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A surge against Maliki
9.1.2008
By David Ignatius
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January 9, 2008
A new movement to oust Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki is gathering force in Baghdad. And
although the United States is counseling against
this change of government, a senior U.S. official in
the Iraqi capital says it's a moment of
"breakthrough or breakdown" for Maliki's regime.
The new push against Maliki comes from Kurdish
leaders, who, U.S. and Iraqi sources told me, sent
him an ultimatum in late December. "The letter was
clear in saying we are concerned about the direction
of policies in Baghdad," said a senior Kurdish
official. He described the Dec. 21 letter as "a
sincere effort from the Kurdish parties to help the
government reform -- or else."
The Kurds are upset that Maliki hasn't delivered on
promises they say he made to them last summer, when
he was trying to stave off an earlier attempted
putsch. Maliki pledged then that his government
would pass an oil law and a regional-powers law, and
that it would conduct a referendum on the future of
Kirkuk. None of these promises has been fulfilled,
and the Kurds are angry.
The strongest anti-Maliki voice is Massoud Barzani,
the President of Iraqi Kurdistan and dominant
political leader. Barzani agreed to back Maliki last
summer after a personal telephone call from
President Bush. Now, fuming about Turkish attacks
across the border last month and the delay on Kirkuk,
Barzani is on the warpath.
Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, met
after Christmas in Kurdistan with Barzani and Jalal
Talabani, the Iraqi president and the region's other
ruling warlord. In a telephone interview yesterday
from Baghdad,www.ekurd.net
Crocker said his message
to the Kurds was: "We think everyone should be
placing emphasis on making the government more
effective, not on changing the government."
Although U.S. officials are counseling against
removing Maliki, they agree that the prime minister
must govern more effectively and inclusively in
coming months -- or suffer the "breakdown" described
by the senior U.S. official. "Clearly there is a
sense among the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites that the
government isn't doing what it's supposed to do," he
explained. "It needs to get better quick."
The anti-Maliki forces would like to replace him
with Adel Abdul Mahdi, one of Iraq's vice presidents
and a leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council,
headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Mahdi's supporters
think they can muster the 138 votes needed for a
no-confidence vote in parliament, by combining 53
votes from the Kurdish parties with 55 from Sunni
groups and 30 from Hakim's Islamic Council. Add
another 40 votes from supporters of former prime
ministers Ayad Allawi and Ibrahim al-Jafari, and
you're close to the two-thirds majority needed to
form a new government.
The rumor mill in Baghdad is already floating the
names of officials who would take cabinet posts in a
new government. The Kurds are said to want key
security portfolios, perhaps including control over
intelligence through the Ministry of National
Security. Various candidates have been proposed to
take over the Energy Ministry -- and halt what is
said to be massive smuggling of oil from the
southern Iraqi pipeline across the border to Iran.
The biggest obstacle to removing Maliki is the
Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani,
who is said to be frustrated with Maliki's poor
performance but wary of dividing the Shiite
alliance. "Najaf [Sistani's headquarters] is
unhappy," said one top Iraqi leader. But the senior
U.S. official said he was "certain" that Sistani had
not yet blessed any change of government.
Though Bush administration officials share the Iraqi
frustration with Maliki, they fear that a change of
regime would add delay and distrust to the already
chaotic political scene in Baghdad. "How long would
such a transition take? How long before they would
form a new government?" worries a second senior U.S.
official.
Rather than dumping Maliki, the administration hopes
to work around him, by operating through a coalition
known as the "three plus one." That group includes,
in addition to Maliki, President Talabani and vice
presidents Mahdi and Tariq al-Hashimi. "Our message
to Maliki is that you can't govern solo. You have to
govern as part of a group,"www.ekurd.net
says the second senior
U.S. official. With a push from this governing
alliance, Crocker hopes the Iraqi parliament will
pass a law easing de-Baathification as early as the
end of this week, and a budget by mid-January --
finally breaking the political logjam.
For an America caught up in its own political drama,
the Baghdad primary seems remote. But what happens
in Iraq during the next several weeks will shape
events there for the rest of 2008. For Maliki, just
back in Baghdad after a visit to London doctors for
treatment for exhaustion, it's "make or break" time.
washingtonpost com
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