Arab News Blog

Some wag observed of the camel that it is “an animal designed by a committee.” Likewise, the speech that President Obama gave on the end of the US direct combat mission in Iraq last night appeared to have been designed by a committee. Intended to please everyone, it likely altogether pleased no one.

With regard to particular sections of the speech, I was happy, I must say, to see this paragraph early on:

“From this desk, seven and a half years ago, President Bush announced the beginning of military operations in Iraq. Much has changed since that night. A war to disarm a state became a fight against an insurgency. Terrorism and sectarian warfare threatened to tear Iraq apart. Thousands of Americans gave their lives; tens of thousands have been wounded. Our relations abroad were strained. Our unity at home was tested.”

At least, the president acknowledged the human cost of the war, for both the Iraqis and the Americans. One can fruitfully contrast the honesty of these words with the petty insistence by the Bushies that there never was a guerrilla war or a civil war in Iraq. When violence finally began subsiding in Iraq, the Bush White House childishly wrote a letter to NBC news crowing about the change and again upbraiding the network for having dared use the phrase ‘civil war’ about the Sunni-Shiite fighting in 2006-2007. But that the civil war subsided when the Shiites won it does not actually imply that there was no civil war at all. This logical nuance was forever beyond the Bush apparatchiks.

The natural place for Obama to go from here was to a thorough debunking of the Republican war propaganda. Instead, the president almost seemed eager to put the war behind him and behind us, and to more or less let the Republican Party off the hook for driving the US over a cliff.

Instead, Obama shifted attention to the apolitical subject of American soldiers’ valor and the increasing readiness of Iraqi troops. Bad novelists often neglect actually to resolve the outstanding issues raised in their art in favor of a melodramatic ending that tugs at the heart strings.

President Obama also said,

‘”This year also saw Iraq hold credible elections that drew a strong turnout. A caretaker administration is in place as Iraqis form a government based on the results of that election. Tonight, I encourage Iraq’s leaders to move forward with a sense of urgency to form an inclusive government that is just, representative, and accountable to the Iraqi people. And when that government is in place, there should be no doubt: the Iraqi people will have a strong partner in the United States. Our combat mission is ending, but our commitment to Iraq’s future is not.’

The issue with the Iraqi elections was not their credibility but their inconclusiveness. They produced a hung parliament. Any time you have to talk about a caretaker government 5 months after an election, there is something profoundly wrong. And, urging the Iraqis to form a government quickly when the US is delaying things by attempting to install its favorite, Iyad Allawi, in power or at least in power over the security forces, leaves the audience thinking that the fault lies with the Iraqis rather than with continued American interventionism. Presumably Iraqis will eventually form a government. But with the US gone, as it soon will be militarily, will Iraq have any further elections? Is it doomed to a long-term cycle of hung parliaments where there is no majority? I am not sure where ‘accountability’ comes into this process. In any case, this passage seemed to put a brave face on a disastrous political stagnation.

Obama even praised George W. Bush, not for launching the war but for trite matters such as an alleged Bush devotion to US security. But wouldn’t foreign adventures have risked US security?

Obama gave us a couple of over-optimistic paragraphs on how well the Afghanistan war is going, combined with a pledge to begin drawing down US forces in summer 2011. There is that camel again. Presumably the language about the Afghan struggle against al-Qaeda was intended to please hawks, while the pledge to begin withdrawing next year was for the purpose of reassuring liberals. It is not clear, however, that practical success in Afghanistan can be achieved through this sort of rhetorical compromise.

The conclusion we are urged to draw on the Iraq war is that it is now an Iraqi problem, the US is determined to withdraw, and we couldn’t afford more Iraq War anyway given our collapsed economy. Obama used this bankruptcy of the nation as a segue to our economic problems to dwell on domestic policy and some length, as though, having briefly adverted to the catastrophe Washington had visited on the Iraqis and on us in the US public, he was now eager to change the subject and talk about domestic issues. He emphasized the need to regrow the American middle class, devastated by years of poor economic policy.

