Sunday, August 10, 2014 11:19:11 PM
Sunnis Big Losers in Iraq Elections, PM al-Maliki has Largest Party
By Juan Cole | May. 20, 2014 |
(By Juan Cole)
The results of the Iraqi parliamentary elections are in .. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/19/maliki-coalition-winner-iraq-elections , and everybody lost. There will be another hung parliament that gets almost nothing done. The Sunni Arabs ended up dividing their vote and doing poorly. The Shiites likewise are deeply divided. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s party did best, positioning him for a third term. That isn’t a foregone conclusion, because he needs to put together a coalition that will give him 51% of the 328-seat parliament (i.e. 165). His party gained only 92 seats. But anyway al-Maliki isn’t what Iraqi needs. He has been bad at reaching out to Sunni Arabs (though to be fair he has deployed the new Iraqi Army and security forces to establish order and cut militias down to size in the Shiite South).
The electoral system designed for Iraq by the US and the United Nations was never very good, and by now it is broken altogether. The country’s 15 provinces and one Kurdistan super-province are the equivalent of districts. But Iraq’s provinces tend to be heavily populated by a particular linguistic or religious ethnic group. Thus, Najaf Province (about a million people) is almost entirely Shiite and everyone speaks Arabic (a Semitic language related to Hebrew). Dohuk, Suleimania and Irbil, which have joined to form Kurdistan, are almost entirely Kurdish (Kurds speak an Indo-European language ultimately related to English and have their own form of Sunni Islam, though there are some religious minorities among them).
The system therefore is doomed to produce ethnic blocs in parliament– Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish. None of them really gets along with the other, guaranteeing gridlock. Indeed, even the major Shiite factions don’t get along. The Shiites can always rule if they remain united with one another. Therefore, the Sunni Arabs can count on being outvoted on every issue from here to eternity, which many now realize; they are increasingly ticked off about it.
So Nouri Al-Maliki, the prime minister, heads the Shiite Islamic Mission Party (al-Da`wa al-Islamiya), founded around 1957 — the oldest fundamentalist civil party aiming for an Islamic state in the Muslim world. (Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is older, but it was a cadre organization, not a civil party). Since 2005, Iraq has always had a prime minister from the Islamic Mission Party and in some ways ensconcing this party in power is the major political achievement of the Bush administration in Iraq.
The Islamic Mission Party is in coalition with some independents and other small groups, forming a coalition called the State of Law (as in, ‘Iraq is a state of laws and not men.’)
The State of Law received 92 seats out of the 328 or 28%. (It won 10 of the country’s 18 provinces). Al-Maliki needs to find partners to make up the other 73 he needs at a minimum. This is what the UK’s David Cameron had to do in 2010, when he allied with the Liberal Democrats because his Conservative Party had not gotten a majority.
In 2010 in Iraq, al-Maliki had a great deal of difficulty forming a government (that time he got 88 seats). His natural partners are the other Shiite parties, but they have conceived a deep dislike of him, seeing him as grasping and dictatorial.
The Citizens Party of Ammar al-Hakim received 29 seats, down somewhat from 2010. This group used to be the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and then the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. It was formed in Iran among Iraqi expatriates in 1984 and originally had Khomeinist tendencies (believing that clerics should rule). It has moved more toward a democratic point of view but is still more clerically dominated than the lay Islamic Mission Party of al-Maliki. In 2010 Iran appears to have asked al-Hakim to support al-Maliki, and he acquiesced.
The Liberty Party of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr got 28 seats, and two tiny pro-Sadr parties got another 6, for 34 for this tendency. Al-Sadr has broken with al-Maliki and denounced him as dictatorial, and supported Sunni fundamentalists opposing al-Maliki. In 2010 Iran strong-armed al-Sadr into supporting al-Maliki.
Al-Sadr and al-Hakim had been in coalition in the last election, in 2010, and had gained somewhat more seats that year. Now they have 63.
Even if al-Maliki could pull off a miracle and get both al-Sadr and al-Hakim to support him, that is only 63 of the 73 he needs. In 2010, al-Maliki was put over the top by the support of the Kurdistan Alliance, which may happen again this time. The Kurds are in competition with Sunni Arabs for control of Kirkuk and influence in Mosul and in Diyala Province. Many Iraqi Sunnis support the uprising in Syria, which has come to be dominated on the battlefield by al-Qaeda affiliates. Kurds in Syria have fought the extremist fundamentalists and are supported by Iraqi Kurds.
