Muqtada and Maliki as united as
ever By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - The relationship between
Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki appeared to have taken a major
downturn on Monday when Muqtada withdrew his six
ministers from the cabinet. Appearances, though,
especially in Byzantine Iraqi politics, can be
deceptive,
In pulling out his ministers,
Muqtada stressed his demand for a timetable for a
US troop withdrawal from Iraq. Last December he
"froze" his participation in the Maliki cabinet,
to protest a meeting between the Iraqi prime
minister and President George W Bush in
Jordan, only to return after
Shi'ite ranks needed unification following the
hanging of Saddam Hussein.
Monday's
announcement was read by a seemingly confident
Nasser al-Rubai of the Sadrist bloc. "The main
reasons [for the Sadrist walkout] are the prime
minister's lack of response to the demands of
nearly 1 million people in Najaf asking for the
withdrawal of US forces and the deterioration in
security and services." On April 9, about a
million Shi'ites, on Muqtada's call, marched in
protest on the anniversary of the US invasion four
years ago.
As long as
Maliki fails to push hard for the Americans to leave, Muqtada
said, there will not be any cooperation between the
Sadrists and Maliki.
Significantly,
though, Muqtada did not withdraw his 30 deputies
from the 275-seat Parliament. Had he done that, it
would automatically have brought down not only the
Maliki cabinet but the entire Iran-backed United
Iraqi Alliance (UIA) that heads Parliament and in
which the Sadrists are a leading group.
Muqtada and Maliki apparently want the
world to believe that they are no longer friends.
They have not become enemies, however; at least
not yet.
One of Maliki's advisors
downplayed Muqtada's decision, saying that Muqtada
was only practicing his "democratic right". She
added, in what might explain why this break is not
permanent, "Despite the difference in our views
[with the Sadrists], our national vision is the
same - only the methods of achieving it are
different. We need to have real opposition from
outside the government. This is a great beginning.
The prime minister needs real opposition that can
act as a watchdog inside Parliament."
Friends or foes? Maliki's job
is very much on the line. Apparently the
decision-makers in Washington have decided to get
rid of him if he does not bring stability and
security to Iraq by June. That, anyway, is what
officials at the US Embassy in Iraq told him in
March.
Maliki therefore wants to create a
bogyman in the form of Muqtada whom, he will tell
the Americans, only he can tame. In short, Maliki
wants to extract more aid and support from the US
by playing up the "specter" of a "radicalized"
Muqtada.
Muqtada gave an interesting
interview to La Republica in January, explaining
his relationship with Maliki - or at least how he
wanted the world to see this relationship. He
said: "Between myself and Abu Israa [an alternate
name for Maliki] there has never been much
feeling. I have always suspected that he was being
maneuvered, and I have never trusted him. We have
met only on a couple of occasions. At our last
meeting he first told me: 'You are the country's
backbone,' and then he confessed that he was
'obliged' to combat us. Obliged, you hear me?"
There is much to prove that he was
bluffing. If Muqtada suspected that Maliki was
"maneuvering" and there was "never much feeling"
between the cleric and the prime minister, why did
he join the cabinet in the first place in May
2006? Muqtada is ostensibly opposed to the entire
political process, which he claims was imposed on
Iraq after the downfall of Saddam in 2003. Yet
having six ministers in the US-backed cabinet only
legitimized the political process, as did having
30 deputies in Parliament.
The fact is
Muqtada had much to gain from joining the
political process, which he has now partially
left. First, it gave him an official platform to
recruit members and preach his ideology. He used
organs of government, from the Ministry of Health
and Education, which he controlled, to empower the
Mehdi Army in a manner similar to how the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq used -
or some would say abused - the Ministry of
Interior. The militias infiltrated the ministries
and used them to settle scores with the Sunni
community, and each other.
Maliki had much
to gain from an alliance with Muqtada. It
legitimized him in the eyes of ordinary Shi'ites.
