23 June 2006
One month after choosing a cabinet and pledging to transform Iraq into a country ruled by law under a national unity government, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki finds himself bogged down by the same problems that paralyzed an array of politicians before him. Observers, both in and outside Iraq, look on bewildered as the same sectarian divisions that delayed the government’s formation for six months after the December elections crop up over every single issue, ranging from drawing up a security plan to establishing a national reconciliation initiative.
So is al-Maliki in the driving seat or not? Judging by last week’s surprise visit to Baghdad by US President George W. Bush, the answer is “not.” Many Iraqis regarded it as nothing more than a publicity stunt by a “guest” who summoned the premier and members of his government to the US embassy for a meeting they were not told about until minutes before. Security issues notwithstanding, the five-hour visit did nothing to build confidence in al-Maliki.
The first weeks of al-Maliki’s rule saw two major security events: the killing of Al-Qaeda’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq, and the biggest clampdown in Baghdad in three years of US occupation (EC Jun.9,p4). But the deployment of several thousand policemen and a nightly curfew have not stopped Iraqis being bombed, killed and kidnapped by the dozens every day.
Iraqis say the biggest challenge for al-Maliki comes from the militias sponsored by dominant Shiite groups who, together with Sunni insurgents, make daily life a nightmare for ordinary Iraqis. Not only are they carrying out tit-for-tat killings and beheadings, they are imposing a strict code of behavior and dress, especially on women, both Sunni and Shiite. The militias are the armed wings of the political groupings, mostly Shiite, that are fighting for influence and power all over Iraq, but particularly in and around Baghdad and the southern oil province of Basrah.
Each of the main parties making up the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, the biggest parliamentary coalition, has its own militia. These include the Supreme Council (it recently dropped “for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq” from its name), the Dawa party, the Fadilah party and the followers of fireband cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. And each of the militias is involved in sectarian score-settling against Sunnis and other Shiite groups.
Al-Maliki, who has bet his political future on making Iraq secure, knows that bringing insurgents into the political fold — under a so-called “national reconciliation initiative” — will be far easier than trying to dissolve the militias who take their orders from his political allies in the government or asserting the “state’s monopoly over power and authority,” one Iraqi analyst said. His proposal to disband militias or integrate them into the national army or police force was quickly challenged by other politicians, including the Kurdish leadership, who argued that their peshmerga fighters were a regular army, not a militia. The Iraqi constitution will not allow for regular armies if and when a federal state is established.
Nowhere is the war among Shiite militias more apparent than in Basrah. Iraqi analysts say it has been raging in the province for most of the past three years, but went unnoticed until it threatened to interrupt oil production and exports. Iraqis say the sectarian killings are motivated largely by a power struggle over oil smuggling, a practice that allegedly involves all the major Shiite parties. Al-Maliki has imposed a one-month state of emergency in the city, but there are no signs that any of the Shiite militias is willing to relinquish power to the state. Moreover, Iraqi sources say that even though the police are a symbol of state power, they owe their allegiance to a number of political parties, not the central government. “For the central government to win the militias’ war, it needs its own strong militia to fight that war, but it has none,” one source said.
The fight for Basrah extends into neighboring Iran, which Iraqi analysts say has been pulling the strings since the collapse of the Baath regime, using its close ties to Shiite parties to which it offered refuge when Saddam Hussein was in power. All the Shiite militias bar, al-Sadr’s al-Mahdi army, which was set up after the US-led invasion in 2003, have close links to Iranian power centers.
Oil minister Hussein al-Shahristani timidly accused Iran of having a hand in the smuggling wars this week, when he told state television he blamed “the Iranian coastguards for letting Iraqi smugglers’ boats … reach the Iranian coast and protecting them until they reach the open sea.” Local sources say Iran’s foothold in southern Iraq is not confined to the coastguards, being much larger and more important.
Iraqi analysts believe Basrah will make or break al-Maliki. The outcome will determine whether he’ll be the effective prime minister of Iraq, or the equivalent of the local governor of Baghdad.
By Ruba Husari, Dubai
(Published in Energy Compass June 23, 2006)