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Iraq’s futile elections

With their hopes for change dashed by chaos, Iraqis are losing interest in another meaningless set of elections, writes Salah Nasrawi
Shortly before Iraq kicked off the election campaign for the 2014 parliamentary polls last week, the Shia-led government sent a draft emergency bill to parliament that introduces draconian anti-democracy measures.
The National Safety Law, as it is billed, raises serious questions about the viability of the parliamentary elections as the government plans to twist the constitution and take unrelenting actions against its critics and opponents.
The proposed law gives the government the right to impose sweeping restrictions on the freedoms of movement, travel, speech and political activities.
Under the law, the government can impose censorship on media, personal letters, cables and emails as part of larger restrictions if it deems these necessary “to confront security threats from military or non-military actions”.
It can also declare curfews, issue house arrests, limit the opening hours of shops, take control of state economic assets and delay payments of government debts.
The law has yet to be ratified by the parliament, but concerns have been raised that Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, who is seeking a third consecutive term in office, might be planning the emergency measures in order to manipulate the elections. 
The elections, scheduled for 30 April, also come amid political turmoil, constitutional disputes and increasing instability in the country, which have cast heavy shadows over the polls.
Violence has risen sharply in the past year, fuelling fears that Iraq is slipping back into the all-out communal conflict that plagued the country following the US-led invasion in 2003 and left hundreds of thousands dead.
UN figures put the overall toll for 2013 at 8,873 deaths in violent attacks across Iraq, while nearly three thousand people have been killed this year alone, not including in the rebellious Sunni-populated town of Fallujah.
On the other hand, Iraq’s annual budget has been languishing in parliament over a dispute between the Baghdad central government and the self-ruled Kurdistan region. Political stalemate has gripped the country as ethno-sectarian bickering and disagreements over sharing power and oil revenues have continued vigorously.
Parliamentary elections are required to be held once every four years. In the event a group or coalition wins a majority of the seats, it can then go on to form a government.
More than 9,000 candidates are vying for the 328 seats in parliament. Dozens of hopefuls, including four current MPs, have been disqualified either for links with the former regime of former president Saddam Hussein, for their bad reputation, or for having criminal records. 
But the race still appears to be a wide-open competition between Iraq’s three main communities, the Shia, the Sunnis and the Kurds, whose candidates run on ethnic and sectarian tickets.
Iraq has been ruled by a Shia-led coalition government for the last decade, and questions now largely centre on whether the new parliament can ever hope to change the hopelessly dysfunctional ethno-sectarian based political system created by the Americans for the post-Saddam era.
Even before the election campaign officially kicked off on 1 April, the main contenders in the increasingly bitter battle to lead the violence-torn country had been intensifying their mobilisation and personal duels.
The polls are expected to worsen Iraq’s already fragile communal ties, as political parties typically conduct election campaigns by appealing to voters’ sectarian, ethnic or tribal backgrounds rather than to national issues.
The UN envoy to Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, has warned that the elections seem to be “highly divisive” as parties have been appealing to their sectarian bases at a time of worsening violence.
Al-Maliki is also eyeing a third term in office, even as he faces criticisms from opponents who accuse him of an authoritarian style of government at odds with Iraq’s post-Saddam constitutional system of political compromise and consensus-building.
They have also been attempting to capitalise on his failure to provide security and basic services in the country, as well as to curb the rampant corruption which has combined to make Iraq one of the most deadly and miserable places on earth.
Since the campaign started, the rhetoric against Al-Maliki has increased, with key politicians and religious leaders picking on his mistakes and political follies.
Top Sunni politician and speaker of the parliament Osama Al-Nujaifi warned on Sunday that Iraq’s failure would have far-reaching consequences, including serious “repercussions for the entire world”.
Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani has warned that the political process launched by the Americans and installing Al-Maliki in power is now “on the verge of failure”.
“Iraq is disintegrating,” he said in an interview with the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat on Friday.
Even Shia leaders who traditionally have defended Shia empowerment against Sunni opposition have become disenchanted with Al-Maliki’s policies.
Representatives of Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, who rarely speaks in public, have been urging voters to choose “new faces” instead of “the ones who have brought no good to Iraq”.
Another Grand Ayatollah, Basheer Najafi, has gone public in demanding that Al-Maliki step down. “If Al-Maliki stays in power, Iraq will never be able to stand up again,” he said in a statement last week.
Iraqi Shia leader Muqtada Al-Sadr also urged Al-Maliki not to run for a third term, accusing him of terrorising Sunnis so that they did not go to the polls in the upcoming elections.
He has repeatedly accused Al-Maliki of trying to “build a dictatorship” by excluding his partners from the government.
