DAMASCUS - Nuri al-Maliki celebrated the second anniversary of his assumption
of power as prime minister of Iraq, on May 20. Curious, I went through a
multitude of Iraqi dailies - trying hard - to find one good thing happening in
Iraq, to give credit to the prime minister. Of all the newspapers I went
through, I found only two pieces of good news.
One was that the Iraqi government is planning, under his orders, to tear down a
military camp in Baghdad and transform it into a residential area, with gardens
and a sports complex. Second was a plan to renovate 1,000 schools in the
southern city of Basra, and find jobs for 10,000 unemployed Iraqis. Apart from
that, one
third of the Iraqi population remains below the poverty line, making less than
US$1 per day.
Unemployment under Maliki has reached a staggering 50%. There are over 50,000
agricultural engineers, for example, searching for jobs - willing to sell
commodities on the streets, in order to make a living. The Baghdad Security
Plan has failed - to say the least - and there is a major sewage problem in
Basra, dragging into its sixth month, which despite numerous calls from
residents, has not been addressed by the Maliki government. The Ministry of
Health is on alert, fearing spread of cholera, and the Municipality of Baghdad
is making life more miserable for residents of the Iraqi capital, paving roads
during peek hours, congesting traffic, and making clusters of people an easy
target for terrorists.
Exams have been postponed in Mosul and calls for similar action are echoing
throughout Sadr City. The situation is too unsafe for children to venture
outdoors, residents claim, because of the fighting between Maliki's troops and
those of Muqtada al-Sadr. The never-ending sound of gunfire has distracted
young Iraqis who are unable to prepare for end-of-the-year examinations. In
pockets of the capital where exams are going ahead as planned, the Iraqi
military - rather than the school system - is preparing to monitor finals. This
to avoid what happened last year, when militiamen invaded exam centers,
terrorizing faculty and the student body, or in some cases, helping students
cheat in their baccalaureate exams. That single event prompted the Maliki team
to collectively fail all those who took final exams in history, geography, and
English, because widespread cheating had taken place.
Meanwhile, 8,000 families have been uprooted in Mosul, not to mention all the
dead, and another 1,100 residents have been arrested, on orders from the prime
minister. A total of 700 security forces and armed Sunni tribesmen (known as
the Awakening Councils) have been gunned down since January 2008, and another
924 have been wounded. During this time, over 3,000 Iraqi civilians have been
killed, and another 4,000 have been wounded. In the first twenty days of May
2008, over 70 security officials have been killed in Iraq. Earlier this week,
Ahmad Nouri, a police officer, was murdered in Sadr City. South of Nasriyya,
insurgents assassinated a senior army commander while in Basra, and tried to
kill a representative for Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. He escaped unhurt but
his home was blown up, reminding how vulnerable even men of religion have
become in Maliki's Iraq.
Despite the ceasefire agreed to with the Sadrists in the slums of Baghdad,
Maliki's men have been firing at suspected members of the Mahdi Army, killing
four (including a seven-year-old child) and wounding 38. The aftershocks of the
murder of Paul Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, last
March 2008, have not healed for Iraqi Christians. Rahho had been kidnapped and
his kidnappers demanded that Assyrian Christians form a militia to fight the
Americans, a prisoner release, and a $3 million bounty for his release. The
archbishop's body was found buried in a shallow grave near Mosul.
As Maliki celebrated with family and friends in Baghdad (having just returned
from a field inspection from Mosul), insurgents ambushed a bus filled with
Iraqi policemen, killing 11, in a remote town called Baaj, 32 kilometers from
the Syrian border. The assault on men in uniform came just six months after
another terror attack had struck in Baquba last November 2007, killing 27
policemen. Trying to downplay the latest incident with some good news, the
Maliki government claimed that it had arrested Abdul Khaliq al-Sabawi, a senior
al-Qaeda commander in Mosul, known as "al-wali", or the "governor" of Mosul. A
former brigadier under Saddam Hussein, he had joined the insurgency after 2003
and was apprehended in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit.
I recently had a conversation with a senior European diplomat, whose government
has stationed thousands of troops on Iraqi soil. We were talking about Maliki.
I argued that stability cannot be achieved so long as a man who continues to
harbor and protect two out of three militias (the Peshmerga and Badr Brigade)
is in power in Baghdad.
Maliki can bring neither security nor reconciliation, so long as he refuses to
address - in a serious manner - the grievances of Iraqi Sunnis (who walked out
on his government in August 2007). The answer I got was lame; "We cannot
interfere in internal Iraqi affairs. Maliki has been elected by the Iraqi
people; he is more legitimate than any other Arab leader." That, however, is
not what many people in Iraq are thinking. An Iraqi friend angrily snapped,
when hearing of the conversation, "What kind of legitimacy is that? I am an
Iraqi Sunni. I am not even represented in the Maliki government!"
The residents of Mosul, birthplace to the creme-de-la creme of Iraqi
intellectuals and scientists, who have seen intensive fighting since January
2008, are also, not-too-fond of their prime minister. Their hopes were slightly
raised when in December 2007, the Maliki government reopened Mosul airport,
bringing the first commercial flights to the city since it fell to the
Americans, after being abandoned by Saddam's army, on April 11, 2003.
Normalcy was thought to be on its way back to Mosul. By January 2008, terror
struck again, when a terrorist disguised as a police officer assassinated the
police commander of Mosul. Another bombing in an apartment led to the killing
of over 30 civilians. Maliki responded with a military offensive, backed by the
US, on May 10, aimed at ridding Mosul of all terrorist elements. Ten days
later, the offensive continues, and stability has not been achieved.
This week, Maliki fired Mutaa Habib Khazraji, the commander of the 2nd Army
Division, which is based in Mosul. He was accused of supporting officers
implicated in terrorist attacks. Additionally, the prime minister recalled
nearly 5,000 retired soldiers from their homes, all being residents of Mosul,
to take part in the fighting, along with 400 officers from the war-torn city.
Naturally, the Iraqi press is saying something completely different. A-Zaman,
for example, claims that "the residents of al-Zaman are overwhelmed with joy"
by the prime minister's dedication to security in Mosul.
Then comes the "greatest of evils" after what happened in Haditha and Abu
Ghraib, meaning the American soldier who fired at the Holy Koran on May 9,
using it for target practice. Of course, Maliki has nothing to do with that;
but Sunnis throughout the region (mainly Iraqi Sunnis) are blaming it on the
prime minister.
"If Maliki were a real man, he would resign or force the Americans to hand over
the criminal." This outrage is being heard all over the Arab world, mainly in
Sunni Iraq. Iraqi Sunnis are already fuming with the prime minister for having
refused to respond to any of their worries, refused to pass a general amnesty,
or stop executing former officials of the Saddam regime. Not only has Maliki
turned down all of his requests, but he is now working to curb the powers of
the Awakening Councils, a 70,000-strong army of Iraqi Sunnis, funded and armed
by the Americans, to fight al-Qaeda.
Maliki has for long complained that these Awakening Councils do nothing but
legitimize Sunni arms, claiming that sooner or later, the tribesmen are going
to use them against Shi'ites like himself, and the Americans. He thinks the
Awakening Councils are no different from al-Qaeda and has curtly refused to
bring them into any new cabinet that he forms. They in turn, along with several
Sunni heavyweights, are not pleased with his behavior at the Koran issue. The
Islamic Party, a Sunni heavyweight organization headed by Vice President Tarek
Hashemi, called for the "severest of punishment" for the Koran issue, and not
just an apology from the Americans.
So much for security - so much for two years of Nuri al-Maliki.
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