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Labour strategists fear the subconscious message will play well in marginal seats in areas such as the West Midlands and among eurosceptics tempted to vote for the UK Independence Party.As Liam Fox, the Tory co-chairman, told a private meeting last autumn: “If we had a tougher line on immigration and asylum they [defectors to UKIP] would come back.”All week, the Tories anxiously awaited the first opinion polls since Mr Howard’s intervention. Michael Howard’s speeches on immigration and asylum on Monday and yesterday cannot be described as racist. He tapped into a genuine concern among many people in this country, who put asylum and immigration very high when asked what issues concern them.The Tory leader did not mention the colour of people’s skin; he didn’t need to. His call for a quota on asylum and a points system for immigration will no doubt have conjured up black and Asian images in many minds.

But it will establish Shia power in Iraq – and in the wider Arab world – for the first time since the great split between Sunnis and Shias that followed the death of the Prophet Muhammad
More from Robert Fisk. In Australia, they call it “dog-whistle politics”: sending a sharp message which, like a dog whistle that is inaudible to humans, is heard only by the people at which it is aimed. The reality is different: the countries from which most economic migrants entered Britain in 2003 were Ireland, the United States, France, Australia, Italy and Portugal.Dog-whistle politics has been used successfully by John Howard, Australia’s conservative Prime Minister. It may well produce a parliament so top-heavy with Shia candidates that the Americans will be tempted to “top up” the Sunni assembly members by choosing some of their own, who will inevitably be accused of collaboration.

By holding the poll now – when the Shias, who are not fighting the Americans, are voting while the Sunnis, who are fighting the Americans, are not – the elections can only sharpen the divisions between the country’s two largest communities.While Washington had clearly not envisaged the results of its invasion in this way, its demand for “democracy” is now moving the tectonic plates of the Middle East in a new and uncertain direction. The Arab states outside the Shia “Crescent” fear Shia political power even more than they are frightened by genuine democracy.No wonder, then, King Abdullah of Jordan is warning that this could destabilise the Gulf and pose a “challenge” to the United States. But now they are far more frightened that without elections the 60 per cent Shia community would join the Sunni insurgency.Tomorrow’s poll is thus, for the Americans, a means to an end, a way of claiming that – while Iraq may not have become the stable, liberal democracy they claimed they would create – it has started its journey on the way to Western-style freedom and that American forces can leave.Few in Iraq believe that these elections will end the insurgency, let alone bring peace and stability. This may also account for the tolerant attitude of Jordan towards the insurgency, many of whose leaders freely cross the border with Iraq.The American claim that they move secretly from Syria into Iraq appears largely false; the men who run the rebellion against US rule in Iraq are not likely to smuggle themselves across the Syrian-Iraqi desert when they can travel “legally” across the Jordanian border.Tomorrow’s election may be bloody. Iran’s oil wealth is controlled by the country’s overwhelming Shia majority.What does all this presage for the Sunni potentates of the Arabian peninsula? Iraq’s new national assembly and the next interim government it selects will empower Shias throughout the region, inviting them to question why they too cannot be given a fair share of their country’s decision-making.The Americans originally feared that parliamentary elections in Iraq would create a Shia Islamic republic and made inevitable – and unnecessary – warnings to Iran not to interfere in Iraq.

Apart from Mosul, Iraqi Shias live almost exclusively amid their own country’s massive oil fields. Saudi Arabia has long treated its Shia minority with suspicion and repression.In the Arab world, they say that God favoured the Shia with oil. Call the number and a recorded voice says: “You are not allowed to make this call.” Disconnected. Like good people torn apart.I would dearly love to believe in Tahseen’s “little bit of string”. He believes in good and does not speak of evil, which – on this weekend of all weekends in Iraq – might be the most powerful example for his country
More from Robert Fisk. He doesn’t talk about the videotapes of her agony, the tears, the appeals, the tape he has not seen of the partly masked woman being shot in the head.