Now there are increasing signs that Barzani, Al-Sadr and the leader of the Shia Iraqi Islamic Council Ammar Al-Hakim are coordinating their efforts to stop Al-Maliki from getting a third term in office.
Al-Maliki seems to be unable to counter his opponents’ confident campaign, but he may be using the prolonged instability in the country to outmaneuver his opponents and even stage-manage crises.
The four-month standoff in the Sunni-dominated Anbar province between the Iraqi security forces and Al-Qaeda linked militants seems to be Al-Maliki’s best bet in appealing for Shia votes.
Many now fear that Al-Maliki will also use the emergency measures he has proposed to parliament, even though the new law has not been ratified, if he feels the chances of his reelection have been compromised.
Others believe that he may resort to drumming up hostile sentiments in order to deepen the divide between the two branches of Islam in Iraq in an attempt to gain more Shia votes.
In the latest escalation, al-Maliki has threatened to use “the most extreme force” against Sunni rebels who seized a major dam on the Euphrates and cut water supplies to southern Shia provinces.
This has raised fears that al-Maliki could use the new dispute to whip up the Shias against the Sunnis in order to garner more support among the Shias ahead of the elections.
In another worrying development, al-Maliki ordered security to be tightened around Baghdad this week in what officials say was a precautionary measure against a possible incursion of Al-Qaeda fighters from Sunni-dominated satellite towns into the capital.
Obviously, all these moves indicate that al-Maliki, who is facing electoral difficulty at the polls, is using the sectarian card to perpetuate fears among Shias and herd Shia voters in his direction.
One reason behind al-Maliki’s increasing resort to sectarian hectoring is the mounting evidence that the race will not attract a large portion of the electorate, even among Shia voters.
Frustration with al-Maliki’s self-serving and mostly authoritarian politics, combined with the fact that he has failed to bring security to the country, is expected to damp down turnout in the elections for the Iraqi parliament.
In post-Saddam Iraq’s first poll in 2005, when the elections were trumpeted as Iraq’s “example of democracy,” about 79.6 per cent of the electorate cast their votes. Four years later, only 64 per cent of voters showed up in polling stations.
Another low turnout was registered in the local elections in 2013, when only 50 per cent of people voted although three million new voters were added to the electoral rolls.
Many now fear that the wave of political apathy that has been sweeping Iraq will also dent voter turnout at this month’s balloting, as the country’s leaders fail to resolve political and sectarian tensions.
In fact, regardless of voter participation Iraq’s elections are increasingly proving to be meaningless, as they continue to produce sectarianism instead of genuine democracy and the rule of the people.
If the country’s present pointless elections mean anything, it is that they will change nothing and will remain a scandal for the country’s democracy. Indeed, many people in Iraq see things this way already, even if the sectarian politicians do not.
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An unnoticed massacre

The latest massacre in Iraq is just one more on an already long list of sectarian atrocities in the country, writes Salah Nasrawi

It took place on a warm and breezy spring day last week in a little town that provides beautiful views of two small rivers and surrounding citrus orchards and palm groves. The Sunni rebels who knew that the government forces were coming stood among lines of mud huts and concrete block houses ready to fight.

Buhriz, a rebel Sunni-dominated town in the mixed Diyalah province, was reportedly controlled by terrorists from the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) two days before the Iraqi army was due to try to take it back.

Hours before Iraq’s SWAT troops stormed Buhriz, the fragrance of orange flowers, which usually fills the air at this time of the year, was mixed with gunpowder smoke from the artillery shells fired by the Iraqi army.

When Buhriz eventually fell to the army on 23 March, a convoy of armed men in civilian clothes weaved its way behind the assaulting troops through the deserted streets right to the town centre.
What happened next in the troubled Sunni-dominated town remains unclear, but according to eyewitnesses suspected Shia militants raided Buhriz for hours without any intervention from the army.
The gunmen reportedly rounded up a group of men and shot them before hanging some of the bodies from electricity poles.
Among those who were killed were teenagers and elderly men, the eyewitnesses were quoted as saying, also telling Iraqi Sunni-controlled television networks that the gunmen had set fire to Sunni mosques, shops and houses.
Thousands of residents fled Buhriz to other Sunni-dominated towns in Diyalah. Other witnesses described how the attackers had arrived in trucks and on motorcycles under the eyes of the soldiers.
Iraq’s Al-Sharqiya television, which usually reflects Sunni views, said 27 people had been summarily executed in the massacre by what it described as militia members who had accompanied the army.
The television channel quoted Abdullah Al-Hayyali, the governor of Baquba, the provincial capital, as saying that at least five persons had been executed in the Nissan quarter of Buhriz while members of their families were watching.
The Qatari Al-Jazeera satellite channel also showed footage of bodies which it said belonged to men slain in Buhriz.
