BAGHDAD -- Mishaan Jubouri does not dare set foot in his home district in Mosul to campaign for a seat in Iraq's National Assembly. His posters are torn down -- if anyone was emboldened to put them up in the first place. Stores do not sell the newspaper he runs, and some post large signs on their windows saying so. Even in Baghdad, where Jubouri lives now, his wife and family are afraid to leave their home, which is guarded by 54 armed security men.
Still, Jubouri, a Sunni Muslim and Mosul's first mayor after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government, defies those trying to stop the Iraqi elections. He has to run, he says, "to give the people some hope."
Mishaan Jubouri, 47, is running for election to the National Assembly, but doesn't campaign in his home district of Mosul because of threats.
(File Photo)
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In another northern city, Kirkuk, things are almost as bad. Ethnic strife looms over the coming vote, politicians have been kidnapped, mortar fire punctuates campaign debate, candidates are scared and their staff members are hunkered down in their homes. A Sunni leader there, Abdul Rahman Asi, took stock of the situation and chose to do the opposite of what Jubouri is doing.
"Under normal circumstances, I would be a candidate. But the people are too afraid to come. There will be no voters. I will only lose," Asi said. "It is dangerous, and my reputation will go down."
The two men -- both leaders of large Sunni Arab tribes -- represent the dilemma for Iraq's once-dominant branch of Islam. The Sunnis are the targets of an intimidation campaign by insurgents using violence to disrupt the elections. Under threat of death, they have been warned not to run, not to vote, not to participate. If they stay away from the polls, the attackers' logic goes, the elections will be seen as invalid, the fragile sectarian balance in Iraq will be upset, and Iraq might sink into a civil war among Sunni Arabs, the majority Shiite Muslims and the Kurds, who are Sunnis but are ethnically distinct from Iraq's more numerous Arabs.
The Sunni Arabs are aware of the stakes. Some question whether they could live under a Shiite-dominated government and the form of Islamic rule they fear it would bring. They are faced with what might be a life-and-death choice: sit out their chance to share power in Iraq's new government or plunge into democracy despite the threats.
For Sunni voters, the choice means whether to risk bombs and possible retaliation if they go to the polls Jan. 30. For their leaders, such as Jubouri and Asi, the choice is whether to risk meeting the same fate as the scores of candidates who have been killed for choosing to participate in the elections.
"The people who are against the election have warned me to withdraw. They have focused on me because I am a Sunni with a strong voice," said Jubouri. "It's high risk."
But Jubouri, 47, is accustomed to risks, familiar with the gamble of when to play and when to flee. As a teenage tough, he says, he accepted a car and money as gifts from Saddam Hussein but balked at joining Hussein's Baath Party as it rose to power.
"I think Saddam secretly liked that somebody said no to him," Jubouri said over a plentiful lunch with wine in his soaring mansion in Baghdad. His cell phone rang constantly as supplicants shuttled into his sitting room seeking advice and help.
Jubouri did not always say no. As a leader of the large Jubouri tribe, he sent soldiers to serve in Hussein's armies in the Iran-Iraq war and joined with the dictator's corrupt sons in business, exporting wool from his clan's flocks and importing consumer goods that earned him millions. But in 1989, Jubouri says, he joined a plot to have Hussein gunned down at a military parade. Hussein learned of it, and Jubouri fled the country.
After 14 years in exile, Jubouri returned to Mosul in April 2003, ahead of U.S. troops. He declared himself mayor, but left office after a month. Mosul, long a source of Baathist military officers, has since descended into violence as insurgents try to stop the elections.
Jubouri says he does not fear the threats. As a 9-year-old, he alone survived when 13 members of his family were gunned down by rival Kurds. "They missed me because I was too small," he said. He feels protected by that past: "I think I am alive for a purpose, and I have not filled that purpose yet. Until I do, I will live."
If he wins a seat on the 275-member National Assembly, Jubouri said, he expects to be an opponent of a Shiite-led government. But being in opposition, he said, is better than not being in the political process.