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Jalal Talabani (president of Iraq) got 19 seats; the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani also got 19; and the Movement for Change (Goran) got 9. So the Kurds altogether won 47 seats.
Long story short, the Kurdish parties are unlikely to support a Sunni party, and although Barzani in particular is done out with al-Maliki, are far more likely to ally with the Shiites. Whether that means backing al-Maliki for prime minister, it is too soon to tell. Before the election Massoud Barzani met with Allawi, allegedly to strategize .. http://www.sotaliraq.com/mobile-news.php?id=149727 .. how to move al-Maliki out.
The Sunnis had largely supported the secular Iraqiya Party in 2010, which got 92 seats and was the largest in parliament. But the Iraqiya’s leader Ayad Allawi just could not put together a majority coalition. Many Iraqi Sunnis felt cheated, but they just don’t understand how parliamentary systems work. Unless you get a majority, you need coalition partners to rule. With the Kurds in tension with Sunni Arabs, and Sunni-Shiite tensions high, the Sunnis have found themselves isolated in national politics.
This time the Sunni Arabs split their votes among three major parties. Allawi’s party is now al-`Iraqiya al-Wataniya or the Iraqi Nationalism Party. It got 21 seats. The Speaker of the Parliament runs a party called the United (al-Muttahadun), which received 23 seats. And deputy pm Saleh al-Mutlaq headed al-Arabiya, the Arab Party, with 10 seats.
So the Sunni Arabs got at least 54 seats this time. But their ability and willingness to go to the polls was lessened by the crisis in Falluja and Ramadi since January, where the terrorist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has taken over many neighborhoods.
The Sunni Arabs of Iraq since early 2011 have mounted their own “Spring,” though without much success. The rallies are either crushed by the state or disrupted by Iraqis of a more extremist bent.
The gradual loss of any hope among Sunni Arab Iraqis in the new parliamentary system is heartbreaking. Now entire cities in their regions are under al-Qaeda. Al-Maliki can’t or won’t reach out to them. 3200 people have been killed in Iraq since January. That looks set to continue and accelerate.
——
Related video:
Iraq PM al-Maliki frontrunner to form new coalition after early election results .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqkQxnZ_2BI&feature=youtu.be
http://www.juancole.com/2014/05/elections-maliki-largest.html
===
Forces loyal to Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki deploy in Baghdad streets, sparking coup fears
Date August 11, 2014 - 10:52AM
Ahmed Rasheed
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wants to hold on to power. Photo: AP
Baghdad: Special forces loyal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki were deployed in strategic areas of Baghdad on Sunday night after he delivered a tough speech indicating he would not cave in to pressure to drop a bid for a third term, police sources said.
Pro-Maliki Shiite militias stepped up patrols in the capital, police said. An eyewitness said a tank was stationed at the entrance to Baghdad's Green Zone, which houses government buildings.
In a speech on state television, Mr Maliki accused Iraq's Kurdish President Fouad Masoum of violating the constitution by missing a deadline for him to ask the biggest political bloc to nominate a prime minister and form a government.
"I will submit today an official complaint to the federal court against the president of the Republic for committing a clear constitutional violation for the sake of political calculations," said Mr Maliki.
Serving in a caretaker capacity since an inconclusive election in April, Mr Maliki has defied calls by Sunnis, Kurds, some fellow Shiites, regional power broker Iran and Iraq's top cleric for him to step aside for a less polarising figure.
The troop movements have raised speculation that they may mark the start of a coup by Mr Maliki to take full control of the government.
A western security expert based in Iraq said that Mr Maliki deployed members of the Golden Dawn militia and the elite SWAT special forces units around the International Zone prior to giving the speech.
"He was clearly anticipating a negative, possible coup-like response," said the expert, whose employer does not allow him to speak openly to the media.
Critics accuse Mr Maliki of pursuing a sectarian agenda which has sidelined Sunnis and prompted some of them to support militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, whose latest sweep through northern Iraq has alarmed the Baghdad government and its Western allies.
Washington seems to be losing patience with Mr Maliki, who has placed Shiite political loyalists in key positions in the army and military and drawn comparisons with executed former dictator Saddam Hussein, the man he plotted against from exile for years.
