Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Nouri al-Maliki

  • Islamist Militants Take Mosul, Discrediting Iraq’s Government

    Even before the Tuesday morning assault into Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, by hundreds of militants affiliated to Al Qaeda, the Iraqi security forces were stretched thin across the country.

    Last week, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), the breakaway Al Qaeda faction that has solidified a presence in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, swept into Samarra in a renewed attempt to spark widespread sectarian conflict. While the Iraqi army was quickly dispatched to the city and managed to reclaim neighborhoods previously taken by ISIS fighters, the operation sent shockwaves in the hearts of Iraq’s political officials and once again raised the question of whether the country’s security is at all better since American troops left in 2011.

    In yet another reminder of how potent militancy in Iraq has become — and how ineffectual the Iraqi government’s response to terrorist attacks has been — the Sunni extremist group took a large swath of Mosul with little to no army resistance. Banks were looted of what are rumored to be millions of dollars in stolen funds, military checkpoints and police stations were taken, civilians were forced to flee to the Kurdish regions of Iraq and the city’s residents awoke to new overlords. (more…)

  • Iraq’s Maliki Faces Tough Choices in Fallujah

    In some of the most deadly fighting in Iraq since the American withdrawal more than two years ago, the residents of Fallujah, one of the largest city in the western Anbar Province, find themselves in the middle of a violent confrontation between militants associated with Al Qaeda and Sunni tribesmen who, for now, back the national army and police.

    Thanks to reporters on the ground and corresponds in the region, we know that Islamist fighters have effectively taken over the city and held their ground for the last week. While Ramadi, Anbar’s provincial capital, is also partially in the hands of the same insurgents, Sunni tribes supported by the Iraqi government have reportedly captured its center.

    The violence prompted Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to appeal to the residents of Fallujah in televised address to evict Al Qaeda’s fighters on their own if they hope to stave off a military operation. With sectarian tensions already at a dangerous high in Iraq, the worst decision that Maliki, a Shia, could take is to order the Iraqi army to storm a major Sunni city and potentially incur civilian casualties. (more…)

  • Iraq’s Maliki Deserves Some Tough Love from Obama

    Twenty-three months ago, Americans and Iraqis alike celebrated a milestone they had both long waited for: an end to a bloody and hard fought occupation. Iraq, at least when compared to its more violent days, was slowly stabilizing, with an Al Qaeda terrorist network struggling to sustain itself and a thriving oil sector pouring tens of billions of dollars into the country’s economy. President Barack Obama, who had considered the invasion of Iraq a “dumb war,” announced on national television that all America’s troops were coming home and that its involvement in the war was finally over.

    Fast forward to today and it is clear that whatever hopes Iraqis had for a future have come apart at the seams. (more…)

  • Maliki Can Learn Counterinsurgency Lessons from Americans

    For the millions of Iraqis who are still trying to recover from a decade of war, terrorism is nothing new. Ten years of warfare and insurgency have not only brought about the partial destruction of Iraq as a strong state but also the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians while millions more were made refugees in their own country.

    So when American troops finally withdrew in December 2011 after officially declaring that coalition military operations were over, Iraqis of all sects and religions were hopeful that their lives would get better — or at the very least, more peaceful.

    Nearly two years after that withdrawal, however, the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated to a point that even the most pessimistic Iraqi had not predicted. The scope and scale of terrorism that is devastating the Middle Eastern country this year is on a level not seen since 2008 when the sectarian civil war that tore Iraq’s social fabric apart was finally burning itself out. (more…)

  • Rising Sunni Discontent Test for Iraq’s Shia Premier

    It is not unusual for thousands of Iraqis to march in the streets, railing against their government. The country’s Sunnis, who dominated politics under Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime, have particular grievances with Shia prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s administration, the most important being the abolition of counterterrorism laws that they view as discriminatory to their sect.

    This was how last week’s protests started. Things changed on Tuesday last week when an Iraqi army unit stormed a protest camp in Hawija near Kirkuk north of Baghdad in pursuit of suspects involved in the killing of a soldier a few days prior. By the time the operation was over, dozens of people lay dead in the carnage. When news of the incident spread across the country, protesters and insurgents in Sunni areas were quick to pick up arms in retribution. In one such incident, four Iraqi troops were ambushed at a checkpoint in Ramadi and killed by unidentified gunmen. Five more were killed in Abu Ghraib.