Though details remain sketchy, the finger of blame has been pointed at Shia militias.   The main Sunni bloc Mutahdoon accused what it termed as sectarian “militias” of attacking Buhriz but stopped short of naming any specific group.
It said the attack had been part of a plan to change the demographic profile of Diyalah, a reference to the sectarian cleansing of Sunnis from the province which has a diverse population of Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, ethnic Kurds and Turkoumans.
Mutahdoon, which is headed by the Sunni speaker of the Iraqi Parliament Osama Al-Nujaifi, also demanded an investigation into the atrocities.
Surprisingly, the government did not issue an official comment on the events in Buhriz, but a statement by the Interior Ministry a week later categorically denied the allegations of atrocities.
The ministry, which is responsible for the security forces, accused “some media outlets” and politicians of fabricating the allegations for “sectarian reasons.” It said the security forces had intervened in Buhriz only after a terrorist group had killed two policemen and a woman in the town. 
However, Ali Ghaidan, commander of the land forces that are operating under the command of the Ministry of Defence, gave a slightly different version of the events in Buhriz.
He told an Iraqi television station that locals had joined some twenty ISIL fighters in a fight to take control of the town. “The defeat of the armed men in Buhriz sent a strong message to the terrorists never to think again of reaching Buhriz,” Ghaidan said.
Violence in Buhriz is nothing new, since this is a town, with its tribal and farming community, that has been a haven for the Sunni insurgents who have been fighting the Shia-led government for years.
During the US occupation of Iraq, Buhriz became a flashpoint where US soldiers and Sunni rebels embittered by the US-led invasion of Iraq regularly fought fierce battles.
The small agricultural town, about 30 miles northwest of Baghdad, acquired the nickname of “Little Fallujah” after it became a symbol of Sunni resistance to both the Americans and the Shia-led government.
In 2006, American forces killed Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian founder and leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, in a village just north of Buhriz. Like many other towns in Diyalah, Buhriz has remained a stronghold for the Al-Qaeda-affiliated group the ISIL and other Sunni insurgents.
A cycle of violence, distrust and extremism has festered since the US troop withdrawal in 2011, and Sunnis who are complaining of marginalisation and exclusion have organised an anti-government rebellion in the area.
The violence has escalated since early January, when Sunni insurgents seized large parts of the area after government forces had dismantled a Sunni Muslim protest camp in the city of Ramadi.
Sunni rebels also stepped up their attacks against the military, police forces and pro-government tribes in other Sunni-populated provinces, such as Nineveh and Salah Al-Din.
The attacks and clashes in some of Baghdad’s outskirts have raised fears of a Sunni attempt to create a territorially controlled zone to encircle the capital and increase pressure on the government.
Buhriz seemed to be a key link among this ring of towns around Baghdad, since it needed to be under rebel control to create the zone.
According to some accounts, the ISIL fighters controlled the town for a full two full days before it was taken back by the army.
Different accounts suggested that security forces wearing ISIL-style black uniforms and checkered headdresses had entered the town to give the impression that Buhriz was being taken over by terrorists.   
However, the army’s onslaught seemed to be part of an effort to deny the Sunni rebels the territories to consolidate their power in areas where they can dominate.
The participation of the Shia militia, if confirmed, would be a major development in the ongoing sectarian conflict in Iraq and could usher in the collapse of the state’s security apparatus.
While Sunnis have been complaining about Shia hegemony in the army and police force, the direct participation of Shia militias in the fight against Sunni insurgents would be tantamount to a fully-fledged civil war.
Shia militias have reportedly begun to remobilise in recent months, including the Badr Organisation, Kataib Hizbullah, the Mahdi Army and Asaib Ahl Al-Haq. Reports abound about militiamen carrying out targeted or extrajudicial killings.
On the other hand, many Sunnis are questioning the terrorist tactics used by the ultra-violent ISIL, such as execution-style killings and indiscriminate killings and mass murders, which they consider as provocative to the Shia.
On 20 January, ISIL members killed four members of the SWAT near Ramadi. A video posted online showed ISIS members firing on four SWAT fighters in an execution-style killing.
SWAT, or Special Weapons And Tactics, are Iraq’s special forces, which are tasked with fighting terrorism. Iraqi Sunnis accuse the forces of brutality, including the use of excessive force and the destruction of property.
These atrocities raise fears of tit-for-tat sectarian killings, and the massacre in Buhriz could offer a snapshot of what is now going on in Iraq.
Many Iraqis believe that the killings in Buhriz could be retaliation for the execution of SWAT soldiers by the ISIL.
The truth about the Buhriz massacre is not known for the time being, and like many horrific events of the war in Iraq it may be buried with the bones of its victims.