A senior US official said on Sunday he fully supported Mr Masoum after Mr Maliki, who the United States has blamed for stoking Iraq's security crisis, criticised him.
"Fully support President of Iraq Fouad Masoum as guarantor of the Constitution and a [prime minister] nominee who can build a national consensus," Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk, the US State Department point man for Iraq, said on his Twitter feed.
US President Barack Obama urged Iraqi politicians on Saturday to form a more inclusive government that can counter the growing threat from ISIL, which recently changed its name to Islamic State and declared a "caliphate".
But Mr Maliki keeps digging in.
"Now we can see unprecedented deployment of army commandos and special elite forces deployed in Baghdad, especially sensitive areas close to the green zone and the entrances of the capital," one of the police sources said. "These forces are now taking full responsibility of securing these areas of the capital."
Iraq's Interior Ministry has told police to be on high alert in connection with Mr Maliki's speech, a police official said.
ISIL militants have capitalised on political deadlock and sectarian tensions that have made it easier for the group to make fresh gains after arriving in the north in June from Syria.
The group, which sees Shiites as infidels who deserve to be killed, has ruthlessly moved through one town after another, using tanks and heavy weapons it seized from soldiers who fled in the thousands.
ISIL militants have killed hundreds of Iraq's minority Yazidis, burying some alive and taking women as slaves, an Iraqi government minister said on Sunday, as US warplanes again bombed the insurgents .. http://www.smh.com.au/world/third-day-of-us-strikes-in-iraq-spur-kurd-fightback-against-islamic-state-20140811-102l67.html .
Human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani accused the Sunni Muslim insurgents - who have ordered the community they regard as "devil worshippers" to convert to Islam or die - of celebrating what he called a "a vicious atrocity".
No independent confirmation was available of the killings of hundreds of Yazidis, bloodshed that could increase pressure on Western powers to do more to help tens of thousands of people, including many from religious and ethnic minorities, who have fled the militants' offensive.
Reuters, MCT
http://www.smh.com.au/world/forces-loyal-to-iraqi-pm-nouri-almaliki-deploy-in-baghdad-streets-sparking-coup-fears-20140811-102m66.html
Sectarianism (any, but particularly religion based), extremism (any, but particularly religion based) and strongmanism .. UGH.
By Juan Cole | May. 20, 2014 |
(By Juan Cole)
The results of the Iraqi parliamentary elections are in .. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/19/maliki-coalition-winner-iraq-elections , and everybody lost. There will be another hung parliament that gets almost nothing done. The Sunni Arabs ended up dividing their vote and doing poorly. The Shiites likewise are deeply divided. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s party did best, positioning him for a third term. That isn’t a foregone conclusion, because he needs to put together a coalition that will give him 51% of the 328-seat parliament (i.e. 165). His party gained only 92 seats. But anyway al-Maliki isn’t what Iraqi needs. He has been bad at reaching out to Sunni Arabs (though to be fair he has deployed the new Iraqi Army and security forces to establish order and cut militias down to size in the Shiite South).
The electoral system designed for Iraq by the US and the United Nations was never very good, and by now it is broken altogether. The country’s 15 provinces and one Kurdistan super-province are the equivalent of districts. But Iraq’s provinces tend to be heavily populated by a particular linguistic or religious ethnic group. Thus, Najaf Province (about a million people) is almost entirely Shiite and everyone speaks Arabic (a Semitic language related to Hebrew). Dohuk, Suleimania and Irbil, which have joined to form Kurdistan, are almost entirely Kurdish (Kurds speak an Indo-European language ultimately related to English and have their own form of Sunni Islam, though there are some religious minorities among them).
The system therefore is doomed to produce ethnic blocs in parliament– Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish. None of them really gets along with the other, guaranteeing gridlock. Indeed, even the major Shiite factions don’t get along. The Shiites can always rule if they remain united with one another. Therefore, the Sunni Arabs can count on being outvoted on every issue from here to eternity, which many now realize; they are increasingly ticked off about it.
So Nouri Al-Maliki, the prime minister, heads the Shiite Islamic Mission Party (al-Da`wa al-Islamiya), founded around 1957 — the oldest fundamentalist civil party aiming for an Islamic state in the Muslim world. (Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is older, but it was a cadre organization, not a civil party). Since 2005, Iraq has always had a prime minister from the Islamic Mission Party and in some ways ensconcing this party in power is the major political achievement of the Bush administration in Iraq.
