Iraq's Sunnis reclaim lost
ground By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - Unlike any other time since
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki came to power in
2006, his tenure is under real threat. This time,
Maliki's exodus is not being engineered by his
long-time rivals in the Sunni community, but
rather by the Kurds: friends of yesterday, enemies
of today. This is what he was reportedly told by
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown during his
recent visit to London.
Indeed, the Sunnis
are temporarily being placated, highlighted by the
Iraqi Parliament approving a landmark bill on
Sunday that would allow thousands of former Ba'ath
party members to reclaim
their positions in the
bureaucracy.
For the past eight months,
Maliki has been cozying up to the two Kurdish
heavyweights, Massoud al-Barzani, the president of
the autonomous Kurdistan district, and Iraqi
President Jalal Talabani. He needed them to
survive politically after major political parties
walked out on him in the summer of 2007.
They needed him to get hold of oil-rich
Kirkuk province. That has been the constant
Kurdish obsession since 2003 - in addition to a
more pressing concern: to fight off the Turkish
military campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Maliki promised to deliver on both issues,
realizing that if the Kurds joined his
parliamentary opponents (all of whom have
abandoned the prime minister, accusing him of
incompetence, authoritarianism, sectarianism and
corruption), then he would be voted out of office.
Maliki first promised to implement article 140 of
the constitution, which calls for a census and
plebiscite on Kirkuk, to be done no later than
December 31, 2007. Thousands of Arabs were
uprooted from Kirkuk (under his orders), to
increase the city's Kurdish population. He claimed
that they had been illegally brought there for the
exact opposite reason in the 1980s, by Saddam
Hussein.
When a census takes place, Maliki
wants people to overwhelmingly vote in favor of
annexation to Iraqi Kurdistan. If that didn't
secure a permanent friendship with the Kurds, then
nothing would. This enraged Sunnis and prompted
certain Shi'ites to demand similar autonomy in
southern Iraq. As a result of political pressure,
and the Turkish campaign on the Iraqi border (the
Turks are equally opposed to giving Kirkuk to the
Kurds), Maliki had to back down and renege on his
promises to Barzani and Talabani. Apart from bold
words to the press, he did nothing to ward off the
Turkish campaign as well, adding to Kurdish anger
with the Baghdad government.
Barzani
seemingly never believed that Maliki could
deliver, but was pressured into working with him
by US President George W Bush. The Americans
feared what post-Maliki Iraq would look like. In
as much as they are opposed to Maliki's sectarian
policies, and his inability to advance security
concerns, the US fears that a power vacuum will be
catastrophic - especially with presidential
elections underway in the United States.
The Americans realize that the only real
and capable alternative, former prime minister
Iyad Allawi, lacks a power base in Iraq, mainly
due to his secular policies and relations with the
US Central Intelligence Agency. US ambassador Ryan
Crocker, sensing Barzani's anger, sent a message
to the Kurds saying: "We think everyone should be
placing emphasis on making the government more
effective, not on changing the government."
Simply put, the Kurds have lost faith in
Maliki. Last December, they sent him an ultimatum,
showing grave concerns over his failed policies
with regard to the Kurdish issue. Barzani visited
him in Baghdad to demand more action on the issue
of Kirkuk, but returned to Irbil empty handed.
Commenting on the failed meeting, he said; "Sadly,
the Kurdish delegation returned without achieving
any results."
Another senior Kurdish
statesman and parliamentarian, Mahmud Othman.
said, "If Maliki doesn't consult with the
Kurdistan coalition ... about political, security
and economic decisions, his government cannot
continue." If Maliki does not deliver on the issue
of Kirkuk, he added, then they would make it clear
to him that their words would be followed by
action.
In normal circumstances, Maliki
would not have cared what the Kurds thought as
long as he enjoyed the backing of the Iraqi
Accordance Front (a Sunni coalition), the Iraqi
National List (a cross-sectarian secular
coalition), and the heavyweight backing of Shi'ite
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. But with all of them gone,
he only has the Kurds to turn to.
Maliki
now has every reason to be worried.
Maliki's opponents are toying with the
idea of replacing him with Adel Abdul Mehdi, the
vice president who is a prominent member of the
pro-US and pro-Iranian religious party, the
Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC). Mehdi has
had his eyes on the premiership since 2005. To do
that, the Kurds need to work with disgruntled
Sunnis from the Accordance Front, Shi'ites from
the Sadrist bloc, and Allawi's team. The
anti-Maliki team needs to garner 138 votes for a
no-confidence vote in Parliament. That can be done
with 53 votes from the Kurdish parties, 55 votes
from the Sunni groups and 40 from the Allawi team
and supporters of former prime minister Ibrahim
al-Jaafari (a former patron of Maliki who has
grown disenchanted with his policies).