The speech could have been a poignant moment, but Obama’s quilted-together neutrality took the edge off of it.

Still, the policy Obama announced, of steady US withdrawal from Iraq, is something that Arab publics say they want and say will improve their relations with the US. And mostly withdrawing (President Obama is correct that he has brought 100,000 US troops out of Iraq) is better than remaining in Iraq in force, and it is ‘way better than like invading more countries.

It is an achievement, of which the president can be proud. But freighting down the speech with bipartisanship (he isn’t in office, and hasn’t achieved what he has achieved primarily because of Republican support) made it forgettable, a mere set of throwaway campaign lines.

With regard to the Iraqi reaction, Shiite leader Ammar al-Hakim pledged that the US troop withdrawal would not affect Iraq’s foreign policy. He was also at pains to mollify Kuwait, which is apparently in a panic that the US withdrawal will let Iraq reemerge as a bullying regional power.

Caretaker Prime Minister declared that Iraq has now regained its sovereignty and is now independent. He is trying to take the credit so as to remain in power. But he has complained about the Americans trying to block him from a second term, so maybe this is wishful thinking.

Certainly, Iraq is on the road to being an independent nation, though how much American neo-imperialism is imposed on Baghdad remains to be seen. Now if only Iraq had a government.

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Rather funny self-contradiction by the editor of the Saudi rag Sharq al-Awsat, who wants the Americans to force Malaki out in Iraq because he’s undemocratic:

For all the American talk about the democratization of Iraq, and the necessity of the Iraqi people managing their own national issues, this is nothing more than beautiful talk that is a good excuse for the ugly reality, for what is the difference between Saddam and al-Maliki? 

But later, in the same editorial:

Post-Saddam Iraq was not in need of superficial democracy, but rather it was – and continues to be – in need of a strong ruler, from the army, in the ilk of a benevolent autocrat or an Iraqi Ataturk.

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A series of coordinated attacks on checkpoints and a Shiite mosque on Monday in Iraq demonstrated that the guerrilla opposition to the US-imposed new order in that country continues to be active and organized. Some 300-400 civilians and members of security forces are still being killed in political violence every month, not counting the insurgents themselves. The death rate from such violence appears little changed this year from last. The attacks continue to make economic progress difficult; they often disrupt the work (and even destroy the edifices) of government agencies, and they discourage foreign investment. Attacks on Shiite mosques are intended to provoke reprisals against Sunni Arabs, sharpening the contradictions and polarization and making Sunnis easier to recruit and mobilize for the resistance.

Meanwhile, one of the only ways mainstream Sunni Arabs, about 17 percent of the population, can hope to avoid another purely Shiite-Kurdish government would be to acquiesce in the formation of a government of national unity. That step would require the secular Iraqiya List, for which most Sunni Arabs voted, but which includes secular Shiites like its leader Iyad Allawi, to join the government. Thus, Al-Sharq al-Awsat (the Middle East) reports in Arabic that incumbent PM Nuri al-Maliki and Iraqiya leader Iyad al-Allawi have met to discuss a place at the table for the Iraqiya.

This move would have benefits for several parties. Al-Maliki campaigned against ex-Baathist secularists, but his current allies, the Shiite religious parties of Ammar al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr, seem insistent on replacing him with someone else, perhaps Ibrahim Jaafari. The Iraqiya might prefer al-Maliki, who has backed off purely sectarian language and speaks like an Iraqi nationalist, even though he remains head of the fundamentalist Islamic Mission Party (Da’wa), to a more sectarian candidate favored by the Sadrists. So, if al-Maliki can draw the Iraqiya in, it might be a way of outmaneuvering Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army al-Maliki attacked militarily in 2008. Ammar al-Hakim of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which is close to Tehran, has in any case made it clear that he will not join a government from which Allawi’s list is excluded.

