Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is gathering force in Baghdad. And although
the United States is counseling against this change of government, a senior U.S.
official in the Iraqi capital says it's a moment of "breakthrough or breakdown"
for Maliki's regime.
The new push against Maliki comes from Kurdish leaders, who, U.S. and Iraqi
sources told me, sent him an ultimatum in late December.
The Kurds are upset that Maliki hasn't delivered on promises they say he made to
them last summer. Maliki pledged then that his government would pass an oil law
and a regional-powers law, and that it would conduct a referendum on the future
of Kirkuk. None of these promises has been delivered, and the Kurds are angry.
The strongest anti-Maliki voice is Massoud Barzani, the dominant political
leader in Kurdistan. Barzani agreed to back Maliki last summer after a personal
telephone call from President Bush. Now, fuming about Turkish attacks across the
border last month and the delay on Kirkuk, Barzani is on the warpath.
In a telephone interview Tuesday from Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador
to Baghdad, said his message to the Kurds was: "We think everyone should be
placing emphasis on making the government more effective, not on changing the
government."
Although U.S. officials are counseling against removing Maliki, they agree that
the prime minister must govern more effectively and inclusively in coming months
— or suffer the "breakdown" described by the senior U.S. official.the government
isn't doing what it's supposed to do," he explained.
The anti-Maliki forces would like to replace him with Adel Abdul Mahdi, one
Iraq's vice presidents and a leader of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, headed
by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Mahdi's supporters think they can muster the 138 votes
needed for a no-confidence vote in parliament, by combining 53 votes from the
Kurdish parties with 55 votes from Sunni groups and 30 from Hakim's Islamic
Council. Add another 40 votes from supporters of former prime ministers Ayad
Allawi and Ibrahim al-Jafari, and you're close to the two-thirds majority needed
to form a new government.
The rumor mill in Baghdad is already floating the names of officials who would
take Cabinet posts in a new government. The Kurds are said to want key security
portfolios, perhaps including the control over intelligence through the Ministry
of National Security. Various candidates have been proposed to take over the
Energy Ministry — and halt what is said to be massive smuggling of oil from the
southern Iraqi pipeline across the border to Iran.
The biggest obstacle to removing Maliki is the Shiite religious leader, Grand
Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who is said to be frustrated with Maliki's poor
performance but wary of dividing the Shiite alliance. "Najaf (Sistani's
headquarters) is unhappy," said one top Iraqi leader. But the senior U.S.
official said he was "certain" that Sistani had not yet blessed any change of
government.
Rather than dumping Maliki, the Bush administration hopes to work around him, by
operating through a coalition known as the "three plus one." That group
includes, in addition to Maliki, President Talabani and vice presidents Mahdi
and Tariq al-Hashimi. "Our message to Maliki is that you can't govern solo. You
have to govern as part of a group," says the second senior U.S. official. With a
push from this governing alliance, Crocker hopes the Iraqi parliament will pass
a law easing de-Baathification as early as the end of this week, and a budget by
mid-January — finally breaking the political logjam.
For an America caught up in its own political drama, the Baghdad primary seems
remote. But what happens in Iraq during the next several weeks will shape events
there for the rest of 2008. For Maliki, just back in Baghdad after a visit to
London doctors for treatment for exhaustion, it's "make or break" time.