However, years of bitter sectarian fighting is now deepening the divide between the two branches of Islam in Iraq, as Sunni and Shia politicians wage campaigns against each other to drum up hostile sentiments.
“The militias, which are Iran’s agents, wouldn’t have dared to kill civilians without a license from Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki,” wrote former Sunni vice-president Tariq Al-Hashemi on his Facebook page following the Buhriz events.
“When seven Shias get killed, I want seven Sunnis to get killed, too,” Shia lawmaker Hanan Al-Fatlawi told the Al-Sumeria television station last week.
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No friends for Iraq
As this week’s Arab summit sidestepped Iraq‘s quagmire, Iran and the United States were getting ready to step in, writes Salah Nasrawi

For months Iraqhas been in turmoil as political wrangles and grave sectarian violence continue to grip the country. A general election is due in few weeks and many fear that it won’t bring peace because Iraq‘s political system has broken down.
National efforts to resolve the sectarian conflicts have failed as rival factions remained entrenched in their positions on a wide variety of disputes, primarily on power and wealth sharing.
This has prompted frustration among ordinary Iraqis who see the chances of defusing the situation peacefully shrink and ethno-sectarian struggle escalates and their country plunges deeper in violence.
So, can world and regional powers assemble enough diplomacy to guide the country out of its current impasse where Iraqis have failed?
An Arab summit in Kuwait this week has ignored the worsening situation in Iraq despite its direct bearing on the regional stability and peace. Far little attention was paid in the summit which ended Wednesday to the crisis in Iraqthan other Middle East issues.
But surprisingly, the United Statesand Iran, the other foreign nation which is accused of muddling in Iraq, have reportedly succeeded in easing current tensions to pave the way for the 30 April election.
While Iran has sent its point man in Iraq, the United States dispatched its top diplomat on Iraqi affairs in what Baghdad media described as separate mediating efforts to solve Iraq‘s on going crisis.
As the story goes the two emissaries managed, each in his own way, to head off further deterioration in the strained relationships between Iraq’s main communities, though there has been no talk about durable solutions to Iraq’s outstanding problems.
First, we read about a USenvoy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq Brett McGurk, being able to broker an oil deal between the Shia-led government and the Kurdistan Regional authority that had helped to achieve a breakthrough on the state budget.
Under the agreement Iraqi Kurdistan will export crude via the country’s main oil marketing company, potentially removing a major obstacle in a dispute with the central government over oil export.
McGurk, who shuttled between Baghdad and Kurdistan in diplomacy, said his mission was part of the UScommitments to Iraq under a Strategic Framework Agreement that cleared way to the US troop withdrawal in 2011.
The “US is proud to stand with the Iraqi people, equidistant from all political blocs, as neutral broker and facilitator where appropriate,” McGurk wrote on his twitter account on Saturday.
“The United Stateswill continue to serve as a neutral broker with all sides as talks accelerate in the coming weeks,” Vice President Joe Biden later said in a statement.
Kurdistan Regional Government had insisted to take oil exports into its own hands through a pipeline it built bypassing the central government and.
But a statement following McGurk’s shuttling said it agreed to export 100,000 barrels of oil per day through the Iraqi pipeline network from 1 April “as a good will gesture” until the issue is solved.
Some media outlets also suggested that McGurk was engaged in mediation effort to end a four-month standoff in Iraq‘s western province of Anbar between the Shia-led government and Sunni insurgents.
The USmediation was reportedly involving the withdrawal of the Iraqi army from the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah in return for new security arrangements that would give local authorities a larger say in policing the province.
 As for Iran, Iraqi media outlets suggested that General Qasim Soleimani, Iran‘s most influential intelligence official, visited Baghdad‘s Green Zone last week in a bid to defuse an internecine dispute that threatens the ruling Shia alliance.
Soleimani has reportedly succeeded in brokering a tentative truce between Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and other top Shia leaders who have engaged themselves in a nasty war of words in a highly polarized election campaign.
According to different accounts, Soleimani, who supervises Iranian foreign policy in Iraq, pressurized the Shia leaders to mend fences in order to avert the breakdown of the Shia alliance ahead of next month’s polls.
Tense relations between Al-Maliki and Shia leaders Amar Al-Hakim and Muqtada Al-Sadr have been further strained in recent months as Iraqis remain split over Al-Maliki’s attempts to bolster his chances for a third term.
Iran remained tight-lipped about Soleimani’s business in Iraqbut Iraqi media also reported he was involved in attempts to resolve the disputes between Al-Maliki and the Kurdistan Region and Sunni politicians over their ongoing disputes with his government.
Yet, the question remains whether McGurk and Soleiman were actually trying to provide a way out for Iraqor their initiatives were just part of their efforts to consolidate a détente between the two countries following Iran‘s historic nuclear deal last year. 
