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2 Muqtada strikes another political
blow By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - "We have absolutely no
intention of pushing Prime Minister [Nuri
al-]Maliki out," said a spokesman for the Sadrist
alliance on Sunday. This came after Muqtada
al-Sadr finally decided to walk out of the ruling
Shi'ite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA).
For
obvious reasons, the prime minister did not
believe the assurances, realizing that ever since
he broke with Muqtada this year, the
rebel-turned-politician has been bent on bringing down
the
entire Maliki administration in revenge.
Muqtada has been giving Maliki nightmares
- serious ones. Step 1 of his "coup" was six of
his supporters walking out on the Maliki cabinet,
depriving it of Sadrist legitimacy and keeping key
positions vacant, such as Transport, Commerce, and
Health. Maliki promised a cabinet reshuffle in the
summer to fill in the vacant posts, but to date he
has not done so.
Ali al-Dabbagh, a
spokesman for the Maliki government, refused to
comment on the latest embarrassing drawback,
saying: "It is not our affair. It is the affair of
Parliament." This was the last thing, however,
that Maliki needed, given that he has already lost
most of his parliamentary allies, mainly the
Sunnis in the Accordance Front and seculars in the
Iraqi National List of former prime minister Iyad
Allawi.
The walkout on the UIA deprives
the all-Shi'ite alliance of 32 deputies from the
Sadrist bloc in the 275-member Parliament. It is
targeted against two people, Maliki and his
patron, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim (a traditional
opponent of the Sadr family in Shi'ite politics
and leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council -
SIIC).
Muqtada, who has been threatening a
walkout for some time, claims that the UIA (which
is headed by Hakim) has failed to respond to his
numerous demands. One of the complaints is that
Maliki no longer consults the Sadrists on affairs
of state. Another is that Maliki, after his
falling out with Muqtada, started arresting
members of his Mahdi Army, although Muqtada
promised a truce with government authorities and
US forces that would last for six months, starting
in August.
In effect, Maliki is now
cracking down on the same people who have
protected his regime since it came to power in May
2006. The walkout is in direct response to a new
alliance comprising Maliki, Hakim and two Kurdish
leaders, Kurdistan Regional Government President
Masoud Barzani and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
Maliki says they are "moderate architects"
of a new Iraq. As far as Muqtada is concerned,
they are nothing but puppets for the United
States, working to transfer control of oil-rich
Kirkuk to Kurdistan, in return for Kurdish support
for the prime minister.
The UIA, which has
already lost the Shi'ite Fadila Party and runs a
high risk of being voted out of power if new
elections are called for or if Maliki receives a
vote of no confidence within the chamber, is
frantic. Maliki now only has a razor-thin
majority.
Abbas al-Bayati of the UIA said
it would try to persuade the Sadrists to return.
"They will not go too far away from the alliance;
their withdrawal is not decisive." Members of the
Sadrist bloc, however, claim the move is final,
with no turning back.
Muqtada is very
aware - often too aware - of his political weight
within the Shi'ite community. Although Hakim and
Maliki are powerful among Shi'ite businessmen and
the middle class, Muqtada is king among young
people and the community's poor. People follow
Muqtada because he offers them services such as
free hospitalization and protection. When they are
wronged, he offers them revenge.
The Mahdi
Army, seen as a militia by Iraqi Sunnis and the
United States, is extremely popular among young
Shi'ites. If these young people, who are
frustrated because of unemployment, abandon the
UIA, then the coalition of Shi'ite powers is in
great trouble, although they refuse to admit it.
Many Shi'ites are already frustrated by
the UIA's refusal to call for a timetable for US
troop withdrawal. They are equally angered by
Maliki's recent crackdown on the Mahdi Army, to
please the George W Bush White House. In addition
to protection, the Mahdi Army provided them with
jobs.
Hakim, who competes with Muqtada for
leadership among Shi'ites, is still strongly in
favor of creating an autonomous Shi'ite district
in southern Iraq. The UIA backs him in this, but
Muqtada is curtly opposed to further
federalization of Iraq, claiming the country
should remain united.
Many Iraqis, who
remain Arab nationalists at heart, are opposed to
the carving up of Iraq along sectarian lines,
despite their Shi'ite nationalism. The UIA is also
strongly allied to, and funded by, the mullahs of
Iran. Muqtada claims that Hakim is a stooge of
Tehran for having lived there in the 1980s and
mobilized his militia, the Badr Brigade, to fight
against the Iraqi army in the Iran-Iraq War of
that decade. Although Muqtada dreams of a
theocracy in Iraq, he nevertheless wants it to be
independent of the Iranian regime.
This
also puts him at odds end with the UIA. The UIA,
originally created for the parliamentary elections
of 2005, was composed of several Shi'ite parties
that were headed by the Da'wa Party of Maliki, the
SIIC of Hakim, and al-Fadila, all under the
patronage of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
They held 130 of the 275 seats in
Parliament. The Sadrists, originally seen as a
junior party in the UIA, started playing an
increasingly stronger role with their 32 seats,
and the ministerial jobs given to them by Maliki.
Their influence stemmed from two elements:
Muqtada's popularity, and his undeclared alliance
with the prime minister.
Maliki gave
Muqtada protection from US persecution and Muqtada
reciprocated with giving Maliki legitimacy among
Shi'ites in the slums of Baghdad. The two men
began to disagree in late 2006 on how to deal with
the US. Muqtada wanted Maliki to confront the US.
But Maliki simply could not say "no" to the US,
since he owed it his political existence.
By 2007, Muqtada had become a political
embarrassment for Maliki. The US was pressuring
him to get rid of him and crack down on the Mahdi
Army, if he wanted to stay in office. Arab states
were pressuring Maliki to abandon his Shi'ite
nationalism in favor of a pan-Iraqi stance. They
believed that Muqtada's growing influence in
post-Saddam Hussein Iraq was due to Maliki's
leniency with the Mahdi Army.
The
targeting of Sunni neighborhoods, attacks on Sunni
mosques and the assassination of Sunni notables
were all believed to be the doing of Muqtada. The
Sunni street made Muqtada the scapegoat for all
the sectarian violence in Iraqi, even if he were
not responsible.
Maliki survived the wave
of condemnation from the Arab world by holding on
to a strong domestic alliance of Shi'ites, Sunnis
and Kurds. When that began to snap, things began
falling apart on all
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