So the scenario I predicted soon after the March 7 election, of a core Shiite alliance but a government of national unity that includes Iraqiya and the Kurds, seems in train. It replicates the government of summer, 2006, when US ambassador Ryan Crocker worked hard at cementing it. This time, much of the work seems to be being done by the Iraqis themselves, sometimes reluctantly, as the need for political reconciliation bears in on them and they realize it is key to their future as a state.

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Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that despite their announced coalition, the religious Shiite State of Law and National Iraqi Alliance lists will probably have to resort to an up and down vote in parliament to choose the prime minister. The State of Law refuses to put forward any alternative to incumbent prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is unpopular with the Sadrists, who hold 38 of the National Iraqi Alliance’s 70 seats. Al-Maliki militarily attacked the Sadrist militia or Mahdi Army in spring of 2008 in Basra, and then in Sadr City.

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The pan-Arab London daily al-Hayat [Life] reports in Arabic that sources close to the two major Shiite coalitions have revealed that they will form a 10-person committee of “wise men” to choose the country’s prime minister.

The “wise men” will consist of or include prominent Shiite clerics chosen by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the spiritual leader of the Shiites, according to AP.

The move comes in the wake of the sudden announcement the night before last that the Iraqi National Alliance (Sadrists, Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, some others) and the State of Law (Islamic Mission Party or Da’wa and some others) will form a broad coalition. The step gives them a combined tally of 159 of 325 seats in parliament, only 4 short of the 51% required to form a government on the second ballot and then to rule effectively. Likely they will nevertheless seek to form a government of national unity.

The secular Iraqiya list, for which most Sunni Arabs voted denounced the move as having been orchestrated by Iran and returning Iraq to the sway of sectarian religious parties. But Iraqiya failed to form a government in its own right in part because of frictions between Sunni Arabs in the North and Kurds in the East, over the division of spoils.

The Shiite religious parties denied that they had already fixed on former prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari, who was widely viewed as ineffectual in 2005-2006. Still, the announcement of the new coalition was made in Jaafari’s house in Baghdad, which is unlikely to be completely without significance.

The clerical committee will choose among Ibrahim Jaafari, Adil Abdul Mahdi (current vice president and member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq), Baqir Jabr and incumbent PM Nuri al-Maliki. Al-Maliki is fiercely disliked by the Sadr Movement, which controls some 40 seats in the new parliament, because he deployed the Iraqi military against their Mahdi Army militiamen in 2008. Some major clerics in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala have also been extremely fierce critics of al-Maliki.

The Iraqi National Movement or Iraqiya, headed by former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, denounced the Shiite super-coalition as a return to the bad old days of sectarian rule (i.e. 2005-2010) and said it was a move intended to exclude their party.

Still, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, headed by Ammar al-Hakim, insisted that it would not serve in any government that excluded any major party.

The communique from the new partners said, “An agreement has been reached on the formation of the largest parliamentary bloc, via the alliance of these two [Shiite religious] coalitions. This is a basic step intended to create an opening toward other national forces.”

Aljazeera English has video:

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Here is the reason it is so important that President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has begun behaving so erratically. It is because the path President Obama chose in Afghanistan requires a strong, upright, and relatively efficient local partner. Moreover, the US needs to gain hearts and minds, but a series of costly errors of judgment have scandalized the Afghan public. Put the two developments together, and you get a ‘surge’ that so far is not going well and in which the loyalty of America’s partners cannot be taken for granted.

President Obama had two choices in fall of 2009 in regard to Afghanistan. He could have pursued a limited counter-terrorism strategy, involving targeting of armed extremists but gradually extricating US troops from that country. Instead, he signed on to a major counter-insurgency project that implies a certain amount of state-building. US and Afghanistan National Army [ANA] troops would take territory, clear it of insurgents, hold it in the medium term so they would not return, and build services and infrastructure.

This strategy of counter-insurgency is far more dependent on expanded military and governmental capacity than the course of counter-terrorism would have been. The army and police are to be much expanded and given basic training. The civil bureaucracy is to be encouraged to provide more services.

