For Al-Maliki to be hailed as a great leader he must do more, writes Saif Nasrawi Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki might feel some inner pride in being selected by Newsweek as one of the 50 most influential figures of the year, but he knows that 2009 will be decisive if he aspires to be remembered as a great leader. The Iraqi premier could be partially hailed for his role in substantially reducing violence in Iraq in 2008 due to his successful military campaigns against both Shia militiamen and Al-Qaeda operatives. However, the political challenges facing efforts to stabilise the war-torn nation remain immense and could easily, if not thoroughly tackled, lead to a reversal of security gains. As the year drew to a close, the monthly Iraqi death toll is around 9,000 casualties, down from 24,300 on average in 2007, the lowest total since the 2003 US invasion. The reduction of violence in 2008 was attributed to several factors among which is Al-Maliki's bold plans to chase the Sadrists in central and southern Iraq and to hunt down Al-Qaeda cells in the Sunni Triangle. Al-Maliki's military assaults, which took place between February and May, were largely conducted by an increasingly confident Iraqi army that is being gradually transformed into a professional and national combat force as opposed to its initial sectarian and ethnic character after the US occupation. Containing extremists was also facilitated by the Awakening Councils -- the nearly 105,000 US-financed Sunni Arab tribal fighters who joined forces with the government to drive Al-Qaeda out of Sunni provinces. Beside their direct military impact, cracking down on paramilitary groups, especially the Mahdi Army of Shia cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, helped to convey a message of trust to Sunni factions that the Shia-led government was trying to be more inclusive. In July, the Iraqi Accord Front, the main Sunni bloc in the parliament that boycotted Al-Maliki's government last year, returned to the cabinet. The Front's six ministers had walked out in August 2007 in protest of what they qualified as the sectarian policies adopted by the ruling Shia coalition. On similar grounds, seven Sunni Arab states, including Jordan and Kuwait, decided in July that they would restore full diplomatic relations with Iraq, a move seen by many Iraqi and US circles breaking Iraq's political isolation from the Arab world since the US invasion. Yet despite these security and diplomatic achievements, Iraq's long-term stability and democracy remain highly fragile, as these developments were largely tactical, not institutional. Iraqi political factions are still divided on the essence of the state, especially power-sharing mechanisms. Creating a more embracing political atmosphere seems remote in the near future when Iraqis will be faced with two fundamental challenges: the withdrawal of US troops from Iraqi cities by the end of June 2009, and provincial and parliamentary elections of next year where the political scene will be re-shuffled in favour of political newcomers. As stipulated by the recently signed US-Iraqi security agreement, US combat forces will be relocated outside Iraqi cities by mid-2009, before leaving the country entirely by the end of 2011. A possible withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, powered by the election of Senator Barack Obama as the next US president, with his pledge to pull US troops out of Iraq in 16 months, puts tremendous pressure on the Iraqi government to ensure that militant groups will not bounce back. This seems likely with the mushrooming of all kinds of political rifts and the absence of a genuine national reconciliation project. As 2008 ends, rising tensions between Iraqi Arabs and Kurds over the nature of federalism and the redeployment of Kurdish military forces outside Iraq's ethnically mixed cities, introduce a new perplexing divide in an already fragmented political process in Iraq. In September, Iraqi Arab and Kurdish lawmakers quarrelled intensely over legislation to move forward with provincial elections. Their major disagreement focussed on whether to grant all large ethnicities in the oil rich city of Kirkuk -- Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen -- equal representations in the city's governing council. Non-Kurdish groups insisted on this condition because of fears that the Kurds have been actively engaged in a planned scheme to annex the city to Kurdistan, the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. And although the local elections law was passed in late September, Kirkuk and all Kurdish provinces will not participate in the elections scheduled on 31 January, pending a parliamentary committee to draft a specific law for these regions. The majority of Iraqi Arab and Turkomen political factions boycotted the last local polls of 2005 in protest of what they viewed as widespread fraud and voter intimidation carried out by the Peshmerga, the nearly 280,000-strong well-trained Kurdish security forces. A growing Shia-Kurd divide was also evident in Al-Maliki's call in October to rewrite the Iraqi constitution in order to create a strong central authority. "A state can not be established without a strong national government. Security, diplomacy and the distribution of Iraqi oil revenues should be laid entirely within the powers of the central government," he said in a written statement. The upcoming local elections are also widely expected to reshape the Shia political scene before the parliamentary elections that will take place in December 2009. Analysts suggest that the Sadrist movement, which boycotted the 2005 local elections, will score a landslide victory by depending on strong social networks among disenfranchised Shia communities in central and southern Iraq. Failing to integrate the Sadrists into the political process will put considerable pressure on the movement's leader, Moqtada Al-Sadr, to terminate a 14-month ceasefire that is largely viewed by many experts as the most important factor behind the reduction of violence in Iraq. Stabilising Iraq also has a regional dimension as it requires reaching out to Iraq's neighbours, especially Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, to persuade them to cut funds to insurgents, stop smuggling weapons, and provide stricter monitoring on their borders to prevent foreign fighters from infiltrating Iraq. The dilemma of Baghdad and Washington with regard to Iraq's neighbours will be the handling of these countries' differing, not to say conflicting, interests. Although Obama has promised to negotiate directly with Tehran, Iran's tough stance on its nuclear programme, its hegemony over Iraq and its heavy involvement in Lebanon and Gaza, makes it likely that Tehran would not accept anything less than a strategic deal with Washington to secure its regional position, a situation that would be resisted by Iraq's Sunni neighbours. On the other hand, Obama is aware that he needs Saudi Arabia to use its leverage to pressure Iraqi Sunni forces as well as to convince the Taliban in Afghanistan to stabilise the country and push senior Al-Qaeda leaders away. Obama also knows that the $2 trillion of Arab Gulf reserves are crucial to easing the financial crisis he is facing at home.