Indeed, few Iraqis are convinced that Iranand the United States have enough good will to help Iraqending its lingering tragedies no matter what initiatives they are putting forth.
Many Iraqis fear that Iran and the United Statesmay turn their country into a play ground as they are trying to assemble a regional package that could ease the path for a larger geostrategic deal.
Iraqis who see their bickering leaders fail to end the bloodletting and heal a divided nation find the reports about the peace efforts by the two protagonists too good to be true.
The Arab-Kurdish schism is wider than could be bridged by flamboyant diplomacy or self-congratulatory tweets.
Soon after McGurk flew back to Washington Kurdish politicians resumed their criticism of Al-Maliki government over its policy toward Kurdistan. Many Kurdish MPs said they will continue boycotting the parliament over the budget dispute.
Relationship between Iraq’s semi-independent northern region and Baghdad have remained at low ebb since December when Kurdistan completed a 400,000 barrels a day pipeline which will allow the region to export oil independently through Turkey and Baghdad retaliated by cutting off the region’s revenues.
In one of his most scathing attacks against Kurds, Al-Maliki warned this week that Kurdistan can do alone with its oil.
“The Kurds had the illusion that they could control the oil in the north themselves. They believed that neighboring Turkeywould support their plans. But the Turks are not Kurdistan‘s sponsor. On the contrary, they would devour the Kurds in one bite,” he told German Der Spiegel in an interview.
“Kurds only have a future as part of Iraq….. And only Iraqcan safeguard the production and export of that oil,” he said.
Relationships between Kurds and Shia have taken a nose dive this week following the murder of a Shia journalist by a member of the Kurdish presidential guards.
Tensions rose at the scene of the murder after the shooting sparking ethnic fever with mourners and protesters shouting anti Kurds slogans.
Al-Maliki himself rushed to the scene where he stood over the body of the slain journalist and vowed that he would personally avenge his death.
“It is my responsibility to avenge this killing. Blood is for blood,” Al-Maliki told the state-owned Iraqiya television as he left the scene.
Such anger reveals deep-seated hostility which can only worsen the already blazing bickering between the Kurds and the Shia-led government.
Kurdish politicians condemned what they termed as anti Kurd’s chauvinism and demanded that Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani stand up to Al-Maliki.
  On the other hand, Soleimani seems to have failed to achieve a breakthrough in relationships between Al-Maliki and his key Shia rivals. Soon after he left Baghdadthe two camps escalated their rhetoric.  
In launching his group’s election campaign on Friday, Al-Sadr called on all Iraqis to participate in the forthcoming elections to prevent “thieves” and “beneficiaries” from gaining power.
Al-Sadr, who had denounced Al-Maliki earlier as a “tyrant” called on his followers to go to polls en mass in order to prevent Iraq falling again to a “dictatorship.”
It is bloody business as usual in Iraq, where politics is run by rival warlords and greedy political leaders who compete for power and resources.
At the same time, neither Irannor the United Statescan claim that they have a solution to the Iraqi crisis because they are part of its problems.
Iraq needs patriotic, foresighted and honest leaders who should do everything to stave off its collapse with the help of true friends, backed by as much outside advice as the country will stomach.
Unfortunately, as the Kuwait summit and all previous Arab gatherings have shown, Iraq has no real friends who can reach out to during crisis. Tehran and Washington will still be able to fill the vacuum.
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The enemy next door

Desperate to win a third term in office, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki is turning up the rhetoric against his neighbours, writes Salah Nasrawi
Last week, Iraq’s Shia Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki invited dozens of foreign representatives for a conference in Baghdad in a bid to enlist international support for his government’s efforts in combating terrorism.
Al-Maliki used his lofty rhetoric to press on his guests the idea that the unabated violence in Iraq was driven by foreign fighters and sought international help to curb the flow of funding to terrorists from Iraq’s Arab neighbours.
Internally, Al-Maliki has been in a fighting mood recently, charging his political rivals with aiding terrorism. The counter-terrorism conference seemed to be designed to put his foreign audience on notice. 
Nonetheless, in both cases Al-Maliki has seemed to be trying to shore up domestic and world support for his faltering government just as the 2014 elections season gears up.
The Iraqi organisers said that Al-Maliki’s government would present evidence to the conference that “certain countries” supported terrorism on Iraq’s soil, but it was not clear if in fact it did.
Earlier, Al-Maliki had accused neighbouring Saudi Arabia, which shares a long border with Iraq, and the Gulf state of Qatar of backing militant groups in Iraq and across the Middle East as well as terrorism worldwide.