But at the head of the security forces and the civil bureaucracy is Hamid Karzai. The president stirred controversy last week by asserting that the problem of ballot fraud in last summer’s presidential election was actually caused by foreign troops. Both the US and the UK have vigorously denounced Karzai’s comments. (In fact, the ballot fraud appears to be the work of Karzai’s own supporters).

Then last weekend, according to the Wall Street Journal, Karzai met with a handful of US congressmen and senators. During the meetings, Karzai is said to have warned the US that if it went on acting so heavy-handedly in his country, it would create the Taliban as national liberators and make them popular.

But then he went further and warned that he himself might join the Taliban if he were subjected to too much American pressure. The US legislators who leaked these details did not think they should be taken seriously.

But the remarks underline that Karzai is a loose canon. They provided an opening for former deputy UN envoy to Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith, to accuse Karzai of being unbalanced. Galbraith, a former US ambassador to Croatia and a representative of Kurdish interests in Iraq (along with being an investor in Kurdistan petroleum development), was at loggerheads with Karzai last fall because of the way the Afghan politician stole the presidential election. Galbraith was fired over his stance.

In an interview with AFP, Galbraith said that Karzai is given to extreme temper tantrums and suddenly becomes very emotional. He added that there are rumors that Karzai uses heroin, and that that drug use helps explain his outbursts. I fear Mr. Galbraith undercut his credibility by retailing this unsubstantiated rumor, which does not actually fit with the facts he is reporting. Heroin users are notoriously laid back and emotionally detached even on occasions when emotion is called for.

Karzai’s problems do not derive from being crazed or a drug addict. Rather, he is in an impossible situation. He knows that the Obama administration came into office last year determined to remove him as indecisive and more of a problem than a solution. He responded by rigging the presidential election to ensure his hold on power. He presented the Americans with a fait accompli, which they reluctantly acknowledged and even embraced.

At the same time, Karzai faces an ongoing insurgency (some of it Taliban, some of it other groups less seldom studied). The insurgents have a rhetorical advantage over Karzai, insofar as they can freely paint themselves as guardians of the national heritage and freedom fighters determined to expel the foreigners. This stance is leant plausibility by some US actions, a recent mistaken raid that left women dead and which was covered up. The impact of such actions on Afghan and especially Pashtun nationalism and male self-image cannot be over-estimated.

Karzai has responded to this difficult situation by blaming the US for some of his troubles, by reaching out to negotiate with figures such as Gulbadin Hikmatyar (not Taliban but mujahid or ‘freedom fighter’ in Ronald Reagan’s terms)– with whom the US would probably prefer he not be talking– and then by adopting the rhetoric of mujahid or freedom fighter himself. There is a little resemblance between Karzai’s current strategy and that in 2008 of Iraq’s PM Nuri al-Maliki. Al-Maliki sent troops to Basra against US advice, and then negotiated a US troop withdrawal that Bush-Cheney did not want but which they had no choice but to accept if foreign troops were to remain in the area.

Karzai would very much like to likewise position himself as having brought greater security to his country and as having forced the US to set a withdrawal timetable for its exit. Karzai’s outbursts and his apparently erratic statements actually just mark off his peculiar, almost DeGaulle-like situation (in being in his own mind a national liberator who in fact is deeply dependent on foreign allies. That humiliation and contradiction once led DeGaulle to warn that missiles could be aimed as easily at the US from France and toward the Soviet Union.

Karzai’s jejune threat thus bespoke his own internal contradictions.

But if Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s counter-insurgency campaign depends on Karzai’s support and on the latter supplying a ‘government in a box’ for the provinces, then it may well be in trouble.

Karzai seems to have forgotten to ask the Taliban whether they would have him, but the answer appears to be ‘no.’ Here is an article translated by the USG Open Source Center on the state of play in Afghanistan politics:

Taleban dismiss Afghan leader’s alleged joining the Taleban remarks
Afghan Islamic Press
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 …
Document Type: OSC Translated Text…

Taleban dismiss Afghan leader’s alleged joining the Taleban …

Text of report by private Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency:

Kandahar: “We neither have information about Karzai’s remarks, nor can we say anything about them.”