Talk of replacing Maliki has triggered the
imagination of the Sunnis, who are demanding that
Talabani step down and be replaced by a Sunni Arab
president, floating the name of current vice
president Tarek al-Hashemi. Instead, the Kurds
would get the post of speaker of Parliament.
Current speaker Mahmud al-Mashadani would be
replaced by Fouad Massoum, a member of the Kurdish
Alliance. Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari (a Kurd)
would be replaced by a Shi'ite statesman from the
SIIC, Hamed al-Bayat, who currently serves as his
country's ambassador to the United Nations.
While the Hashemi-Massoum-Bayat scenario
is far fetched at this stage (although the
Americans would support it if it means greater
security) the Maliki one is more realistic.
With all of that in mind, Maliki has
started to cuddle up to former opponents, hoping
that he can salvage what can. He is now targeting
the very same names who are planning to work with
the Kurds at bringing him down: the Sunnis, the
Sadrists and the coalition of Allawi.
Last
week, Maliki received a joint delegation of the
Accordance Front and the Iraqi List - with whom he
has been at loggerheads for months - calling on
them to return to the government. All of their
demands, including a Sunni request for a general
amnesty, will be fulfilled. Both parties have
refused to comment on the promises made to them by
the prime minister, claiming that they visited him
with the sole purpose of checking on his health
after he traveled to London for medical treatment
two weeks ago.
Coinciding with the visit
was a high profile sermon delivered at a prime
Shi'ite mosque in Baghdad by Maliki's ally, Sayyed
Ammar al-Hakim. Speaking to worshipers on Friday,
Hakim (the son of the SIIC's leader, Abdul-Aziz
al-Hakim) called on the Iraqi Accordance Front and
the Iraqi National List to be more flexible when
it comes to rapprochement with Maliki. He also
called on the government to exert a stronger
effort to restore cooperation with the al-Fadila
Party (another walkout on the prime minister) and
the Sadrist bloc of Muqtada. Ammar al-Hakim said:
"I hope that the government will take all needed
measures to secure their return."
Additionally, Maliki's team is trying to
put together a new alliance that excludes the
angry Kurds, composed of the National Dialogue
Front (Sunni) that is led by Saleh al-Motlak, the
Iraqi National List (secular) that is lead by
Allawi, the Sadrist bloc headed by Muqtada, the
Iraqi People's Congress, led by Adnan al-Duleimi,
and the Da'wa Party, headed by Maliki himself.
He has also backed a law originally
advised by former US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad -
bringing thousands of Ba'athists (all Sunnis) back
into government. And so it was that on Sunday
Parliament passed a bill allowing lower-ranking
former members of the Ba'ath party to reclaim
government jobs. Washington has been pushing for
the legislation, which will become law after being
processed by the sluggish Iraqi bureaucracy and
approved by the presidential council, consisting
of the president and two vice presidents.
It was not known how many former
Ba'athists will be eligible for reinstatement, but
before the party was outlawed by proconsul L Paul
Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority soon
after the invasion in 2003, its membership was
estimated at between 2 million and 6 million.
Estimates put the number likely to regain jobs at
31,000.
The new legislation will permit
Ba'athists to return to their jobs in the civil
service, military and police, and receive pensions
for their years of work, starting from when they
were employed under Saddam. This will please the
Sunnis, Maliki believes, making sure, however, to
exclude senior Ba'athists from a comeback (a total
of 3,500). Speaking on his Middle East trip,
President George W Bush praised the new law,
saying that it is an "important step towards
reconciliation".
The issue is whether this
will be enough to please the Sunni community. Some
people are saying that what Maliki is now doing is
too little too late. They complain that Maliki is
extending a hand to the Sunnis not for the sake of
being nice, but to save his government. Had it
been up to him, he would have kept them on the
sidelines of political life.
He is already
upset with the Americans arming up to 70,000 Sunni
tribesmen (known as the Awakening Councils) to
combat al-Qaeda in Iraq. He warns that the minute
these Sunnis get rid of al-Qaeda, they will train
their guns on the Americans, Maliki and the
Shi'ite community.
Arming Sunnis - and
legitimizing their weapons - was the last straw
for Maliki. He ordered thousands of Shi'ite
militias to join the Iraqi army in response. If
the Sunnis were legitimizing their arms, then so
would the Shi'ites. This hostile attitude with
regard to the tribal councils has also been toned
down dramatically this past week. Speaking at the
86th anniversary of the founding of the Iraqi
police, Interior Minister Jawad al-Boulani (an
ally of Maliki) praised the Awakening Councils and
accredited them with the reduction in violence.
That is new to government rhetoric, and came days
after Maliki made similar statements to the
London-daily al-Sharq al-Awsat.
Sleeping
with the Accordance Front and cuddling up to the
Awakening Councils while honeymooning - again -
with Muqtada and Allawi might be the only remedy
to save Maliki from the wrath of the Kurds.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian
political analyst.
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