As the Obama administration is about to send military advisers to assist Iraq’s government there are growing reports that Washington wants Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to be replaced. The argument is that the premier is a divisive figure and that by getting rid of him the country’s politics can move forward, which will in turn help counter the insurgency. Finding a new prime minister could definitely improve the atmosphere in Baghdad in the short term, but it is no panacea for the deep structural problems facing Iraq.
Pres Obama wants PM Maliki to carry out reforms, which some Iraqi parties are taking for a call for his replacement (Defenselink)
A new premier from Ammar Hakim's ISCI (left) could lead to better relations with Kurdish Premier Nechirvan Barzani (right) and the KRG (KRG)
A new premier could help Iraq with some of its short-term problems. For instance a new premier from say the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraqi (ISCI) would have a much better relationship with the Kurds who have lost complete trust in Maliki. ISCI and the ruling Kurdish parties have had a good relationship dating back to the 1980s when both were supported by Iran and fought on Tehran’s side in the Iran-Iraq War. Those lists could work together and come to an oil export agreement that would actually be followed through with rather than the last two where Maliki refused to pay the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) all the money that it was owed. There also would not such heated rhetoric between Baghdad and Irbil the capital of Kurdistan. Parties like Speaker Osama Nujafi’s Mutahidun might be more willing to join a coalition as well since it currently opposes Maliki returning to office. A new national unity government could therefore be put together based upon the shared animosity towards the premier and make some deals between the lists.
Those short-term gains however would not overcome Iraq’s deep-seated institutional problems. For instance, any new coalition would still be based upon ethnosectarian quotas where ministers and other officials are named not by their competence, but rather by their party being Sunni, Shiite, or Kurdish. The endemic corruption would not end as this has become a means of governance where every winning party gets to steal part of the government pie to enrich itself and maintain its patronage networks. The economy would still be the most oil dependent in the world, and the parliament would be no closer to passing an oil law as the Sadrists and ISCI both want central control over the industry, while the Kurds want autonomy. Other reforms that have been called on for years such as ending deBaathification are unlikely to come about since parties like the Sadrists are ardent supporters of it. The competence of the Iraqi Security Forces would not suddenly improve, and neither would its counter productive tactics either. The new premier would likely follow the same types of coup proofing tactics that Maliki and every other leader in the Middle East has done, which is to put loyalists in top positions and maintain Maliki's separate chain of command over the army and police. Finally, every government since 2005 has been a national unity one. The simple inclusion of parties from each group did not stop the insurgency back then and will not deter it now. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), the Baathist Naqshibandi, and others are not interested in being included the government, but rather want to overthrow it. Sunni votes were spread across several different parties as well who do not agree with each other showing that at least those who voted would not suddenly unite either, because there is no agreement upon which party or individual should be the leader. Without solving these long-term issues Iraq’s future would still appear dim.
The talk of replacing Maliki is a popular one, but it provides no real solutions to Iraq’s deep seated problems and divisions. The greater cooperation amongst the major lists that might emerge in the aftermath of Maliki not be re-elected premier would likely fade with time, and all the internal political divisions over centralism versus federalism, the oil industry, etc. would re-emerge. Not only that, but the appearance of a new united front amongst the elite is not going to suddenly lead to a Sunni consensus to try politics again or more importantly end the insurgency. Therefore any short-term gains from Maliki being replaced will not pan out over time leaving Iraq still a very divided and violent country.
.. ouch .. rather negative, yet spiced with the reality speckles it's unfortunately palatable .. yet there seems some consensus that 'claiming constitutionally bound' Maliki is not the best guy to run the show ..
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Maliki rejects calls for emergency government as battle rages at former US air base
26 Jun 2014
Iraqi Shiite fighters, flashing the sign of victory, stand at the back of a technical fighting vehicle during a parade on 21 June in the capital, Baghdad.
Embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Wednesday rejected demands from rival politicians for an emergency national unity government, as al-Qaida-inspired insurgents gained more ground, assaulting a former US air base and pushing toward one of the country's largest dams.
In his weekly address to the nation, he described such efforts as a "rebellion" against the constitution. The United States is pressuring Iraq to create a more inclusive government, urging Maliki, a Shiite, to reach out to the country's disaffected Sunni Muslim minority.