“They are attacking Iraq through Syria and in a direct way, and they have announced a war on Iraq, as they announced it on Syria. Unfortunately, this war is on a sectarian and political basis,” he told the French television network France 24.
“These two countries are primarily responsible for the sectarian, terrorist and security crisis of Iraq,” he said.
Yet, as the conference ended it became clear that the delegates were not interested in buying Al-Maliki’s argument that Iraq’s problem was that of terrorism alone.
A final statement only paid lip service to Baghdad, suggesting instead that Iraq should “forge a national strategy to fight terrorism based on legal and national bases and resolve all social, economic and cultural disputes.”
Al-Maliki has in the past blamed unnamed Arab neighbours for interfering in Iraq, but by accusing Saudi Arabia and Qatar of declaring war on the country he has now made a bold play to turn up the heat on the Sunni Arab countries by implicating them in destabilising Iraq. 
As the elections loom, Al-Maliki seems to be using the confrontation to consolidate the public behind his rule, tapping into the deep well of emotion about the Iraqi Shia in the past suffering at the hands of their Sunni neighbours.
The direct attack on the Sunni Gulf governments comes as Iraq is gripped in its worst prolonged period of bloodshed since the US-led invasion in 2003, with some 2,000 people killed already this year.
Al-Maliki’s accusations came shortly after Saudi Arabia unveiled a new counter-terrorism package that punishes those who fight in conflicts outside the kingdom or join extremist groups or finance them.
Under the new law, those who join such groups or support them could face up to 30 years in prison.
By implicating Saudi Arabia publicly in the conflicts in Iraq, Al-Maliki apparently wants to take aim at the kingdom’s measures by trying to portray its anti-terrorism discourse as hypocritical.
Since the US-led invasion in 2003, Iraq is believed to have drawn in hundreds of young Saudis who have joined the Al-Qaeda-linked group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. This has been responsible for most of the terrorist attacks and is now battling in Iraq’s western Anbar province.
Riyadh has repeatedly denied sanctioning the influx and has threatened to prosecute those Saudis who have joined the terrorist groups. It was quick to reject Al-Maliki’s accusations and condemned them as “aggressive and irresponsible.”
Two of Saudi Arabia’s allies in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, also came to its support. While Bahrain denounced the Iraqi move, Abu Dhabi summoned Iraq’s ambassador to protest against the accusations that Saudi Arabia has been supporting terrorism in Iraq.
However, Al-Maliki seems to have soon found solace in GCC divisions over how to deal with Islamists around the region.
Saudi Arabia, along with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar recently as the gas and oil-rich emirate refused to join the GCC’s anti-terrorism strategy.
Seeing tensions rise between the Gulf Sunni allies must have suited Al-Maliki’s ploy perfectly, as they serve his intentions to portray them as supporters of terrorism.
On the other hand, Al-Maliki seems to have been emboldened by US support for his government’s anti-terrorism drive, including the new delivery of American weapons and ammunition to the Iraqi army to fight against Sunni rebels.
This week, the US embassy in Baghdad said Washington had sent 100 Hellfire missiles to Iraq, along with assault rifles and ammunition, as part of its anti-terrorism assistance to the country.
In a statement issued on Sunday, the embassy said the delivery was made earlier this month in order to help bolster Iraqi forces fighting Al-Qaeda. It also promised to send more weapons in the coming weeks.
Al-Maliki seems to be capitalising on reports about strained US-Saudi relations over a host of Middle East issues, including the war in Syria and Iran’s nuclear deal. The US-Saudi relationship has deteriorated, as the Saudis have expressed reservations about the Obama administration’s policies towards Syria and Iran, both of which are close allies to Al-Maliki.
US President Barack Obama will travel later this month to Saudi Arabia, where he is expected to discuss Saudi arming of rebel groups in Syria seeking the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.
Here again, it would make sense if Al-Maliki planned to exploit the frayed relationship between the two old allies by revelling in the alleged hypocrisy of his Saudi adversaries.
Meanwhile, Al-Maliki will probably also be further encouraged by the recent reports that Iraq has increased its oil production, news that could ease US concerns that oil prices will not go upward.
The International Energy Agency unveiled on Friday that Iraq’s oil output had jumped by half a million barrels a day in February to average 3.6 million barrels a day.
Iraq said in December that it would target oil production of 4.1 million barrels a day this year.
By increasing Iraq’s output, Al-Maliki, probably in collaboration with his Iranian allies, may hope that Iraq will be able to challenge Saudi Arabia’s grip on the world market and ease pressure on crude prices.
All in all, the Iraqi premier seems to be playing the terrorism card both domestically and externally to re-emphasise his version of the troubles in Iraq. 
What al-Maliki wants both Iraqis and the world to believe is that Al-Qaeda terrorists are the only reason for the deteriorating security situation in the country as he continues to consolidate his power.
