Two months after a Sunni uprising triggered by the arrest of his bodyguards on charges of terrorism, Iraq's Sunni Finance Minister Refaai Al-Essawi has announced his resignation in a move widely expected to deepen the governmental crisis and heighten sectarian tensions in the war-scarred country. Iraqis are concerned that the resignation of possibly more Sunni ministers from the power-sharing government will have broader consequences in a country already rocked by unrest and at a time when a spillover from the civil war in neighbouring Syria is straining Iraq's delicate ethno-sectarian balance. Dozens of Syrian soldiers who had fled across the border into Iraq at the weekend to escape an attack by rebel fighters were slain in the worst incident in the Syrian civil war to take place in a neighbouring country. Since mid-December huge anti-government protests have kicked off in Sunni-dominated provinces in Iraq in order to push for the release of Al-Essawi's bodyguards. The protesters later stepped up their demands to end what they consider to be the exclusion and marginalisation of the Sunni community. They have sought to topple the political process which they believe has empowered the majority Shias at their expense following the US-led invasion of the country in 2003 that overthrew the Sunni-dominated regime of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Al-Essawi told the protesters at a rally in his stronghold province of Anbar on Friday that he was resigning in response to their demands that Sunni ministers should quit after the government had refused to meet their demands. “It doesn't honour me to be a part of a sectarian government. I decided to stay with my people,” he told the crowd. Many Sunni religious and tribal leaders who support the protesters have been calling on Sunni politicians to leave the government and demand an overhaul of the US-orchestrated political process, including rewriting the post-Saddam era constitution and drawing up a new power-sharing contract. Sheikh Abdel-Malik Al-Saadi, a high-ranking Sunni clergyman who is considered a spiritual guide for the protesters, welcomed Al-Essawi's resignation and called on all Sunni ministers and lawmakers to step down in protest against the policies of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. “The government has failed to correct its path. I therefore call on brothers, the ministers who disdain sectarianism and hate deceit, to withdraw from the cabinet in order to maintain their dignity,” Al-Saadi said in a statement on Saturday. Al-Essawi is a member of the Al-Iraqiya List, the main Sunni-dominated group that holds the second-largest number of seats in the parliament after the Shia Iraqi National Alliance. After the arrest of Al-Essawi's security staff, the bloc ordered its representatives in the national unity government to boycott the cabinet. The List also holds eight portfolios in the government, while one of its leaders, Osama Al-Nujaifi, is the speaker of the parliament. Another leader, Tarek Al-Hashimi, has fled Iraq after he was accused of running death squads and was later sentenced to death. Many dissatisfied Sunnis agree that their politicians should press for drastic political changes that would give them a broader role in decision-making in the country, but they believe that they should do this through participation rather than by attempting to topple the political system. This might explain why many leaders of Iraqiya are reluctant to ask their ministers to resign because they do not see any good in Sunnis abandoning the political process altogether. The Iraqi media have reported that the leaders of Iraqiya met at least twice after Al-Essawi's resignation in order to discuss their next step, but that they failed to agree on a decision to resign from the government, signalling a sharp division within the community. At least one Sunni minister has already returned to work backed by his tribe, while Sunni tribesmen in Mosul have organised sit-ins to urge the minister of agriculture, who is a member of the tribe, to return to work. Some cynics say Iraqiya ministers have been reluctant to quit for fear of Al-Maliki's retaliation and retribution. On Saturday, his office said Al-Maliki would not accept the resignation of Al-Essawi before a judicial inquiry about corruption charges was completed. Al-Maliki had used the judiciary in the past to issue arrest warrants against rival politicians after accusing them of graft or terrorism. On the other hand, there have been reports about a division within the Shia alliance over the way Al-Maliki is handling the crisis. Senior politicians from the ruling coalition have been complaining that Al-Maliki is not doing enough to co-opt the Sunni demonstrators. Others believe that Al-Maliki is playing sectarian cards in order to boost his chances ahead of next month's provincial elections. However, the escalation in the governmental crisis and the protests in the Sunni heartland are fuelling fears that the increasingly sectarian bickering in neighbouring Syria will push Iraq back towards the bloody Sunni-Shia strife that took place in the years following the US-led invasion. Last week, Al-Maliki warned of the turmoil in Iraq that could follow the collapse of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's embattled regime. He said that a victory for the insurgents in the Syrian civil war would create a “new extremist haven” and destabilise the wider Middle East, sparking sectarian wars in Iraq and other neighbouring countries. Indeed, the lingering political crisis in Iraq shows the volatility that the Syrian conflict and the country's own sectarian divisions could spark in what remains a sharply divided society a decade after the US-led invasion. On Monday, unidentified armed men ambushed a convoy carrying Syrian soldiers who had crossed into Iraq from weekend fighting that had left 48 Syrians and seven Iraqis dead. The soldiers had crossed into Iraq from the northern sector of the border after Syrian rebels fought government forces in a nearby town and eventually seized the border post, prompting Iraq to shut the border crossing with Syria. Meanwhile, violence intensified this week with the swelling of the Sunni opposition to Al-Maliki, whose power-sharing government has been all but paralysed since US troops withdrew from the country in December 2011. A suicide attacker drove a car laden with explosives on Monday into a police checkpoint in Mosul in northern Iraq, killing five policemen and wounding 12 other people. A day earlier, a suicide bomber struck in nearby shrines in the Shia holy city of Karbala and wounded 10 people. At least five people were also killed in a double car-bombing at a market in the southern Iraqi city of Al-Diwaniya on Saturday. It came a day after at least 22 people were killed in a series of bombings in Shia neighbourhoods in Baghdad. In all likelihood, Iraq seems to be continuing to sail the stormy sea it has been on since the US-led invasion ten years ago. For those who know the country's polarised politics and rivalry inside the government well, part of the reason for the current crisis lies with Al-Maliki and the uncompromising strategy he has embraced to sideline his opponents using the vast powers of his office. Since starting his second term as prime minister in 2010, Al-Maliki, who already had unprecedented personal control over the country's army and security forces, has tightened his grip over several key state institutions. Among independent commissions Al-Maliki has assumed control of those which are overseeing the media, elections, integrity and human rights violations. He is also in control of the Central Bank and the country's Federal Supreme Court. In his current standoff with the Sunnis, Al-Maliki is relying on the sectarian loyalty of Iraqi Shias who fear what might come after the collapse of Al-Assad's regime in Syria. But by being unconscionable about Sunni grievances Al-Maliki is failing to learn from the lessons of the sectarian conflict that has scarred the last ten years of Iraq's history. If the crisis drags on, Iraq will degenerate into a patchwork of warring fiefdoms, and almost everything the Shias want to achieve will become harder. What will remain is a “Shia Saddam” who will rule over a canton-like country controlled by Iran and besieged by hostile Sunni neighbours on three sides.
