Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki picked a fight with the Kurds last week by accusing them of harboring terrorists in their autonomous region. This emboldened the Kurds, who reacted by withdrawing their representatives from the national government and then seizing two major oilfields in the north.
I obviously do not understand the day-to-day pressures facing Maliki but it’s hard to fathom why he would deliberately alienate the most effective fighting force in the country at a time when Sunni extremists are overrunning Western Iraq and pressing on towards the capital.
It seems to me like the wiser choice would have been to be solicitous of Kurdish assistance in defending national assets and beating back the folks who want to destroy Shiites shrines and establish a caliphate.
After all, while most of the Kurds are Sunnis, I don’t think they want to see Iraq taken over by Sunni Arab extremists who they may then have to fight.
Perhaps Maliki doesn’t want to resign, but anyone who wants to see Iraq survive as a country should be working for his ouster. It may already be too late.
“…anyone who wants to see Iraq survive as a country…”
Let’s see: that would be Winston Churchill and T. E. Lawrence (“of Arabia”) as of 1922, and no one else, at any subsequent time.
Not sure that’s really accurate. Most Iraqis I’ve heard from never wanted Iraq to become a sectarian battlefield.
It’s not in anyone’s interest to have the SIC dominate the region. Those guys make Wahabis look like cub scouts and members of the Muslim Brotherhood look like toe jam. They are more extreme than the Taliban was in Afghanistan. If they come to power, expect an enormous blood bath, destruction of religious buildings of other faiths and all shrines (which they see as idolatrous).
Maliki made the same mistake that Morsi made. He thought that winning by a small margin was enough to institute a winner-take-all spoils system that benefited not the Shias but the Shias in his coalition or more specifically in his party. He held for himself three portfolios–national defense, intelligence, and internal security. That indicated autocratic tendencies to most other parties. And so it has turned out.
The future of Iraq as federative nation depend on the extent to which members of his own party and members of his alliance agree with this hard-line stand. After the abuses of the Ba’ath regime, it is understandable why Shia parties are reluctant to share power with them.
Don’t underestimate the extent to which Kurdish seizure of Iraqi oilfields represents US and European oil interests over against the companies that contracted with the Maliki government.
Likely the terrorists that Kurds are accused of supporting is the anti-Iranian group MEK, which seems to have extraordinary support in the US deep state. Iran at the moment is Maliki’s strongest ally. And Ahmed Chalabi is making yet another play for power.
Unless there is a reasonable government to replace Maliki in the interim, his removal will accelerate the chaos and dissolution, not end it. Iraq can survive as a country (the same goes for the US btw) only if the factions in the political arena want enough of the same things from government.
It is hard to sort out how redrawing boundaries in the Middle East makes the situation better. On what basis do you draw boundaries, given that the post-war experience resulted in partial ethnic integration in most of the countries.
For the US, the best policy is to pursue renewables and get our nose out of that tent. Sadly, that is not going to happen because of general lack of vision and hard-nosed partisan agendas.
A vote of no confidence by Iraq’s parliament is the only legitimate means of removing Maliki from government. That would require that the chamber of deputies present Iraq’s president, Jalal Talibani, with a petition signed by at least 164 of them calling for such a vote.
That may never happen because Talibani is a Kurd and he, as well as the Kurdish delegation to parliament, has withdrawn from government in the wake of Maliki’s accusations on Wednesday. Legally, the vote cannot be held.
Maliki’s sectarian intransigence may well have doomed Iraq to be broken into three parts; Baghdad, an ISIS state, and Kurdistan.
HECK OF A JOB, CHENEY!
Incompetent governments can muddle along far longer than expected. Even if they become more incompetent. Several US state governments and the US House are demonstrating this every day now.
What are the long-term chances that Iraq remains one country?
The US owes Iraq reparations for the war crimes it committed against Iraq, and they should also pay for the UN peacekeeping missions that arise from a split of the “country”.
Otherwise, we need to leave those people alone. They and us cannot afford for the US government to do them any more “favors”.
Maybe we should prefer establishing a caliphate.
I get nervous about changing regimes. It’s not my business.
I suspect that ISIS, or whatever they are calling themselves this week, will crumble if it’s cut off from aid (who’s been buying them the new Toyota Forerunners and Nike shoes?) from the House of Saud and the US (maybe they pretended to be moderate).
Never was a fan of Malicki, but then I haven’t been too happy with most regimes over in that neck of the woods.