Sadr ministers walk out of Iraq government in protest at US
Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered his six ministers to leave the Iraqi cabinet because of Maliki's refusal to demand a date for American withdrawal.The Sadrists accused Mr Maliki of "ignoring the will of the people" over the issue of a timed American withdrawal.
Should there be a confrontation between American forces and al-Sadr's movement, which is mostly supported by the Shia population, then the Americans would find themselves fighting both the Sunnis and the Shias.
And, at a time when George Bush is fighting to stop Democrats attaching a withdrawal date to the Iraqi spending bill, al-Sadr's move should highlight just how popular such a date for withdrawal is amongst ordinary Iraqis.His new anti-American campaign is in keeping with Iraqi opinion going by a recent poll by ABC, the BBC, ARD and USA Today. It showed that 78 per cent of Iraqis oppose the presence of US forces in Iraq. More than 7 out of 10 Shia - and almost all Sunni - say the US military presence makes security worse.
Al-Sadr has threatened to remove his ministers many times before now, but this is the first time he has ever carried through on such a threat which will leave Maliki weakened as he has relied on al-Sadr's votes to maintain his majority in parliament.
Bush used to be able to say that "ordinary Iraqis" welcomed the American presence in Iraq. Now, even that legitimacy is lost to him.A significant change in Iraqi politics over the past four years has been the growing hostility of the Shia towards the US. Although the government of Mr Maliki is in effect a Shia-Kurdish coalition, 59 per cent of Iraqis think the US controls things in Iraq according to the poll. Many Shia see the US as covertly manipulating the real levers of power in order to exclude them. For instance the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, the main security service, under General Mohammed Shahwani, is wholly funded by the CIA at a reported cost of $3 bn since 2004.
The Sadrists are not likely to move into total opposition to Mr Maliki's government because Mr Sadr has sought to avoid direct military confrontation with the US since his Mehdi Army militia clashed with American forces in 2004. "The Prime Minister has to express the will of the Iraqi people," the head of the Sadrist bloc in parliament, Nasser al-Rubaie, said yesterday. "They went out in their millions asking for a timetable for withdrawal. We noticed the Prime Minister's response did not express the will of the people."
And, four years down the line, he has difficulty appointing a new war czar because, in the words of one of the generals who turned down the position:
What I found in discussions with current and former members of this administration is that there is no agreed-upon strategic view of the Iraq problem or the region....Which is as polite a way as I can think of saying that Bush has no real plan. There is certainly no easily discernible one other the vague notion that Bush would like to pass this war on to his successor. For his present "surge" with it's intention to retake Baghdad and, therefore, take control of the rest of Iraq, seems to ignore the fact that, in Afghanistan, Karzai controls Kabul but not the rest of the country. So the plan, as far as it exists, is based on a notion that has already been proven not to work elsewhere.
We cannot "shorthand" this issue with concepts such as the "democratization of the region" or the constant refrain by a small but powerful group that we are going to "win," even as "victory" is not defined or is frequently redefined.
But the recent move by al-Sadr highlights another, more deeply rooted problem in Bush's approach, where he has always insisted that his willpower alone will determine events. Other players get to make moves as well.
And, with every month that passes, Bush's intransigence becomes even harder to defend as it becomes clearer that fewer and fewer Iraqis agree with the American presence in their country.
78% of Iraqis now oppose the American presence. Four out of every five people in the country. That's an astonishingly large proportion of the population. Indeed, that's the kind of figure that you ignore at your peril.
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Juan Cole
I now count those who would probably vote against al-Maliki if the question was called this way: The Iraqiya List of Iyad Allawi: 25; The Fadhila Party: 15; the National Dialogue Front (secularist Sunnis): 11; Sadrists: 32. That is 83. I don't know what the Iraqi Accord Front (fundamentalist Sunnis) would do. They have 44 seats. If they voted against, that would be 127. It would take 138 to cause the government to fall, which means that if the Sunnis were disgruntled enough, and if a few (11) other Shiites defected, even al-Maliki's powerful coalition of Kurds and fundamentalist Shiites could not protect him. I think the Iraq government is gradually collapsing; likely the end state is just dysfunctionality rather than anything dramatic. There was a Lebanese parliament all through the Civil War there, it just did not do anything and couldn't meet (the parliament building lay on the Green Line along which the fighting raged).
2 comments:
Personally, I'd be more than happy to pull back to Kurdistan and to the border regions and just let them kill themselves, but I guess that wouldn't be the responsible thing to do.
Oh, and you don't really think that the Sadrists wanting us out, a movement we engage in open hostilities with, is news, do you?
Erm, you're fighting the Sunnis and have recently had much better relations with the Sadrists. Do you think it's a good idea to fight the Shia as well?
I know you've fought them before but, as the article says, "Mr Sadr has sought to avoid direct military confrontation with the US since his Mehdi Army militia clashed with American forces in 2004."
But if you think it's a good idea to fight everyone, have a whale of a time.
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