to allow fraud. We said we will transform from a political entity to an armed wing against the electoral commission and the IIP because we discovered fraud," Awakening movement head Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha told Reuters.

Hamid al-Hais, head of the Anbar Tribes list in the election, travelled to Baghdad to lodge a protest.

"We will set the streets of Ramadi ablaze if the Islamic Party is declared the winners of the election," he told Reuters, referring to Anbar's provincial capital. "We will make Anbar a grave for the Islamic Party and its agents. We will start a tribal war against them and those who cooperate with them."

Electoral authorities say official preliminary results will not be announced for days and final results may take several weeks. The IIP says it came in first and expects to hold onto power in the province.

"We are convinced that we will be the first in Anbar and we will make a coalition with any entity that wants to work with us," said Khalid Mohammed al-Alwani, IIP head in Falluja, the Anbar town that saw fierce battles between U.S. forces and insurgents in 2004.

Witnesses said supporters of both sides fired guns into the air late on Sunday to celebrate perceived victories -- IIP supporters near the governor's office in Ramadi and Awakening movement supporters just outside the town.

No one was hurt, but the gunfire rattled throughout the city for about two hours.

The electoral commission said the election took place without major violations. However, it has acknowledged that thousands of people were unable to vote because they could not find their names on registration lists.

The Kurdish regional government said it would file a formal complaint because thousands of Kurds were unable to vote.

We will set the streets of Ramadi ablaze if the Islamic Party is declared the winners of the election. We will make Anbar a grave for the Islamic Party and its agents. We will start a tribal war against them and those who cooperate with them,

Hamid al-Hais, head of the Anbar Tribes list in the elections

Voting for secular parties

Iraqis voted heavily for secular parties, in a show of disaffection with the religious parties that lead the central government as early indications.

The Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), the Shiite religious party that won control of seven out of the 11 mainly Shiite provinces four years ago, looked set to lose at least five of them, according to early results from the electoral commission.

The outcome was a serious blow for the party's aspirations to establish a Shiite autonomous region in the centre and south like the Kurdish one in the far north.

The big winners were secular parties, including not only the list of former prime minister Iyad Allawi but also several new formations, some with links to the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein.

"According to the preliminary estimates, new parties will advance, which will make significant changes in the political map and the nature of alliances in the future," the state-run al-Sabah newspaper said in an editorial.

The rout of the religious parties looked set to extend even to the Shiite clerical centre of Najaf, where SIIC was poised to lose control of the provincial council.

"People are fed up with the way religious parties have acted because they are disconnected from modern life, especially the Supreme Islamic Council which has strong ties to Iran," said Mohammed Kazim, 38, who works as an odd jobs man in the central shrine city.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is himself the leader of a Shiite religious movement -- the Dawa party -- but it played down its religious background in Saturday's elections, fielding candidates as part of a State of Law Coalition, and it fared slightly better at the polls.

In the last elections four years ago, the Sunni Arab minority that was the mainstay of Saddam's regime largely stayed at home as the country slid in to several years of devastating sectarian bloodshed.

But this time round the community voted in larger numbers than the Shiite majority.

According to the preliminary estimates, new parties will advance, which will make significant changes in the political map and the nature of alliances in the future,

Iraqi al-Sabah newspaper