What better public relations could a US-appointed
prime minister want than the blessing of a
firebrand nationalist like Muqtada, who has
launched two uprisings against the Americans since
they invaded Iraq. It made Maliki look important
in the Shi'ite community. Before becoming prime
minister, he was a colorless and relatively
unimportant member of the Da'awa Party and the
UIA.
He had neither the intellect of
former premier Ibrahim Jaafari, the religious
legitimacy of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani or the
nationalist credentials of Muqtada. An alliance
with Muqtada gave him a little of everything that
he lacked. It was a double-edged sword, however.
It embarrassed him within Arab circles, which are
controlled by Sunni states like Saudi Arabia,
Jordan and Egypt, all of which see Muqtada as a
young, inexperienced adventurer with a permanent
grudge against Sunnis.
The behavior of the
Sadrists at the execution of Saddam, and the fact
that members of the Mehdi Army were allowed to
attend the hanging, further damaged Maliki's
standing in the predominantly Sunni Arab world. It
ruined him forever in the eyes of Iraqi Sunnis,
who were enraged at the killing of their former
president.
That is why Maliki started to
slowly detach himself from Muqtada - at least in
public - to regain some credibility as a prime
minister for all of Iraq, not only the Shi'ite
community. This explains why shortly after Maliki
announced his Baghdad security plan in February,
Muqtada went into hiding, ostensibly fearing the
prime minister's dragnet.
Both Muqtada and
Maliki will want to maximize gains from the
Sadrist walkout from the cabinet. Maliki will use
it to polish his image both in Washington and in
Arab capitals. Muqtada will use it to facelift his
own image, because many have started to accuse him
of being more interested in gains from the
political process than in getting the Americans
out of Iraq.
True he has lost some of his
government platform, but he continues to have his
powerful Mehdi Army, which, since coming to power
in May 2006, Maliki has refused to disband, disarm
or even weaken significantly. This despite
cosmetic "raids" that are periodically launched
against it by the Iraqi police. The stated reasons
for Muqtada's walkout will give him a boost: he
left in protest against the Americans in Iraq.
That can do wonders to the career of any Arab
politician.
Bush, who is due to receive
congressional leaders from both parties at the
White House this week, has nevertheless repeated
that he does not plan to set a timetable for Iraq
and will veto any legislation to that effect
imposed on him by the Democrats.
Speaking
on Muqtada's walkout, White House spokeswomen Dana
Perino said, "If the Sadrists were to leave
government, obviously they've said they would
before and I understand that they have done that
this morning - that does not mean that Maliki
loses his majority. I think that's an important
thing to remember."
So even the White
House does not make too much of Muqtada's walkout.
So Maliki, to use Muqtada's words in his January
interview, is "maneuvering". But for what? Time?
Legitimacy? For a new round of friendship with
Muqtada when all else fails?
Ultimately,
what unites Muqtada and Maliki is much more than
what divides them. Both want a theocracy in Iraq.
Both want the Americans to leave - although with
different degrees of urgency. And both would dread
a post-Maliki regime because most probably it
would mean the return of former premier Iyad
Allawi, who has promised to launch a deadly war
against sectarianism, militias and Muqtada.
His record speaks for itself; he launched
a bloody war against the Sadrists when he serving
as prime minister in 2004. Sectarian politicians
like Muqtada and Maliki dread the coming of the
secular Allawi, who has frantically been trying to
put together a coalition and convince both Arab
regimes and the US administration to give him
another go.
Muqtada, who has referred to
Allawi as "the unbeliever who will soon succeed
Maliki", sees Allawi as waiting for an opportune
moment to strike at him and Maliki. He said, "We
represent the majority of the country that does
not want Iraq turned into a secular state and a
slave of the Western powers, as Allawi dreams to
the contrary."
As far as Muqtada and
Maliki are concerned, they are willing to work
with the devil - or each other - to defeat Allawi.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian
political analyst.
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