The Islamic Mission Party is in coalition with some independents and other small groups, forming a coalition called the State of Law (as in, ‘Iraq is a state of laws and not men.’)
The State of Law received 92 seats out of the 328 or 28%. (It won 10 of the country’s 18 provinces). Al-Maliki needs to find partners to make up the other 73 he needs at a minimum. This is what the UK’s David Cameron had to do in 2010, when he allied with the Liberal Democrats because his Conservative Party had not gotten a majority.
In 2010 in Iraq, al-Maliki had a great deal of difficulty forming a government (that time he got 88 seats). His natural partners are the other Shiite parties, but they have conceived a deep dislike of him, seeing him as grasping and dictatorial.
The Citizens Party of Ammar al-Hakim received 29 seats, down somewhat from 2010. This group used to be the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and then the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. It was formed in Iran among Iraqi expatriates in 1984 and originally had Khomeinist tendencies (believing that clerics should rule). It has moved more toward a democratic point of view but is still more clerically dominated than the lay Islamic Mission Party of al-Maliki. In 2010 Iran appears to have asked al-Hakim to support al-Maliki, and he acquiesced.
The Liberty Party of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr got 28 seats, and two tiny pro-Sadr parties got another 6, for 34 for this tendency. Al-Sadr has broken with al-Maliki and denounced him as dictatorial, and supported Sunni fundamentalists opposing al-Maliki. In 2010 Iran strong-armed al-Sadr into supporting al-Maliki.
Al-Sadr and al-Hakim had been in coalition in the last election, in 2010, and had gained somewhat more seats that year. Now they have 63.
Even if al-Maliki could pull off a miracle and get both al-Sadr and al-Hakim to support him, that is only 63 of the 73 he needs. In 2010, al-Maliki was put over the top by the support of the Kurdistan Alliance, which may happen again this time. The Kurds are in competition with Sunni Arabs for control of Kirkuk and influence in Mosul and in Diyala Province. Many Iraqi Sunnis support the uprising in Syria, which has come to be dominated on the battlefield by al-Qaeda affiliates. Kurds in Syria have fought the extremist fundamentalists and are supported by Iraqi Kurds.
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Jalal Talabani (president of Iraq) got 19 seats; the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani also got 19; and the Movement for Change (Goran) got 9. So the Kurds altogether won 47 seats.
Long story short, the Kurdish parties are unlikely to support a Sunni party, and although Barzani in particular is done out with al-Maliki, are far more likely to ally with the Shiites. Whether that means backing al-Maliki for prime minister, it is too soon to tell. Before the election Massoud Barzani met with Allawi, allegedly to strategize .. http://www.sotaliraq.com/mobile-news.php?id=149727 .. how to move al-Maliki out.
The Sunnis had largely supported the secular Iraqiya Party in 2010, which got 92 seats and was the largest in parliament. But the Iraqiya’s leader Ayad Allawi just could not put together a majority coalition. Many Iraqi Sunnis felt cheated, but they just don’t understand how parliamentary systems work. Unless you get a majority, you need coalition partners to rule. With the Kurds in tension with Sunni Arabs, and Sunni-Shiite tensions high, the Sunnis have found themselves isolated in national politics.
This time the Sunni Arabs split their votes among three major parties. Allawi’s party is now al-`Iraqiya al-Wataniya or the Iraqi Nationalism Party. It got 21 seats. The Speaker of the Parliament runs a party called the United (al-Muttahadun), which received 23 seats. And deputy pm Saleh al-Mutlaq headed al-Arabiya, the Arab Party, with 10 seats.
So the Sunni Arabs got at least 54 seats this time. But their ability and willingness to go to the polls was lessened by the crisis in Falluja and Ramadi since January, where the terrorist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has taken over many neighborhoods.
The Sunni Arabs of Iraq since early 2011 have mounted their own “Spring,” though without much success. The rallies are either crushed by the state or disrupted by Iraqis of a more extremist bent.
The gradual loss of any hope among Sunni Arab Iraqis in the new parliamentary system is heartbreaking. Now entire cities in their regions are under al-Qaeda. Al-Maliki can’t or won’t reach out to them. 3200 people have been killed in Iraq since January. That looks set to continue and accelerate.