With the country's conflict expanding, Baghdad is locked in a period of intense political maneuvering that could result in Maliki's loss of the premiership. Given the violence, he is likely to struggle to form a government although his party won the largest share of the vote in April parliamentary elections, analysts said.
Despite his outright rejection of a "national salvation" government demanded by politicians, including the secular Shiite Ayad Allawi, he struck a somewhat conciliatory tone in his speech. He urged political parties to lay aside their differences before the first session of Iraq's newly elected parliament, expected to take place next week.
We desperately need a united national stance to defy terrorism," said Maliki.
His speech, delivered two days after he met with Secretary of State John Kerry, contrasted sharply with his public declarations earlier in the crisis, which have appealed to religious motivations and called for citizens to protect the country's Shiite Muslim shrines.
Maliki issued the appeal as Sunni Muslim militants attacked one of Iraq's largest air bases and seized several small oil fields north of the capital, news agencies reported.
In addition, insurgents were advancing on the Haditha Dam and hydroelectric power plant on the Euphrates River about 280 kilometres northwest of Baghdad.
There were also reports that Iran is stepping up its intervention on behalf of Maliki, secretly supplying military equipment and using drones to conduct aerial surveillance.
In Brussels, where he attended NATO meetings Wednesday, Kerry said the conflict in Iraq has "been widened obviously in the last days with reports of [Iranian Revolutionary Guard] personnel, some people from Iran being engaged in Iraq, perhaps even some Syrian activities therein."
Kerry told reporters, "That's one of the reasons why government formation is so urgent, so that the leaders of Iraq can begin to make the decisions necessary to protect Iraq without outside forces moving to fill a vacuum." He said he briefed other NATO foreign ministers about his meetings with Iraqi leaders earlier this week in Baghdad and Irbil.
Striking a positive note, Kerry also said he was not sure what Maliki meant in rejecting a "salvation government" but that the rest of Maliki's address was in line with what he pledged to do in their meeting.
Syrian government aircraft bombed Sunni militant targets inside Iraq on Tuesday, further broadening the crisis that is threatening to engulf the entire Middle East. Israeli warplanes and rockets struck targets inside Syria.
Iraqi news media reported that at least 20 people were killed and 93 injured in the strike by Syrian jets on an Iraqi border town controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Western officials who confirmed the attack said they had no casualty details on the strike, which targeted a market in the town of Qaim, according to the nongovernment National Iraqi News Agency.
CNN reported Wednesday that at least 57 Iraqi civilians were killed and more than 120 others injured in Syrian airstrikes on several border areas of Anbar province Tuesday, including Rutba, Walid and Qaim.
In Washington, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Bernadette Meehan, said the United States has "no reason to dispute these reports" of Syrian airstrikes inside Iraq. But she stressed that "the solution to the threat confronting Iraq is not the intervention of the Assad regime, which allowed [ISIL] to thrive in the first place," or the involvement of "militias." She referred to the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and to notorious Iraqi Shiite militias that previously targeted both Sunnis and US forces.
Instead, Meehan said, the Iraqi government "must focus now on strengthening its internal political and security institutions in a non-sectarian way."
Iraqi state media initially reported that the attacks near Iraq's western border with Syria were carried out by US drones, a claim that the Pentagon quickly and forcefully denied. The Defense Department said that 90 additional US troops arrived in Iraq, part of up to 300 military advisers whom President Obama said last week he would deploy to assess the situation before taking any further US military action.
A statement said that US aircraft are now flying 30 to 35 manned and unmanned daily surveillance flights over Iraq.
On Capitol Hill, Sen. Timothy Kaine, D-Virginia, normally a supportive ally of the Obama administration, argued that President Obama is required to obtain congressional approval for any US combat action in Iraq. Obama has consulted with congressional leaders, but the administration has indicated that it does not feel it needs legislative approval to launch airstrikes in Iraq.
"The current crisis in Iraq, while serious and posing the possibility of a long-term threat to the United States, is not the kind of conflict where the president can or should act unilaterally," Kaine said in a floor speech. "If the United States is to contemplate military action in Iraq, the president must seek congressional authorisation."
Islamist militants, meanwhile, launched an assault Wednesday on a large air base formerly used by the United States, Reuters news agency reported.
Fighters from ISIL and allied Sunni tribes battled government forces in Yathrib, 54 miles north of Baghdad, Reuters reported. Insurgents surrounded a massive air base nearby, known as Camp Anaconda during the US occupation, striking it with mortars. Eyewitnesses told the news agency the air base was under siege on three sides.