    By Sunday, over two hundred people had died and many more wounded. The situation could get deadlier yet unless Maliki and representatives of the protest movement are able to sit down and strike up some type of accord. (more…)

  • Iraq Rushes to Contain Violence After Shooting

    Large scale protests against Iraqi’s prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government got even more serious this Friday when seven demonstrators were apparently shot by security forces in the city of Fallujah.

    The shootings occurred as Sunnis in the city, who have been marching for close to a month and demanding more fairness from Maliki’s administration which is dominated by Shia Muslims, tried to take their protest to another part of town where they were denied entry by Iraqi soldiers.

    Angry about being stopped, demonstrators began throwing rocks and bottles at the troops deployed at the checkpoint, prompting the soldiers to respond with full force. Judging from videos that were posted by The New York Times after the incident, the protesters were clearly surprised by the use of live ammunition. Out in the open, they ran to try to find as much cover as they could while bullets rang out toward the crowd. (more…)

  • Iraq’s Nouri al-Maliki Increasingly Authoritarian

    The war in Iraq may be over but the political, economic and security conflicts that have defined the lives of ordinary Iraqis for years are still very much there. Even as defense secretary Leon Panetta visited Iraq to officially conclude the war and salute the sacrifices of America’s troops, Iraq remains on the edge of trouble — far from its grisly history of sectarian violence but close enough to fall back into its dark past at any moment.

    The description may sound overly dramatic to some, particularly to the hundreds of thousands of American military families who have shouldered most of the difficulty and trauma over the last decade. Children traveling to school, after all, no longer trip upon dozens of bullet ridden and headless bodies on a daily basis on their way. Al Qaeda’s jihadist philosophy, gathering steam in Iraq only a short time ago, is nearly bankrupt in the country, as Iraq’s own Sunni community (with the help of the United States) pushed out terrorists from their neighborhoods.

    The days when Americans opened up their newspapers and read headlines of multiple soldiers dying in a single ambush or roadside bomb are in the past, where those headlines belong. But the question of what America really accomplished in Iraq, besides the quick overthrow of a dictator during the first few weeks of the war, is still vibrant in the memories of many who have served in Iraq since the operation began. Others may in fact be wondering if the war was worth the cost in human lives, American and Iraqi, as well as trillions of dollars in spending.

    The cutthroat circumstances defining Iraqi politics today are unfortunately putting more credence into that second guessing. A day after American soldiers completed their drawdown, Iraq’s politicians are fighting amongst themselves, both in the capital and in the surrounding provinces — nothing new but certainly more concerning given America’s departure.

    The coalition government that took nine months to form after prodding from internal Iraqi forces and neighboring countries, much like Iraq itself, now stands at the point of dissolution. Iraqi Sunnis under the political umbrella of al-Iraqiya never truly got along or trusted Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Rather, Sunnis and independent parties were compelled to accept him, understanding that refusing to do so would result in their marginalization from the political process. But with the government’s recent Ba’athist arrest campaign spurring moves by Sunni provinces for semi-autonomy, the gap between the Shia-led government and the Sunni opposition (with the Kurds nervously watching) is getting wider than Washington had anticipated.

    Maliki, who has run the country since its civil war days, may be attempting to expand his power base at the same time that American troops are leaving their bases, knowing that any reprisals from Washington would be limited.

    The conclusion is not entirely unfounded, for Sunnis constantly complain of being marginalized from the Iraqi government’s top jobs, including the powerful army and police. Maliki’s refusal to accept any compromise candidate for the defense and interior ministries, despite numerous requests from his political opponents, is not making the job of promoting good and orderly governance any easier. Nor is Maliki’s stonewalling of a National Council for Strategic Policies, a committee that was supposed to provide Iraqiya head Ayad Allawi with an important advisory role on the country’s most urgent issues.

    Combined, of all these factors add up to statements made just a couple of days ago by Iraqi leaders of Maliki autocratic streak, as well as warnings of Iraq “going toward a dictatorship.”

    Is the United States listening to these dire alerts? If not, the tremendous investment that has been made could be placed at risk. The democracy promotion effort in Iraq would therefore be nothing but an embarrassing foreign policy failure.

    Given Maliki’s past record of grabbing as much authority as he can — making promises to get everyone on board, only to renege on those promises months later — this nightmare scenario may not be a nightmare at all.