——
Related video:
Iraq PM al-Maliki frontrunner to form new coalition after early election results .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqkQxnZ_2BI&feature=youtu.be
http://www.juancole.com/2014/05/elections-maliki-largest.html
===
Forces loyal to Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki deploy in Baghdad streets, sparking coup fears
Date August 11, 2014 - 10:52AM
Ahmed Rasheed
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wants to hold on to power. Photo: AP
Baghdad: Special forces loyal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki were deployed in strategic areas of Baghdad on Sunday night after he delivered a tough speech indicating he would not cave in to pressure to drop a bid for a third term, police sources said.
Pro-Maliki Shiite militias stepped up patrols in the capital, police said. An eyewitness said a tank was stationed at the entrance to Baghdad's Green Zone, which houses government buildings.
In a speech on state television, Mr Maliki accused Iraq's Kurdish President Fouad Masoum of violating the constitution by missing a deadline for him to ask the biggest political bloc to nominate a prime minister and form a government.
"I will submit today an official complaint to the federal court against the president of the Republic for committing a clear constitutional violation for the sake of political calculations," said Mr Maliki.
Serving in a caretaker capacity since an inconclusive election in April, Mr Maliki has defied calls by Sunnis, Kurds, some fellow Shiites, regional power broker Iran and Iraq's top cleric for him to step aside for a less polarising figure.
The troop movements have raised speculation that they may mark the start of a coup by Mr Maliki to take full control of the government.
A western security expert based in Iraq said that Mr Maliki deployed members of the Golden Dawn militia and the elite SWAT special forces units around the International Zone prior to giving the speech.
"He was clearly anticipating a negative, possible coup-like response," said the expert, whose employer does not allow him to speak openly to the media.
Critics accuse Mr Maliki of pursuing a sectarian agenda which has sidelined Sunnis and prompted some of them to support militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, whose latest sweep through northern Iraq has alarmed the Baghdad government and its Western allies.
Washington seems to be losing patience with Mr Maliki, who has placed Shiite political loyalists in key positions in the army and military and drawn comparisons with executed former dictator Saddam Hussein, the man he plotted against from exile for years.
A senior US official said on Sunday he fully supported Mr Masoum after Mr Maliki, who the United States has blamed for stoking Iraq's security crisis, criticised him.
"Fully support President of Iraq Fouad Masoum as guarantor of the Constitution and a [prime minister] nominee who can build a national consensus," Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk, the US State Department point man for Iraq, said on his Twitter feed.
US President Barack Obama urged Iraqi politicians on Saturday to form a more inclusive government that can counter the growing threat from ISIL, which recently changed its name to Islamic State and declared a "caliphate".
But Mr Maliki keeps digging in.
"Now we can see unprecedented deployment of army commandos and special elite forces deployed in Baghdad, especially sensitive areas close to the green zone and the entrances of the capital," one of the police sources said. "These forces are now taking full responsibility of securing these areas of the capital."
Iraq's Interior Ministry has told police to be on high alert in connection with Mr Maliki's speech, a police official said.
ISIL militants have capitalised on political deadlock and sectarian tensions that have made it easier for the group to make fresh gains after arriving in the north in June from Syria.
The group, which sees Shiites as infidels who deserve to be killed, has ruthlessly moved through one town after another, using tanks and heavy weapons it seized from soldiers who fled in the thousands.
ISIL militants have killed hundreds of Iraq's minority Yazidis, burying some alive and taking women as slaves, an Iraqi government minister said on Sunday, as US warplanes again bombed the insurgents .. http://www.smh.com.au/world/third-day-of-us-strikes-in-iraq-spur-kurd-fightback-against-islamic-state-20140811-102l67.html .
Human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani accused the Sunni Muslim insurgents - who have ordered the community they regard as "devil worshippers" to convert to Islam or die - of celebrating what he called a "a vicious atrocity".
No independent confirmation was available of the killings of hundreds of Yazidis, bloodshed that could increase pressure on Western powers to do more to help tens of thousands of people, including many from religious and ethnic minorities, who have fled the militants' offensive.
Reuters, MCT
http://www.smh.com.au/world/forces-loyal-to-iraqi-pm-nouri-almaliki-deploy-in-baghdad-streets-sparking-coup-fears-20140811-102m66.html
Sectarianism (any, but particularly religion based), extremism (any, but particularly religion based) and strongmanism .. UGH.
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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