A Taleban spokesman has denied reports that the Taleban has said that Karzai will be the Taleban’s brother if he separates himself from foreigners.

In a telephone interview with Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) Taleban spokesman Qari Yusof Ahmadi said: “We neither know what Karzai has said nor have we reacted to anything like that.”

He added: “Some media take opinions about such sensitive issues from people who identify themselves as Taleban and we consider such reports as an irresponsible action. The Islamic Emirate has specific spokespeople and we hope that the official position of the Islamic Emirate will be taken from these spokespeople.”

AIP asked what would be the Taleban’s position if President Karzai had really said, or if he says, that if foreigners do not stop meddling in Afghanistan he will join the Taleban. Ahmadi replied: “This is drama. Karzai wants to draw people’s attention away from bigger issues, such as the invasion of the country, the killing of people and other big facts. Such remarks have no importance for the Taleban.”

Some media reported that the Taleban’s regional spokesman had said: “If President Hamed Karzai separates himself from foreigners, then he is our brother.”

(Description of Source: Peshawar Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto — Peshawar Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto — Peshawar-based agency, staffed by Afghans, that describes itself as an independent “news agency” but whose history and reporting pattern reveal a perceptible pro-Taliban bias; the AIP’s founder-director, Mohammad Yaqub Sharafat, has long been associated with a mujahidin faction that merged with the Taliban’s “Islamic Emirate” led by Mullah Omar; subscription required to access content; http://www. afghanislamicpress. com)

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I’ve been staying away from the Iraqi election standoff because I figure Juan Cole, Reidar Visser, Marc Lynch and others who follow it more closely than I do have been keeping track of it. But as things get more and more tangled, I guess I ought to offer a few thoughts. And while the various issues involved do not involve hanging chads (non-US readers can Google it), it’s still going to be a while before we see a government, I suspect. Here’s my attempt at a summation for the perplexed.

‘Iyad ‘Allawi’s Iraqiyya movement has the slight edge (91 seats to 89) over Prime Minister al-Maliki’s State of Law bloc. Though both men are Shi‘ites, ‘Allawi is a secularist allied in a front with Sunnis. Under at least one interpretation of the constitution, &lsqluo;Allawi, as leader of the party with the most seats, should have first crack at forming a coalition.

But there are two complicating factors. First, the Justice and Accountability Commission, the “De-Ba‘athification” commission led by Ahmad Chalabi (the onetime hero of the neocons, now seen as pro-Iranian) wants to disqualify six elected deputies. Three of them are from Iraqiyya, which means Maliki would have more seats than ‘Allawi. That attempt so far has not succeeded, but there’s another issue. While Iraqiyya is a multi-confessional secular movement with a lot of Sunni support, the religious Shi‘ite vote is divided between two blocks: Maliki’s State of Law and the Iraqi National Alliance, which includes the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq (formerly Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) and Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement. Though the INA is more clearly Islamist and more indisputably pro-Iranian than Maliki’s, they have more in common with each other than either does with Iraqiyya.

Now the plot thickens again. The Federal Supreme Court has ruled that is constitutional for parties to form blocs in order to qualify as the largest bloc. This is being challenged by Iraqiyya, but could mean that an alliance between INA and Maliki could block ‘Allawi. But we’re likely to see more constitutional arguments.

There will be attempts by both sides to portray this as a fight between the US candidate, meaning ‘Allawi, and Maliki, who will be painted as too pro-Iranian. But Maliki was our guy too, and we should be careful to assume all Iraqi Shi‘ite religious-based parties are Iranian stalking horses (though it’s hard not to see Sadr that way).

