Baghdad: Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki has long held the title of “commander in chief” of Iraq, but it was largely ceremonial — until now. With the shocking collapse of his army before a Sunni militant assault and the potential threat that it poses to Baghdad and the Shiite-led government, it has become his identity.
He is spending much of his time on the military side of the presidential compound, while some of his close civilian aides have taken to wearing starched military fatigues. He spends the better part of his day running the war.
He meets with military commanders, travels to the front lines, makes speeches at recruiting drives rallying young Shiite men and, not infrequently, falls into fits of anger, according to members of his inner circle.
What he does not do, by all accounts, is spend much time on the political reconciliation with the Sunni Arabs and Kurds that his international allies in Washington and Tehran have insisted is his country’s only possible salvation. Even his top aide in charge of reconciliation said Monday that he thinks it is all but hopeless.
“Now there’s a war, there’s not reconciliation,” said Amir Al Khuzai, a longtime friend of Al Maliki’s.
“With whom do we reconcile?” he said.
President Barack Obama has made it clear that the United States will not provide military support unless Al Maliki engineers a drastic change in policy, reaching out to Sunnis and Kurds in a show of national unity against the Sunni militants, whose shock troops are the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). Without that, analysts say, the country is at risk of a renewed sectarian war in which Baghdad could lose control over nearly a third of the country for the foreseeable future.
But Al Maliki is showing few signs of changing his ways. Just as he did in a similar, although not nearly as threatening, crisis in 2008 in Basra, he has doubled down on the military option. He is determined to use the Shiite fighters he trusts to stabilise the country and, he hopes, rout the Sunni insurgents and reimpose the government’s control over its territory.
In a rare show of concord, Obama has been joined by President Hassan Rouhani of Iran in pleading with Al Maliki to reach out to the Sunni Arabs and Kurds. As the Iraqi leader continues to resist those calls, though, the outside powers and prominent Iraqi politicians are increasingly questioning whether he will ever take such steps and, if not, whether to jettison him in favour of someone who will.
One of those waiting in the wings should Al Maliki falter, Shiite politicians say, is the one-time darling, longtime nemesis of the United States, the mercurial Ahmad Chalabi.
For now, Al Maliki’s public message to Obama and Rouhani is that it is just not possible to work with the Kurds and Sunnis right now, that the army first needs to retake lost ground.
Shiite politicians have said there are some immediate gestures Al Maliki could make that would help ease the tensions. He could release the thousands of Sunni prisoners detained by his security forces and being held without trial. He could make common cause with Sunnis and Kurds with statements against the Sunni militants, and he could work with them to bolster the military instead of turning to Shiite militias.
Convinced that there is a conspiracy to undermine him, Al Maliki speaks often of “failed politicians” who are working with the Isil, while his associates describe “dirty deals” between the Kurds, the Islamic State and the Sunnis. The accusations are then answered in kind by Sunnis who have lost patience and now simply want the prime minister to resign.
Many Shiite politicians are deeply uncomfortable with Al Maliki’s more indiscriminate condemnations. Saying the Kurds support the Isil militants “is not a useful narrative,” said a former member of Al Maliki’s government. “We need the Kurds. Even the Iranians are telling him that.”
The worry is that, barring reconciliation, Iraq will split into a Sunnistan and a Shiastan, said a former ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker. Preventing that, he says, will take a heavy US diplomatic hand.
“Either we intervene at the White House and the secretary of state level or this is going to devolve into a bloody stalemate,” he said, “a line of demarcation between north and south, to be determined, but probably just north of Baghdad and the establishment of a de facto Al Qaida state, and that’s completely terrifying.”
The suggestion of many is that Al Maliki has lost so much credibility that the best thing that could happen would be to form a new government with a different leader who might inspire more trust. But for now Al Maliki is not stepping down, and it seems unlikely that there would be enough unity to anoint a successor anytime soon.
Many Shiite politicians, worried about the fate of the country, have begun offering alternatives to Al Maliki’s approach. Chalabi, a Shiite with ties to many groups, wants to change the narrative so that instead of accusing the army (Al Maliki has been threatening to arrest officers who left their posts in Mosul) he is reaching out to Kurds, thanking them for receiving refugees and recommending a national reconciliation.
“The collapse in Mosul is not the fault of the soldiers and officers,” Chalabi said. “It’s the fault of a corrupt and incompetent command structure.
He added: “We need a plan, but it must be drawn by a leadership that’s not tainted by incompetence and corruption. We need a plan to defend Baghdad and continue operations with the Kurds.”
For now the government’s dominant view is that the most recent security deterioration is the result of a conspiracy of Sunnis and Kurds, and because of that there is no point in reaching out to them at the senior level. That does not mean that Al Maliki has lost faith in all Sunnis. He still has words of praise for the Sunni tribes with whom he has long worked, and who have fought and lost large numbers in battling Al Qaida-type extremists in western Iraq.
But Al Maliki has little faith in the Sunni political leaders, said Al Khuzai and other Shiite colleagues.
As recently as last week in the wake of the fall of Mosul, Al Maliki appeared to have a chance to reach out and create a unified multisectarian, multiethnic bloc to fight the Isil militants and those who support them. In a long late-night meeting with Sunni and Kurdish leaders, it appeared they might emerge with a unified stand. Hours passed, and when they emerged there was no agreement.
It turned out the Sunnis proposed raising in effect a Sunni army, a sort of new version of the tribal Awakening Councils that fought Al Qaida in 2007 and 2008. But that idea was rejected by Al Maliki, even as the Shiite militias were beginning to organise.
While the idea of separate Sunni and Shiite armies is an indication of the depths of the sectarian divide, Al Maliki’s inability to use the moment to try to build trust is telling, and his outright rejection left the Sunni leaders with nothing to deliver to their supporters.
So the speaker of Parliament, Osama Al Nujaifi, a Sunni, delivered a scathing assessment of Al Maliki, further deepening the divide.
“We don’t want this prime minister; we reject him,” Al Nujaifi said. “We tried to take him down on more than one occasion.”
