Allawi Maneuverings
Continue Al-Maliki to Shuffle Cabinet, Cut out Sadrists
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Allawi Maneuverings Continue;
Al-Maliki to Shuffle Cabinet, Cut out Sadrists;
Huge Bomb at Ramadi Kills 12, Wounds 22
Al-Hayat reports that Iyad Allawi, a secular ex-Baathist Shiite who leads the
Iraqi National List (25 seats in parliament), visited Kurdistan on Saturday. He
is attempting to convince the Kurdistan Alliance to join his new coalition in
parliament. Allawi has said that his list will leave the 'national unity
government' headed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Allawi's list is small and he is deeply disliked by most of the religious
Shiites that dominate parliament. I can't imagine that he can actually form a
government given the present distribution of seats. But al-Hayat reports that
Allawi was accompanied on his trip to Kurdistan by none other than US ambassador
Zalmay Khalilzad, which the daily read as a sign of US support for dumping al-Maliki
and trying to install Allawi as Prime Minister. (Allawi served as interim prime
minister in 2004, having been appointed by the US and UN for this purpose. He is
an old CIA asset.)
Under this pressure, Nuri al-Maliki says he is going to restructure the Iraqi
cabinet. Rumors are apparently flying in Baghdad that the PM will cut all six
representatives of the Sadr Movement loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr from his cabinet,
and a number of high government officials may face prosecution for links to
death squads. I saw al-Maliki briefly interviewed on the cabinet change on Arab
satellite t.v., and he seemed to me subdued, depressed, and under pressure. He
was glancing down and did not seem very animated.
If al-Maliki looses the 32 Sadrist members of parliament, he would be a
decidedly minority prime minister. It is not clear to me that the Fadila Party,
popular in Basra and holding 15 seats in the federal parliament, ever rejoined
the United Iraqi Alliance after al-Maliki took the petroleum portfolio away from
them. The UIA had 130 seats in the 275 seat parliament, but needs 138 for a
simple majority. UIA leaders have won votes by getting some Shiite members of
Allawi's Iraqi National List to vote with them, and by joining with the
Kurdistan Alliance (53 seats, but the Kurdish fundamentalists, who have 5 seats,
usually vote with the KA).
With only 82 members left in his United Iraqi Alliance (one member of the
Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq had to flee to Iran when it was
revealed that he had helped in an attack on the US and French embassies in
Kuwait in 1983), al-Maliki would be completely at the mercy of the Kurdistan
Alliance. Even this truncated UIA-plus-KA coalition could only guarantee 135
votes, not quite a majority (though as I mentioned above, in fact the Kurdistan
Islamic Union usually votes with the other Kurds, so that would make 140). If
the Sadrists and Fadila are so alienated as to abstain, and Allawi really could
detach the Kurds from the UIA, then it seems to me that the al-Maliki government
would fall at some point.
Of course, on any particular issue, Fadila and the Sadrists might still vote
with al-Maliki, even if they are annoyed with him.
The Kurds and the Sunni Arabs could theoretically put together 111 seats, and if
they were joined by Allawi, that would be 136. With the five delegates from the
Kurdistan Islamic Union, they'd have a bare majority of 141. However, the Sunni
Arabs are mostly die hard opposed to both loose federalism and to the Kurdish
annexation of Kirkuk province, and Sunni Arab guerrillas have chased 70,000
Kurds out of the northern city of Mosul. Moreover, the Kurds despise ex-Baathists,
who are prominent among the Sunni Arabs and on Allawi's list. And, the Sunni
Arabs mostly want the US out, whereas the Kurds very much want American troops
to stay. I think such a Sunni Arab/ ex-Baathist/ Kurdistan coalition in
parliament, while it is theoretically possible, is unlikely and if it came to
pass would fall apart quickly. Moreover, if you excluded the majority Shiites
from power in this way, it would provoke substantial protests and instability in
the South.
Still, one could imagine major changes in the Iraqi government in coming months
once it becomes clear that the surge has failed and the US has run out of purely
military options. One danger of tinkering with the government after you
mobilized all those voters is that there could be a violent reaction if the
changes were viewed as simple imperialist imposition.