So far, and I emphasize that qualification, this is playing out democratically: through the courts, the official commissions, protests to electoral bodies, etc. I think it would be a mistake to go all chicken-little and start proclaiming that Iraq is on the verge of sectarian war. (The US had the whole hanging chad thing in 2000, but when the Supreme Court ruled, it was accepted. Let’s give the Iraqis the benefit of the doubt.) It also occurs to me as ironic that what is, in fact, Iraq’s second general election, is as stalemated as the US’ second Presidential election in 1800, when John Adams ran against Thomas Jefferson but a (later fixed) Constitutional quirk allowed Aaron Burr to challenge Jefferson and throw the whole thing into the House of Representatives. I may be reaching a bit there, but hey, it’s my blog.

I would expect the rhetoric to escalate. ‘Allawi will be denounced as an American stooge and a creature of the CIA (and there’s at least circumstantial evidence that might be used against him), and he’ll doubtless try to paint his opponents as Iranian agents. Things are rarely that black and white. Let’s keep Western analysts’ rhetoric within limits and hope the Iraqis do the same. If ‘Allawi ends up as PM, we’ve worked with him before. If Maliki wins, ditto. I don’t intend to provide daily coverage of this, since the aforementioned other bloggers (especially Visser, but Cole’s a pretty detailed poster on this stuff) are looking at the nuts and bolts.

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Patrick Martin of the Toronto Globe and Mail gets the diction right when he says that Iyad Allawi’s list won a thin plurality. The official results of the March 7 Iraqi parliamentary elections have been announced by the Independent High Electoral Commission. Of 325 seats, 91 went to the National Iraqi List (“Iraqiya”) of former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi. The State of Law grouping of incumbent Nuri al-Maliki came in at 89. The Shiite fundamentalist coalition, the Iraqi National Alliance, which includes the followers of clerics Ammar al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr, garnered 70 seats. The Kurdistan Alliance won only 43 seats.

That leaves 33 seats in the hands of smaller parties, many of them wild cards.

Shortly before the results were announced, two large bomb blasts in Khalis, in Diyala Province northeast of Baghdad, killed 53 persons. Diyala is still the site of violent struggle between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

Most Sunni Arabs in Iraq have moved on from the violence and fundamentalism of groups such as the ‘Islamic State of Iraq,’ and most voted for the Allawi list as a way of reentering national politics.

Despite some breathless headlines, the outcome of the elections is not very different from previous elections. Allawi put together a coalition of Sunni Arabs and secular Shiites. In the December, 2005, parliamentary elections, those two groups received about 80 seats, only 11 less than Allawi’s just list won. If the two major Shiite religious lists (State of Law and Iraqi National Alliance) had run on the same ticket, they would have nearly a majority, about what they won in December, 2005. The Kurdistan Alliance only has 43 seats, down from 54 in the last parliamentary election, but the overall number of Kurdish Members of Parliament is not so different from that in the last polls.

In spring-summer of 2006, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki put together a government of national unity, with the help of the US ambassador. It included Sadrists and Allawi’s Iraqiya. But it gradually fell apart. This election is an opportunity for al-Maliki to attempt to repeat that feat. Indeed, a national unity government may be the first preference of the Iraqi National Alliance, which has, according to al-Sharq al-Awsat, swung into action to convince the other major lists that such a path is the only right one for Iraq at this juncture.

Although Allawi’s list won the most seats, he is very unlikely to be the next prime minister. Al-Maliki’s State of Law list is anti-Baathist and hasn’t gotten on well with Sunni Arabs, while ex-Baathists and Sunnis are the backbone of Allawi’s constituency. Likewise, the Shiite religious party, made up of Sadrists and members of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), among others, are unlikely to ally with secularist ex-Baathists. Allawi says that he is dialoguing with the parties led by Hakim and Sadr, as well as with the Kurds. But Allawi rejects a role in politics for Shiite clerics, which would make for an uneasy alliance with lists headed by clerics. Without the two big Shiite blocs, Allawi could only become prime minister by attracting the Kurdistan Alliance and all of the smaller parties and independents. Keeping such a disparate coalition together would be difficult in the extreme. Allawi is supported by Sunni Arabs who have sharp differences with the Kurds over the future of the mixed province of Kirkuk, which the Kurds covet. Allawi may therefore have a plurality that is incapable of growing into a majority.

