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Why Ibrahim al-Jaafari is fighting to keep his
job amid the sectarian violence
The inability of Iraq's elected leaders to agree on
a new coalition government certainly exacerbates the
danger of civil war. But the political deadlock also
highlights the fact that Iraq is plagued by not one,
but two explosive civil conflicts.
Since last week, Jalal Talabani — both the president
of Iraq and a key Kurdish nationalist leader — has
been maneuvering to force the Shi'ite bloc that won
the most seats in December's parliamentary election
to withdraw its nomination of incumbent Ibrahim al-Jaafari
as prime minister.
The main Kurdish grievance with Jaafari appears to
be his resistance to their attempts to incorporate
the northern oil Kurdish city of Kirkuk into their
de facto autonomous mini-state; the last straw was a
recent visit by Jaafari to Ankara to discuss Iraqi
affairs with Turkey, which has made clear that it
regards anything resembling Kurdish sovereignty on
its border as intolerable. It has vowed to support
Iraq's Turkmen minority, concentrated in Kirkuk, in
resisting attempts to incorporate the city into
Kurdistan.
Talabani had the support of the two major Sunni
parties, as well as the smaller secular alliance for
his demand, but it was flatly rejected across the
board by Shi'ite politicians. His subsequent attempt
to force the Shi'ites' hand by calling the
legislature into session this coming Sunday — which
would have begun a 60-day countdown to decide on the
next prime minister and his cabinet — was also
blocked. In this case it was the Shi'ite politician
most likely to replace Jaafari as the nominee, Vice
President Adel Abdul Mahdi, who put Shi'ite unity
above his own partisan interests. On Tuesday,
Jaafari refused to entertain any notion of stepping
aside from his candidacy, declaring that "no one can
make bargains with me by enlarging personal
disagreements."
Jaafari, widely disliked outside of his immediate
support base, won the nomination of the Shi'ite
alliance by only one vote, thanks to the
intervention of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr, who
threw his 32 votes (among the 128 seats held by the
Shi'ite alliance) behind the incumbent. Jaafari's
rival in that contest was none other than Abdel
Mahdi, a candidate preferred by the U.S. and a top
official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, with which Sadr has been engaged
in a long-running battle for Shi'ite political
supremacy.
The situation is complicated by the fact that all of
Jaafari's detractors are motivated by different
agendas — and some of them at odds with one another.
The Sunnis dismiss Jaafari as too sectarian and
unwilling to make concessions to accommodate their
interests; most recently he was fiercely denounced
for his government's failure to protect Sunnis from
a wave of a violent retribution for the bombing of a
Shi'ite shrine two weeks ago.
The U.S., for its part, has found Jaafari to be
insufficiently responsive to Washington's concerns
and demands, and his historic ties with Iran haven't
helped the relationship. Despite their mutual
mistrust of Jaafari, the Kurds and the Sunnis, who
have their own strong constituency in Kirkuk and
other areas claimed by the Kurds, don't see eye to
eye on the oil-rich city's status.
Whether Jaafari is elected or replaced, however, the
multiple schisms that have plagued the political
process appear to be widening, and the next prime
minister is bound to be surrounded by powerful
enemies looking for him to fail. In other words, at
a time when Iraq needs strong leadership more than
ever, the next Iraqi government may be even weaker
than the current one.
www.time.com
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