Battered by his failure, Iraq's Prime Minister 's insistence on clinging to power is a puzzle, writes Salah Hemeid By the time he arrived in Damascus on Monday seeking Syria's help to bolster his efforts to bring peace and stability back to his violence-torn nation, Iraqi Prime Minister was upbeat about his mission. "The goal of this visit is to achieve the government's policy which is based on security, and economic and political relations with neighbouring countries," Al-Maliki told reporters accompanying him on the plane. Al-Maliki left behind a crumbling government and a fractured political alliance swimming in a sea of a relentless insurgency, and seemed to be hinting that an end to Iraq's aggravating political conflict rests not on Iraq's warring factions, but on its neighbours. Meanwhile, it feels like Iraq is on the verge of an even greater political crisis that might deal the final blow to its fragile unity. Al-Maliki's government crisis, which is the worst since Iraqis gained sovereignty from the US-led occupation in June 2004, was precipitated three weeks ago by the decision of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the main Sunni Arab bloc to which Vice- President Tarek Al-Hashimi belongs, to withdraw its six ministers from the cabinet. In all, seventeen of Al-Maliki's 37 ministers have abandoned his 18 month-old cabinet in recent weeks, in protest over the Shia prime minister's incompetence and failure to build a national consensus that is widely believed to be necessary to bring an end to the country's four-and-a-half years of sectarian strife. Instead of trying to forge a political compromise and expand his coalition government by bringing in more disgruntled groups, Al-Maliki and his Shia and Kurdish allies chose to form a close-knit group that excluded many Shias and all Arab Sunni groups. That alliance came immediately under fire as an attempt by Al-Maliki and his alliance to maintain the status quo by clinging to a non-functional government. Al-Hashimi, whose Iraqi Islamic Party is the backbone of the Sunni bloc, scoffed at the new alliance as "adding nothing to the political process." "That is why we do not believe that this alliance will change the current political equation," he said insisting that the party has no intention to join the four-party alliance. Other Sunni leaders also called the move a bluff and decided to stay away as long as their demands for a larger share in power were not met. As opposition to the new alliance mounted, Al-Maliki and his Shia and Kurdish allies renewed their attempts to revive national reconciliation efforts and repair the fractured unity government. One much discussed compromise to ease the current political impasse is to create a new council made up of Iraq's president, his two deputies, and the prime minister that would make decisions aimed at spurring the political process. The main goal of the council would be to reach a compromise on several contentious issues, including a formula to distribute the country's oil revenue and a law aimed at allowing some former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to hold government jobs. But in order to reach an agreement on this council, leaders of the main political blocs have to meet first at a summit level to overcome their differences. The meeting, which was scheduled to start last week, has been repeatedly delayed. But even if the summit does take place many Iraqis are not optimistic that the crisis meeting will have any meaningful result. The problem is that the current leaders have come to power based on a sectarian blueprint while Iraq needs a broader non-sectarian alliance based on a national consensus if its leaders want to end the stalemate. Al Maliki's attempt to seek support from Syria, which has been accused by his government of being home to many insurgency leaders and backers, fell on deaf ears. Syrian officials spared no time to make it clear to the Iraqi leader that he should be more serious about national reconciliation and make more effort to bring the American presence in Iraq to an end. "Setting a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq will boost opportunities of reconciliation among Iraqis and provide a suitable atmosphere for a serious dialogue among different Iraqi parties," Syrian Prime Minister Mohamed Naji Ottari was quoted as telling Al-Maliki. Also, in a sign of growing US frustration and impatience over Al-Maliki's standstill, US President George W Bush called for further political efforts to bring peace to Iraq. Just weeks before a report on his Iraq strategy is to be presented to the US Congress, he said the Iraqi government still had "many important measures" to resolve in order to meet political goals "such as reforming the de- Baathification laws, organising provincial elections and passing a law to formalise the sharing of oil revenues". Some US congressmen even went as far as declaring Al-Maliki's government non-functional and said that Iraq's parliament should oust him and his cabinet if they are unable to forge a political compromise with rival factions in a matter of days. "I hope the parliament will vote Al-Maliki's government out of office and will have the wisdom to replace it with a less sectarian and more unifying prime minister and government," Senator Carl M Levin (D-MI), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after a three-day trip to Iraq. Levin's statement, the most forceful call for leadership change in Iraq from a US elected official, comes as several lawmakers are travelling to Iraq during Congress's August break to make firsthand assessments before receiving a progress report next month from General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador in Baghdad. Yet toying with the idea of ousting Al-Maliki's government might not be the best solution after all. Despite deepening concerns about Al-Maliki's leadership flaws, many observers believe that any new prime minister would confront the same problems in trying to forge a broader political alliance. One can imagine how many more months Iraqis would have to wait if he was replaced by a brand-new leader and a new government without addressing the real issues of division. Probably this is what makes Al-Maliki so confident and even defiant -- that his replacement would be seen as the "kiss of death" for Iraq. For this reason, Al-Maliki seems to be hedging his bets while he waits to see how his critics play out their cards. One example: now that Sunni tribes have joined in fighting Al-Qaeda they will be willing to join his government, a move which will certainly weaken the accordance and undermine its bargaining position. Second: he will play on the distraction that Bush's forthcoming report provides and try to outmanoeuvre it to profit from any window of opportunity that it offers.
