Iraq: the last days of Maliki?
Soldiers and militiamen have spread out across Baghdad, surrounding what used to be called the Green Zone which contains most of the ministries.
But to whom are they loyal? Not the new President, Fouad Masoum, or even the Iraqi state but the embattled Prime Minister – or possibly former Prime Minister – Nouri al-Maliki.
Iraq has fallen apart, as jihadi fighters from the Islamic State have joined with Sunni tribes to rout government forces from the centre of the country, while the Kurds have seized more territory and all but declared their own state in the north.
After months of US pressure for the prime minister to step down, senior members of his own Dawa party have joined senior clergy who feared that Maliki’s political survival might be at the expense of a unitary state.
“Maliki was so busy fighting for his political life in Baghdad, he wasn’t focusing on fighting for the life of Iraq,” said Toby Dodge, head of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics.
Today, the president called on Haidar al Abadi, a former adviser to Maliki from his Dawa party, to form a new government. Maliki, it seems, has lost the political battle – but he hasn’t given up.
“His supporters are all on Firdous Square cheering for him,” said an Iraqi journalist I contacted by phone. “He is not going to accept Abadi to be the next prime minister.”
Maliki may have lost the support of politicians but the military high command are still his men, promoted not for their competence but for their personal loyalty.
They may have run away when IS fighters attacked Mosul, abandoning swathes of the country, but Maliki sees that as a less serious crime than turning against him.
The political battle in Baghdad has a direct impact on the military battle on the ground. Jihadi fighters from the Islamic State are advancing towards the Kurdish city of Irbil, but Iraqi forces are in disarray, unable to fight effectively, leaving the battle to the Kurdish peshmerga and – since the weekend – the US airforce.
A new government in Baghdad needs not only to reach out to Sunnis and Kurds, repairing some of the damage done by what Professor Dodge calls Maliki’s “Shi’a chauvinism”, but also to reform the military leadership.
The Americans have been pushing hard for Maliki to step down to make way for a less paranoid, more statesmanlike candidate, but Haidar al Abadi is unlikely to change radically the policies that have alienated Iraq’s Sunnis and Kurds. He is seen as a weak, compromise figure – rather as Maliki himself was when he came to power in 2006.
The US military has been pulled back into Iraq, using air power to attack IS, but President Obama has been clear that the conflict in Iraq is fundamentally an internal political not a sectarian or military problem.
He’s right, but what Professor Dodge calls “shifting the furniture at the top table,” is unlikely to provide a solution. And as long as Nouri al Maliki refuses to step down, the Iraqi government is doing no governing at all, let alone getting a grip on the military disaster to the north.
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