Page 2 of 2 Muqtada raises the stakes in
Iraq By Sami Moubayed
a message to
the Iranian leadership that he is disgusted with
their meddling in Iraqi affairs. He used strong
language against the militias supported by Maliki
and Tehran.
This message was delivered
through former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami,
a reformist who has just wrapped up a visit to
Cairo. Tantawi asked the Iranians to use their
strong influence in Iraqi affairs to promote
reconciliation, rather than confrontation,
between Sunnis and Shi'ites.
The message fell on deaf ears, however,
both in Baghdad and Tehran. According to the Iraqi
daily Al-Zamman, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior,
operated by the Shi'ite Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), still uses its
police force to strike at the Sunni community.
That complaint has been heard over and over since
the days of prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Neither Jaafari, however, nor Maliki was
able to stop this abuse of government office
practiced publicly by the SCIRI. Al-Zamman
reported that more than 2,500 people have been
killed, execution-style, over the past six months,
most of them Sunnis. It also quotes an official at
the Baghdad morgue saying that he had received
16,000 bodies over the past 12 months, all
murdered with signs of torture. The only people to
blame for the continued bloodshed are Maliki and
Muqtada.
Maliki has been under immense
pressure, however, to change his habits. The US
has given him a June deadline to get his act
together, wipe out the militias and reconcile with
the Sunnis.
Adding pressure is a bid by
former prime minister Iyad Allawi to return to
office. Allawi, who has just returned from a tour
of major Sunni states (Saudi Arabia, Egypt and
Jordan), promises to achieve everything Maliki has
not: disbanding the militias, confiscation of arms
and reconciliation with Sunnis.
Allawi's
campaign, if anything, has forced Maliki to make
some gestures toward Sunnis in the hope of
preventing them from following the former prime
minister. On Friday, Maliki ordered pension
payments to former officers of the Iraqi army, a
step aimed at defusing rising Sunni anger. The
now-disbanded army had had 350,000 troops and
officers, most of them now jobless and penniless.
With few choices, they have been forced to
join Sunni militias. All persons above the rank of
major, Maliki said, will be given the pension of
an officer and those wishing to re-enlist are
welcome, but need a clean bill of health from the
military command.
Maliki, along with
President Jalal Talabani, was supposed to
introduce a law in Parliament allowing former
officials, including in the dreaded security
forces of Saddam Hussein, to regain their jobs.
They would be placed on probation for three
months, after which they would become eligible to
continue their lives - pardoned of any wrongs (not
crimes) committed in the Ba'ath Party era.
These measures were put forward on March
26 but never made it to Parliament. They were made
public by the premier shortly after an Arab summit
in Riyadh, where the Sunni community promised to
put more effort into stabilizing Iraq, at the
expense of the Shi'ite militias. Adding urgency to
Maliki's desire to publicize the law, which
counters his famed de-Ba'athification campaign,
was Allawi's recent trip to Saudi Arabia.
Another development over the weekend
threatens to bring down the Maliki cabinet. Adnan
al-Duleimi of the Iraqi Accordance Front
threatened to withdraw his members from Parliament
if Maliki does not show more seriousness in
applying the Baghdad security plan. Duleimi, whose
party is a coalition of the Iraqi Islamic Party,
the Iraqi People's Conference and the Dialogue
Council (all Sunni groups), is furious that Maliki
has failed to bring Shi'ite militias to order,
claiming that his security plan has turned
"sectarian".
Among other things, Duleimi
wants to change the Sunni minister of defense (a
member of his own party) because he has failed to
stand up to the security forces of the SCIRI at
the Ministry of Interior. Maliki, pleased at the
defense minister's weakness, has refused this
demand, claiming that it would upset the security
plan. If Maliki sticks to his guns and the
Accordance Front joins forces with Allawi, the
premier will be in serious trouble.
Already, the Sunni minister of justice has
resigned. If more ministers step down, the cabinet
will face a constitutional crisis and have to
present its resignation to Parliament. That would
mean ejecting the SCIRI from the Ministry of
Interior and the Sadrists from the major
ministries they hold, including Health and
Education. By law, the UIA would be called on to
form a new cabinet, because it still commands a
majority in Parliament, but political
considerations would force it to choose a new
prime minister.
Maliki's days could be
numbered, given these political pressures and the
pressure from the US. Muqtada, too, would be
affected and Iraq's political landscape could
undergo yet another major change, and Muqtada
could be heading for more open confrontation with
the US military.
Sami Moubayed
is a Syrian political analyst.
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