Iraq falling apart?

[Kleves]

What a clusterfuck. If Iraq goes (further) into the shitter, it will not be good for Obama. Story: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017309274_iraq23.html

BAGHDAD — Faster than anyone expected — barely a month after the last U.S. troops left — Iraq's government appears to be coming apart, prompting fears that the country is headed for another round of sectarian strife.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, is driving to consolidate control and sideline more secular politicians in a battle that increasingly appears to be a fight to the finish in which there can be no compromise.

Barham Salih, the widely admired prime minister of the autonomous Kurdish region in the north, said the infighting is "tearing the country apart."

Pre-emption is the name of the game.

"The motto is: 'I'll have him for lunch before they have me for dinner,' " he said.

The downhill spiral takes a new turn every week, sometimes daily. Responding to a boycott by his Sunni partners in the power-sharing government, al-Maliki last week locked them out of their jobs, ordering ministries to bar their doors to Cabinet officers, even though they still have a mandate from the Iraqi parliament.

A day later, the Iraqiya bloc headed by secular Shiite Ayad Allawi, which has 94 seats in the 325-seat parliament, said that if al-Maliki did not agree to curbs on his power, he should be replaced, either in new elections or by a vote of al-Maliki's Shiite backers in parliament.

Iraqi politics today is a constellation of clashes, many in plain view but others below the surface. "It's just one-fifth of the iceberg that we are seeing," said Tahseen Shekhli, an adviser to the prime minister. "The more dangerous disputes are still hidden."

The country's vice-president, a Sunni, fled last month to Kurdistan, where he's safe from Iraqi justice authorities seeking his arrest on allegations that he directed hit squads against prominent Shiites. Al-Maliki has attempted to oust the deputy prime minister, also a Sunni, but Sunni and Kurdish legislators refuse to hold a vote, paralyzing the Parliament.

Al-Maliki has sent troops and tanks into the streets of the Green Zone, where most prominent politicians live, and warned top leaders that he is keeping "files" on them.

Allawi, who has been a no-show at Parliament and seems to be abroad more often than in Iraq, says al-Maliki has arrested more than 1,000 political opponents on the pretext of preventing a coup by members and supporters of the Baath party of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.

All is not well within al-Maliki's bloc, either, which is able to control the Parliament with 159 votes.

Supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who hold 40 of those seats, abstained in protest when they were asked to remove Sunni ministers from their jobs, and they're outraged by al-Maliki's courting of Shiite extremists who are rivals to the Sadrists.

In the midst of the political squabbling, insurgents, possibly al-Qaida, have carried out attacks, killing at least 250 civilians in Baghdad and other cities since U.S. forces left, giving the country a security scare.

The international rights groups Human Rights Watch said Sunday in the Iraq chapter of its annual report that the government cracked down harshly on dissent during the past year of Arab Spring uprisings, turning the country into a "budding police state" as autocratic regimes crumbled elsewhere in the region.

With no military forces on the ground, the U.S.' leverage is meager.

President Obama may have made things worse last month when he hosted al-Maliki in Washington and hailed him as the leader of "Iraq's most inclusive government yet."

"Iraqis are working to build institutions that are efficient and independent and transparent," Obama said.

The speech enraged Saleh Mutlak, a Sunni who is a deputy prime minister.

"What I heard from Obama was deceiving both for Americans and Iraqis," Mutlak said. "Obama is telling Americans that they were victorious in Iraq, they liberated the country and Iraqis are now very well situated, and the hero of Iraq, the prime minister, has made an inclusive government in Iraq. But it is the opposite."

So he gave an interview to CNN in which he denounced al-Maliki as a "dictator."

"I wanted to let Mr. Obama know that what he's telling his own people is not correct. And I wanted to tell my people that I have waited enough, and it's time to tell the truth of what's going on inside the government. If al-Maliki stays in power, dictatorship will be more concentrated."

A week later, in an interview with the BBC, Mutlak compared al-Maliki unfavorably with Saddam. "Saddam brought a lot of things to Iraq, like construction and roads and other sorts of things, whereas al-Maliki doesn't seem to be able to bring about such reforms to the country."

Mutlak's comments angered al-Maliki, who announced that he would depose Mutlak and sent a request to Parliament to oust him from his position. But Kurds refused to take part in the vote and together with Sunni delegates deprived the Parliament of a quorum.

Mutlak defends his comparison of al-Maliki and Saddam. "Show me a single building which is being built by Maliki. His office, his home, the Parliament, everything was built by Saddam," he said in Irbil.

Mutlak said al-Maliki showed his sectarian colors a month before the Washington trip by refusing to address the issue of ethnic and sectarian imbalance in the general staff of the Iraqi military. Mutlak said an all-party study commission had concluded that under al-Maliki, 86 percent of the military's top command posts were filled by Shiites and 14 percent by members of all other sects and nationalities, well more than the 60 to 65 percent that Shiites represent in the population.

Mutlak said al-Maliki's response was "I don't believe in that," meaning striving for ethnic and sectarian balance. Mutlak also blasted al-Maliki for not consulting with his Cabinet before departing for the meeting with Obama and for not bringing any member of the Iraqiya bloc and only one non-Shiite to Washington.

"It means this was a personal meeting, between the Dawa party [of al-Maliki] and the Americans," Mutlak said.

Shekhli, the government adviser, said, "If you make all the people a part of a decision, it will be weak. At the end, they chose him as prime minister, and they must accept his decisions."

As for labeling al-Maliki a dictator, he said: "There is no dictatorship here that will last here forever, as Saddam Hussein, or in other Arab countries," he said. "At the end, there will be voting every four years. The people can change the government through the ballot box."

[Tamas]

Who would  have tought.

[Valmy]

And we are going to be blamed for this by everybody 

Empirin' ain't easy.

[Tamas]

And we are going to be blamed for this by everybody 

Empirin' ain't easy.

Yeah, what did you do expect Leeroy Jenkins-ing into a very complex and fragile country without a single plan on how to actually run it after the Mission Accomplished photo opportunity was had?

[DGuller]

Hopefully that's not true, at least not for another year.

[Valmy]

Yeah, what did you do expect Leeroy Jenkins-ing into a very complex and fragile country without a single plan on how to actually run it after the Mission Accomplished photo opportunity was had?

We had a plan.

1. Overthrow Saddam

2. Liberty and Democracy breaks out

I was sure Bush and Blair were just saying that for public consumption and did, in fact, have a plan but in retrospect it does not look like it.

[Razgovory]

Thing is, I don't think many people care in the US.  Neither Democrats or Republicans really like the Iraqis that much.

[The Brain]

I can't believe that daddy Bush stayed out of that mess. What a retard.

[Valmy]

Thing is, I don't think many people care in the US.  Neither Democrats or Republicans really like the Iraqis that much.

No we are pretty tired of the whole thing.

[Berkut]

Thing is, I don't think many people care in the US.  Neither Democrats or Republicans really like the Iraqis that much.

No we are pretty tired of the whole thing.

We did what we could. The rest is (mostly) on them.

[11B4V]

 

[Valmy]

We did what we could. The rest is (mostly) on them.

Yeah that is how I would hope people see it, or they just recognize Iraq was never going to work as a country.

[Razgovory]

I'm not sure they properly appreciate the whole "Kill a bunch of you, so the survivors can have a better life", thing.

[Phillip V]

We need to re-invade with four times as many troops. It will help solve the unemployment problem as well as make the world safe for democracy.

[11B4V]

We need to re-invade with four times as many troops. It will help solve the unemployment problem as well as make the world safe for democracy.

At least on the contractor side of the house.