By his standards, it is the enemy next door and foreign agendas which are fueling the sectarianism in Iraq and not the marginalisation and exclusion of Iraqi Sunni Arabs.
Iraq’s sectarian split has escalated considerably over the past year. While Al-Qaeda remains a real threat in Iraq, al-Maliki’s hard-line positions and some of his extremist allies keep on fueling a larger Sunni insurgency. 
Iraq’s conflicts have been driven principally by widespread discontent among the country’s Sunni Arab minority, which has been complaining about the government’s mistreatment and demanding changes to the post-Saddam political system, which they say has favoured the Shias. 
Tensions have been mounting between Iraq’s two Muslim sects since December 2012 when Sunni protesters started weekly anti-government marches across Iraq.
Since January, Iraq’s western cities have seen fierce clashes pitting government security forces against Sunni insurgent groups.
Anbar’s provincial capital Ramadi and its key city of Fallujah have effectively moved out of the Iraqi government’s control, with Sunni tribal forces taking command of both of them.
In recent weeks, the clashes with the security forces have spread to other Sunni-populated provinces, exacerbated by the recent fighting in the Anbar province.
Sunni anti-government rebels now claim that they have formed a unified command, the General Military Council for Iraqi Revolutionaries, to be in charge of the rebellion.
Many local tribal councils, headed by former senior Saddam army officers, have been formed in Sunni-dominated provinces and are said to be coordinating attacks against Iraqi security forces and officials.
This may not yet be the high point of an overall Sunni rebellion in Iraq, especially for most Sunni Arabs who are still seeking a political solution to end their grievances. 
But the Sunni revolt is drawing a deeper dividing line in Iraq’s politics and poses one of the biggest challenges to the country’s unity.
It is Al-Maliki who seems to be unwilling to grasp the reality and to try reconciliation, preferring instead to interpret the Sunni uprising as an instance of foreign-instigated terrorism.
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An Iraqi Don Quixote

The Iraqi prime minister was once a novice politician who rose to national prominence only to lead his country into tilting at windmills, writes Salah Nasrawi

]In the eight years since he took the post of Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Al-Maliki has won a reputation for concentrating power in his hands in a country that prides itself on being pluralistic, federal and democratic.
Al-Maliki’s autocratic leadership style has drawn the wrath of both his foes and his allies and raised fears that Iraq’s Shia prime minister is becoming another edition of its former dictator Saddam Hussein.
As Iraq prepares for crucial elections next month, many Iraqis believe that Al-Maliki is rallying the country’s Shias behind his tough policy against the Sunni Arabs and ethnic Kurds in his bid to win a third term.
Observers believe that his re-election may deepen Iraq’s communal divisions and push the terror-torn and ethnically and sectarian divided country to the brink of collapse.
In what was perceived by his rivals as being a constitutional coup d’état Al-Maliki last week declared the parliament to be “finished” and accused its Sunni Arab speaker, Osama Al-Nujaifi, of conspiring to topple the Shia-led government.
He also defied the parliament and decided to go on spending from the state coffers despite a standoff over a controversial draft 2014 budget that the assembly has not yet ratified.
Al-Maliki’s harsh rhetoric and the anger and disdain he has displayed towards the parliament come as Iraq remains gridlocked by a political crisis that has paralysed the central government amid a surge in sectarian violence.
Since December, Iraq’s army and security forces have been pitted in fierce fighting with Sunni insurgents in the Anbar province. The troops’ failure to regain control of the city of Fallujah and many parts of the province reflects Al-Maliki’s incompetence as the commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces.
The fight now threatens to spread into other Sunni provinces and to derail the 30 April elections.
Sunni Arabs have been protesting against what they consider to be their marginalisation and exclusion by Al-Maliki and have boycotted the government and occasionally the parliament.
The Kurds meanwhile have also been protesting in order to press their demands for greater autonomy and a larger say in national decision-making.
Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani has repeatedly warned that the autonomous Kurdistan Region will seek full independence if Al-Maliki persists in “breaking the pride and dignity of the Kurds.”
Shia leaders, nominally the prime minister’s allies, have not been less dismayed by Al-Maliki’s authoritarian style, and many of them have been voicing frustration with his attempts to increase his prestige at the expense of restoring normality to the country.
While disenchantment with Al-Maliki is growing, so too is the danger that the Iraqi state may not hold together.
Al-Maliki first came to power in 2006 after a prolonged crisis over selecting a prime minister. He was an accidental choice after Shia leaders failed to agree on a candidate who would not be vetoed by the Kurds and Sunnis.