Militants also overran the Ajeel oil site 30 kilometres east of Tikrit, where at least three small oil fields produce 28,000 barrels of crude oil a day, the news agency quoted a local engineer as saying. The site supplies crude to the Baiji oil refinery, the scene of pitched battles since last week.
The government's al-Iraqiya television channel on Wednesday showed one of its reporters landing by helicopter at the Baiji refinery and briefly interviewing about a dozen counterterrorism troops. But the footage was scrubbed of its usual date stamp, raising suspicions about its intended aim of showing that the refinery remains under government control.
The main US effort Tuesday was on the diplomatic front, as Kerry traveled to Irbil, the Kurdish regional capital, to urge leaders there to remain part of Iraq. As they met, fighters from local Sunni tribes, apparently working with ISIS militants, wrested control of at least part of Iraq's largest oil refinery from government troops.
"We are facing a new reality and a new Iraq," Massoud Barzani, president of the semiautonomous Kurdish government, told Kerry at the start of their meeting.
An independent country is a long-held goal for many in Iraq's Kurdish minority, numbering about 6.5 million. Some Kurdish leaders see an opportunity in the rapid advance of the insurgents and the slow, disorganised response by Maliki's Arab, Shiite-dominated government.
Throughout his visit to Iraq, including in talks with Maliki and Sunni leaders Monday in Baghdad, Kerry has argued that Iraq risks collapsing unless a new governing coalition representing all sects and ethnicities is quickly formed.
That argument is harder to make in the Kurdish region, which has several vast oil fields and a long history of at least partial self-rule. The Kurds also have their own defense force, the pesh merga, separate from the Iraqi military that largely melted away in the face of advancing ISIL forces.
[ ah, yet ISIS(L) and the Kurds have different ways .. there is a difference between wanting a semi-autonomous region in Iraq, even if it toward independence one day it would be by peaceful means, rather than wanting a borderless caliphate created by violence ]
This month, as the ISIL militants overran the northern city of Mosul and headed south, pesh merga forces quickly secured the oil capital of Kirkuk, which lies just outside the official regional borders but which Kurds have long demanded be included in their territory.
US officials traveling with Kerry, who arrived late Tuesday in Brussels, said he had raised the question of possible Kurdish secession during his hour-long session with Barzani, but that most of their discussion focused on strategy to form a new Iraqi government.
In an interview, Kerry was asked about Barzani's "new reality" remark.
"A united Iraq is a stronger Iraq, and our policy is to respect the territorial integrity of Iraq as a whole," Kerry told NBC. "President Barzani understands that" and will participate in the government formation process, he said. Iraq has until Monday to form a new parliament following elections in April; parliament will then choose a new government.
The United States has long feared that formation of an independent Kurdistan in present-day Iraq would not only weaken Iraq but also set off secession attempts or civil war in neighboring nations with Kurdish minorities.
Commenting Wednesday on Kerry's visit, Safeen Dizayee, a spokesman in Irbil for the Kurdistan Regional Government, said: "Nobody said to him, 'We want to be independent, and what do you think?' It was a matter of explaining to him our perspective on the new reality."
Dizayee said Kurdish independence "can't be achieved through violence." Such a step "has to be discussed with Baghdad," he said, but not with a government that does not control its own territory. "We're talking about a Baghdad with a representative parliament, operating according to the principles of democracy."
He said the Iraqi constitution "has been violated" and that Iraq must be restructured. "Adherence to the constitution is the only thing that can keep Iraq united. . . . When there's a violation, this opens other doors." He added: "The last resort is going to the people and letting them decide."
Dizayee said Kurdish forces' recent seizures of territory, including Kirkuk, have not established "new boundaries," Rather, he said, "it has just been a matter of securing those regions" from the ISUS insurgents. Before the fall of Mosul to ISUS two weeks ago, the Kurdish Regional Government controlled 45 per cent of Kurdistan's nearly 33,000 square miles, Dizayee said. "Now, 90 per cent of the remaining territory has been secured."
Washington Post staff writers Anne Gearan in Irbil and Brussels, Ben Van Heuvelen in Irbil, Loveday Morris and Liz Sly – The Washington Post Abigail Hauslohner in Kirkuk and William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report. Image: Ahmad Al-Rubaye / AFP / Lehtikuva
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