Good can come out of evil. A democratic, peaceful and independent Iraq could yet be the final result of the US invasion of 2003, whether that was precisely what the Bush administration intended or not. But it still doesn?t seem very likely.

True, the election was not the bloodbath that had been widely predicted. Shia Arabs voted to claim the long-denied dominant position in Iraqi politics that their numbers entitle them to, Kurds voted to reaffirm their current semi-detached relationship to the Iraqi state, and Sunni Arabs mostly didn?t vote. That 57 percent participation figure probably conceals a 75 percent or better rate among Shia Arabs and Kurds and 40 percent or less among Sunni Arabs. It is mainly Sunni Arabs who are waging the fight against the United States in Iraq right now, and this does not suggest that the ?resistance? (al-muqawama) is about to go into a decline. Indeed, Lieut.-Gen. James J. Lovelace Jr., the US army?s top operations officer, predicted last week that some 120,000 US soldiers would have to stay in Iraq for at least two more years ? and ?a worst-case scenario would be a lot more.?

So official Washington still expects to stay, and almost all Iraqis want US troops to leave quite soon. The votes will be counted within a week or less, the new assembly will meet by the end of the month, and there will be a more or less elected government in place by the end of March. That?s when it gets really interesting.

So far, all the Iraqi officials since the fall of Saddam have been American appointees who can be counted on not to bite the hand that feeds them ? like Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a former CIA agent who returned from exile. with the invading US troops. Now there is the prospect of elected Iraqis who may demand a US military withdrawal. First among them are the Shia parties brought together under Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani?s keadership in the United Iraqi Alliance (the ?Shia house?). These parties have their own militias and most recruits to the new Iraqi army and police force are poor Shias, so they will probably not hesitate to demand an early US withdrawal if they take the leading role in a new coalition government. But they may also be excluded from thatgovernment. Secular Shias fear that the mullahs secretly intend to create an Islamic state despite their constant denials, and they have voted in surprisingly large numbers for Allawi?s group of parties, the Iraqi List. Allawi, too, is Shia but secular.

It is widely assumed that the Shia are keener on an Islamic state than the Sunni, but they are not: a recent poll showed that Sunni Arabs are twice as likely to favour a full-fledged Islamic government as Shia Arabs. This sudden Sunni piety has much to do with the fact that the Sunnis , who are losing their traditional place as Iraq?s ruling minority, are the ones in revolt, and therefore the ones most drawn to radical forms of Islam. But it does raise the possibility of an anti-American alliance between the rebels and the Shia religious parties.

If Allawi can create a basically pro-American coalition out of his own secular Shia party, bits and pieces of secular Sunni parties, and the Kurds, then Sistani?s ?Shia house? could end up frozen out of power. That may be the only way to forestall a demand by Sistani?s allies for an early American departure, so Washington is likely to push it. And if Sistani is frozen out, then perhaps his patience (or that of his younger colleagues) runs out at last. Then the Shia revolt begins in earnest, and America?s security problems in Iraq quadruple overnight.