Al-Maliki has remained in the post since then despite his failure to solve a lingering government crisis, curb escalating violence, end rampant corruption and make significant changes in the living conditions of a population fatigued by decades of dictatorship, military conflict, international sanctions and foreign occupation.
His lack of executive experience, solid political background, statesmanship skills and visionary leadership have been visible in his mismanagement of the government and the animosities he has created with most of the key political factions.  
The official government Website does not carry a biography of Al-Maliki, but several other sites provide profiles of him based on information gathered from various sources.
According to these sites, Al-Maliki was born near the Iraqi Shia holy city of Kerbela in 1950. He joined the underground Shia Islamic Dawa Party in the 1970s, attended a religious college founded by Shia clergy and later worked as a clerk in the local department of the Ministry of Education in Hillah.
Al-Maliki escaped Iraq in 1979 following a crackdown by Saddam on the Dawa Party, which was accused of being involved in subversive activities.
After spending some time in Syria he travelled to Iran where he joined other anti-Saddam dissidents who were fighting alongside the Iranians in the 1980-1988 Gulf War.
Two years after the War ended Al-Maliki returned to Syria where he spent the next 23 years under the protection of the intelligence forces of the regime of Syrian president Hafez Al-Assad and later of his son Bashar.
He lived under the nom de guerre of Jawad Al-Maliki near the Shia holy shrine of Sayeda Zeinab outside Damascus among thousands of Iraqi exiles who were resisting Saddam or seeking asylum in foreign countries.
After the US-led invasion of Iraq that ended Saddam’s regime in April 2003, Al-Maliki returned to Iraq as a scramble for power began among Saddam’s former opponents under the umbrella of American power.
The Dawa Party, probably influenced by Syria, had first opposed the US-led invasion, but it soon joined the American-installed Interim Governing Council and other government institutions with Al-Maliki among its principal leaders.
He was named vice president of a commission charged with eliminating Saddam loyalists from the government, army and security forces. In 2005, he became a member of the security committee of the provisional parliament.
Al-Maliki won a seat in the post-Saddam parliament’s first elections later that year when he was chosen as prime minister after the leader of the Dawa Party, Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, was forced out of the race.
But it was largely the pressure exercised by the US Bush administration to end the government deadlock that forced the Shia groups to go for Al-Maliki.
Iraqi political leaders recall how Condoleezza Rice, then the US secretary of state, lobbied and pressured them to support Al-Maliki for the post.
As prime minister, Al-Maliki has sought to project himself as a strong leader at a time of trouble in Iraq. In 2006, he authorised the execution of Saddam and targeted Al-Qaeda-affiliated Sunni insurgents.
A year later, he led a military campaign against Shia militias loyal to the radical cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, forcing him to disband his notorious Al-Mahdi militia.
Al-Maliki also negotiated a deal that allowed Washington to withdraw its troop presence from the country and end the US military occupation of Iraq in December 2011.
In 2010, he won a second term in office after forming a national unity government with other Shias, Kurds and Sunnis.
All this would seem to be cause for celebration among some of his followers who see him as a Shia hero. Yet, the mood among most Iraqis has been anything but celebratory.
Indeed, Al-Maliki’s rule has come to be viewed as a disastrous failure for Iraq, and the last eight years have been catastrophic for its people.
Just days after the last US soldiers left the country, the fragile national unity government began to unravel as Al-Maliki moved against two senior Sunni politicians on terror-related charges.
The government soon became incapable of resolving key issues, such as power and wealth-sharing.
Opponents of the Iraqi leader say that after Al-Maliki was named prime minister for a second term in 2010, Iraqi politics started taking an avowedly sectarian turn with power being concentrated in the hands of his Shia-dominated government.
Al-Maliki, who had been controlling the army, security forces, the election commission, the anti-corruption body and the state-owned media agency, now started developing autocratic habits, and even his closest allies began comparing him with Saddam.
He has also been blamed for using the judiciary to cow his opponents.
For many Iraqis, Al-Maliki is a living clone of Miguel de Cervantes’s famous character Don Quixote. Like the delusional anti-hero of the Spanish author, Al-Maliki is tilting at his own version of windmills.
However, the question now is how long Al-Maliki can maintain his survival skills before he realises that Iraq can no longer be tamed by a strong man.
In 2010, Al-Maliki travelled to Qom in Iran where Al-Sadr was receiving his religious education in order to seek his cooperation to form a government. It needed another trip to Erbil to appease Barzani and make the Kurdish leader facilitate the formation of the government.
As the new elections approach, Al-Maliki will show if he is a real strong man or whether he is playing for time and gambling on his opponents’ weaknesses.
“He will do it again once the 2014 elections are over. This time he will travel to Mosul too to beg Al-Nujaifi,” said Amir Al-Kinani of the Sadrist Movement in an interview with a local media outlet.