It is also true that al-Maliki is deeply disliked by Muqtada al-Sadr and the Sadrists because he used the Iraqi Army to crush their Mahdi Army militia in Basra and East Baghdad in spring-summer of 2008. His party, however, the ‘State of Law,’ groups Shiite religious parties such as his own Islamic Mission Party (Da’wa), and the natural ally of Da’wa is the Sadrists and ISCI. Still, as Sadrist and ISCI officials admitted on Wednesday, their parties are natural allies with the State of Law. The easiest way to form a new government would be to dump al-Maliki and choose another leader of Da`wa as prime minister. The State of Law and the Iraqi National Alliance can form a coalition of 159 at a time when only 163 is needed for a majority. By picking up just 4 independents, these two could form a strong, stable government. Al-Maliki has gathered a lot of power into his hands, however, and unseating him may prove difficult and time-consuming. In the end, the Iraqi National Alliance may decide that he is their best bet for dominating Iraq in the near to medium term.

Al-Maliki said Friday that he rejects the announced outcome and demands a manual recount of the ballots. He had earlier warned of “violence” if the votes were not recounted. The reason for his adamant stance is that if he could nose ahead of Allawi by even a single vote, he seems to feel that he would have more of a mandate to remain prime minister. The Iraqi constitution stipulates that the president ask the head of the largest single party or coalition to attempt to form the government. As it now stands, al-Maliki will not be asked, while Allawi could be.

One possibility is for his State of Law to form a coalition with the Iraqi National Alliance [Hakim and Sadr] while easing al-Maliki out in favor of some candidate more acceptable to both. Iraqi courts have ruled that post-election coalitions will be counted as legitimate for the purpose of installing a government. The Shiites are thus still in a position to remain dominant, though if they remain divided then Allawi could pick up the pieces. A Shiite electoral alliance accompanied by the elegance of the numbers would detract from the quality of life.

It seems unlikely that anyone can become prime minister without the Sadr Bloc, now the majority component inside the Iraqi National Alliance. Sadr may well demand as a quid pro quo for joining any Iraqi government that the new PM pledge to accelerate the timetable for US troop withdrawal from Iraq, and also promise to end that troop presence altogether.

The difficult road ahead is indicated by the recent denunciation of al-Maliki by both Muqtada al-Sadr and Ammar al-Hakim for his initial warning that “violence” might break out if the ballots are not recounted. Muqtada called the implied threat of violence “political terrorism,” thus ironically turning the tables on al-Maliki, who had hunted down Sadr-linked Mahdi Army commanders on the grounds that they were terrorists.

The big question now in Iraqi politics is whether the new government will look like the sectarian Shiite coalition with the Kurds in 2005, or more like the national unity government forged in summer, 2006. Each proved unstable in its own way, it should be remembered, so neither is a guarantor of a good outcome for these elections. The other question is how many concessions smaller parties can wring from the majority in order to form a government. It seems to me that if the Sadrists demand with sufficient vigor, they should be able to get a faster US troop withdrawal. Their platform since 2003 has been the removal of the American military from Iraq. They may finally be in a position to effect via the ballot box what they could not by their armed paramilitary, the Mahdi Army.

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Don’t miss Tom Engelhardt’s powerful meditation on how Americans see Iraq through rose-colored glasses.

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Cole/ here

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Al-Hayat [Life] is reporting in Arabic that Lt. Gen. Charles Jacoby now says that the US military withdrawal from Iraq is on schedule and that only 50,000 US troops will be in the country by the end of August. He also affirmed that the Iraqi military and police are now capable of keeping order in Iraq, saying that the role they played in providing security during the March 7 elections shows that they have made a big advance in their capabilities.

The Obama administration is eager to get out of Iraq militarily, and so far is experiencing good luck insofar as security has improved, and the civil war has subsided.