  • Iraq in the Middle of Middle East’s Cold War

    Last week, news of Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s assistance to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad broke in The Washington Post. Two days later, the Khaleej Times, an English news outlet in Dubai, reported on a New York Times story that al-Maliki was instead urging Assad to end Syria’s one-party rule. The day prior, Al Arabiya, also from Dubai, ran an opinion piece saying that al-Maliki denied making statements urging Assad to step down.

    Are you confused yet? (more…)

  • Iraq’s Maliki Faces Security Dilemma

    During his latest trip to the Middle East, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates chose to wrap up his meetings in Iraq, where he spoke briefly to the more than 47,000 American troops still operating in that country. Answering questions from individual soldiers about Washington’s plans for the country, the defense secretary walked a fine line, speaking to two different audiences who hold two vastly different objectives.

    The first and most important target throughout his remarks was the American people, where Gates attempted to assure Americans tired of the war that the commitment in Iraq was winding down. Yet it is the second audience, the Iraqi people, who may prove to be the determining factor, especially as Pentagon officials debate whether to keep a small contingent of American troops on Iraqi soil after January 2012.

    As it stands, all American military personnel are to pack up their gear and leave Iraq by the end of this year, in accordance with the Status of Forces Agreement signed years earlier by the Iraqi government and the Bush Administration. The State Department is scheduled to take over all of the Pentagon’s duties, from the protection of US Embassies and consults to the training of Iraqi police and military units. Most of the large bases set up by the American military have been transferred to the Iraqi Security Forces, as have most of the detainees who were captured on the battlefield. Only a small group of Al Qaeda militants remains in American hands.

    Collectively, all of this would indicate that Washington loves nothing more than to leave Iraq sooner before the security situation gets worse. The era of fiscal responsibility has forced the United States government to look for ways to cut down on operating costs across the board, and getting out of Iraq would certainly help that goal by eliminating billions of dollars in supplemental funding. (more…)

  • Finally a Government in Iraq

    It took eight long months of frustration and political wrangling, but it now looks like Iraq’s leaders have set aside their differences over who will lead the next government. And from all of the reports coming out of the negotiations, Nouri al-Maliki will retain the post of prime minister for another four years.

    The actual deal, however, is a bit more complicated than that. Maliki is undoubtedly the big winner, especially when one considers that his State of Law Party didn’t even finish first in the parliamentary elections last month. But Jalal Talabani and Ayad Allawi (Maliki’s fiercest critic) also came out on top. Of course, the constituencies that are actually included in the government are more important for Iraq’s future than the individual figures leading those positions. But even in that context, Iraq has largely succeeded in drawing all major sectarian communities into the political process.

    From early reports coming out of Baghdad, Maliki will remain Iraq’s prime minister, thus giving the majority Shia population firm control over the country’s most powerful office. Talabani, a Kurd, will continue to be Iraq’s president. Ayad Allawi, the man who actually won the most votes, will chair a new body (the National Council on Strategic Policies) that will be responsible for Iraq’s security policy. And Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni, is rumored to head Iraq’s Foreign Ministry, although this is still based on an aura of speculation.

    All in all, the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds are finally under the same roof. Bringing the Sunnis into the government was an especially important decision for Maliki & Company to make. Without adequate representation in Baghdad, there was a very real possibility that millions of Sunni men would return to the insurgency, thereby jeopardizing the entire security situation as a time when American forces are scheduled to withdraw completely by 2011. The last time Sunnis were excluded from politics (in 2005), the insurgency in Iraq spread like wildfire. This time, the United States, specifically Vice President Joe Biden and Ambassador Jim Jeffries, recognized that a return to the past was no longer an option.

    Hard work remains to be done. While Iraq’s top positions appear to be filled, the coalition government will now get down to the tough job of dishing out ministerial duties. Who will head the Interior Ministry, which is tasked with keeping a lid on domestic violence? Who will lead the Health Ministry? These are all questions that need to be resolved quickly and efficiently. Iraqis are waiting for action that will actually improve their lives; another round of political dueling over the ministries will only increase resentment among the Iraqi people and widen the gap between the elite and the electorate.

    Another query still to be answered is what role the new National Council on Strategic Decisions will have with respect to Iraq’s foreign policy. The new institution was just established, so there are no rules and regulations governing the work of the council yet. What is more, there is still a chance that Maliki will simply make decisions on his own, without the council’s input (he has circumvented ministries in the past).

    All of this is for another day. The first step is actually forming a government that everyone can agree on; or at least forming a government that is tolerable for the next four years. That step has finally been taken.