The parliamentary election has also not developed into an obstacle to withdrawal. Indeed, it is likely to produce a government that looks somewhat like that of summer, 2006, with Nuri al-Maliki again prime minister and a national unity cabinet with representation for the Shiite fundamentalist parties and for the secular Sunni-Shiite coalition of Iyad Allawi. It will take weeks or months to cobble this ‘alliance of rivals’ together, since government ministries are given out as inducements, and there is wrangling over who gets what. (Iraq operates by the ‘spoils system’ common in the 19th century US, whereby victorious parties get to hire their party workers to staff government jobs in the ministries they control).

That al-Maliki is likely to get a second term has pros and cons for Washington. The pros are that there will be continuity in Iraqi politics, that al-Maliki has gotten control of the armed forces and will remain in control, and that while he has good relations with Iran, he is not as close to Tehran as some of the fundamentalist Shiite parties in the Iraqi National Alliance. The cons are that al-Maliki has shown little interest in reconciliation with secular, Arab nationalist Sunnis, that he has cultivated tribal militias loyal to himself, and that he has not shown very much interest in or capacity for starting and speeding along projects key to Iraq’s economic infrastructure. Washington would no doubt prefer to have an anti-Iran prime minister like Allawi, and one less hostile to Israel.

Al-Hayat also says that the Independent High Electoral Commission in Iraq has released further partial results from the March 7 parliamentary election, showing that the State of Law coalition of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is substantially ahead in Basra, with the fundamentalist religious parties of the Iraqi National Alliance coming in second in the southern Shiite oil port. (See also the numbers below).

Al-Maliki’s coalition is also said to be leading by a good margin in Baghdad province (where it had won 38% in last year’s provincial elections). This assertion is contested, however, by political commentator Hazim al-Na’imi, who expects Baghdad in the end to divide its vote in almost equal thirds among al-Maliki’s coalition and its two major allies. Al-Hayat says that with 60% of the vote counted, Baghdad has returned 158,763 votes for al-Maliki’s party, 108,126 for the Shiite Iraqi National Alliance, and 104,810 for Allawi’s secular Iraqiya.

Al-Hayat says its sources close to al-Maliki report that he has become convinced that he will remain prime minister, insofar as his coalition defeated the Iraqi National Alliance, Shiite parties close to Iran, among the 60% of the population that is Shiite Muslim.

The National Iraqi List of former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, which has attracted a lot of Sunni Arab votes along with those of secular-minded Shiites, is coming in third after the Shiite fundamentalists, but only by a small margin.

Although Allawi’s secular party has largely supplanted the Sunni fundamentalist party, the Iraqi National Accord (Tawafuq), the members of the cabinet will likely be somewhat similar to those of past Iraqi governments.

Reader Harmis4 helpfully writes in:

“Results as Sunday 7PM EST

The IHEC has released election PDF files of 10 provinces on it’s website. Perhaps 10% of the national vote is listed. The combined totals and the estimated seat distribution based on Iraqi Electoral Law and the partial totals are as follows.

State of Law – 345,005 57 Seats

Iraqi National Movement – 290,724 58 seats

Iraqi National Alliance – 276,403 48 seats

Kurdistan Alliance – 130,409 14 seats

Iraq Unity Coalition 31,150 4 seats

Iraq Accordance – 30,360 9 seats

Change – 22,948 2 seats

Kurdistan Islamic Group – 12,511 1 seat

Islamic Union of Kurdistan – 11,173 1 seat

Others 70,085 0 seats

Total: 1,220,768 194 of 310 regular seats.

More of the mainly Sunni Provinces are in in than the Shia or Kurd.

Based on these results the final seat totals may look something like this.

Rule of Law – Maliki – 90 to 95 Seats

National Movement – Allawi/Hashimi 80 Seats

Iraq National Alliance – Hakim/Sadr
75 to 80 seats

Kurdistan Alliance – Talabani/Barzani 40 seats

Small Parties – 75 Seats including 8 religious minority seats”

End/ (Not Continued)

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