Orientalist Notebook

SHIA POLITICAL FRAGMENTATION CONTINUES

Maliki, with Second Political Wind, Still Fails to Negotiate Majority; PM Faces Party Revolt, Fragmenting Base

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Maliki, very nearly voted out of office in March, obtained a second political wind with his strong crackdown on the Sadrists and the Mahdi Army. Yet the restarting of negotiations with Iraq's largest Sunni bloc have broken down again, as he and the Accord Front have failed to agree to a list of new ministers. Maliki has also faced an internal revolt within his own Dawa Party, with a former prime minister taking over many of the party's office. Finally, as provincial elections voting lists are released, it doesn't appear that anyone wants to be associated with the governing United Iraqi Alliance (UIA).

Maliki-Accord: The Negotiation Saga Continues
As negotiations between the Maliki government and the Sunni Accord Front move into their tenth month, they seem to have broken down again. Now the major issue seems to be the Minister of Planning. Remember that when Accord left the government last September, their minister of planning refused to leave, and they kicked him out of the party. Now they want that ministry back, and they want the renegade sent packing, but the UIA says they won't jettison someone who supported the government. I'm still not convinced that they could get a majority in parliament to approve the list of five ministers once it is agreed upon. In addition to defections of independents, Accord appears also to be facing the defection of one of its three main factions (see below). Of its original 44, I doubt it can muster 30 now.

To give a few examples to show the tenor of these negotiations, looking through some of my sources, on May 5 Maliki rejected Accord's six-person list (five ministers and a deputy prime minister), saying, without apparent irony, that he wanted cabinet ministers with qualifications so as to have a "technocrat" government ("Iraqi Government Reservation About Names Submitted by Accord Front," al-Quds al-Arabi). On May 22, al-Hayat reported that negotiations with Accord continued and "are in their final stages and its return is near," something that has been reported probably appeared in 900 headlines since last fall. On May 27 the same source headlined "Accord Front Doubts Maliki's Sincerity in Bringing About Return of Ministers to Govt," and quoted them as saying that they were going to give Maliki two more weeks, or "one last try," something else I've read before. On May 29, the Emirate newspaper al-Ittihad reported on the issue that Maliki continued to block the planning candidate, and quoted an Accord representative as emphasizing that "getting back into the government is not an end unto itself for us, but to have real and effective participation..." That was of course the reason they left - they had ministries, but no real power in government. The May 29 report of al-Hayat included a quote from Tariq Hashemi expressing optimism that Accord would return "within days," confirming what I've noticed for months that while Hashemi's Islamic Party really wants back in the government, the other two factions of Accord less so. Then on May 11, the same source reported that, according to party leader Adnan Dulaimi, the government gave them "no official response" on their most recent proposal, and that "all that has been put forward about us agreeing to their recent proposal is just media statements."

Jaafari's Pustch
On April 5 former prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari led what may be described as a "soft coup" inside the Dawa Party against Prime Minister Maliki, who is nominally its head. According to Iraqi and international Arabic press reports, Jaafari took over Dawa's offices in Najaf and renamed them under the heading of his new faction, the "National Reform Faction." He also took over an unspecified number of party offices in other Shia areas, including the Kathimiya area in Baghdad. Although press reports largely reported that "Dawa Expels Jaafari," it is not clear whether Maliki has expelled Jaafari or Jaafari has expelled him, since the party's Najaf offices are its national headquarters, Jaafari's people have tried to downplay the split since. (The pro-Dawa Buratha News headlined the issue, "Islamic Dawa Party Expels Ibrahim Jaafari and Denies His Membership to Party," whereas al-Hayat headlined the issue more neutrally - "Division in the Dawa Party Leads to Supporters of Jaafari Declaring their Control over Najaf Offices.")

Jaafari's coalition, the National Reform Faction ("Faction" here may be alternatively translated as "Current" or "Tendency"), appears to include about ten current members of the Iraqi parliament, including some unspecified division from the 12 held by Dawa and the 27 UIA independents. There is a further division in Dawa with the Ansar Dawa, so Maliki's contingent in parliament is something well less than 12, making him more dependant than ever on Abd al-Aziz Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. Furthermore, Jaafari's group is now aligning itself with a new parliamentary coalition that includes the Sadr faction, Fadhila, Iyad Allawi's Iraqi List, Salih Mutlaq's National Dialogue Front, some independents and the third Accord faction referred to above, Khalf Alyan's National Dialogue Council. I estimate that this new coalition will have around 100-110 seats in parliament, and it will be the parliament's largest, although it remains to be seen whether or not it can replace Maliki.

Provincial Elections
Iraqis have now registered for the provincial elections scheduled for October 1, although parliament has yet to pass the enabling law setting down the ground rules for the elections (i.e. how many districts or seats per province, etc.; see High Commission Expects Postponement of Provincial Elections to Later Time"), but the registration process itself has been illuminating. According to al-Watan ("Political Factions Participate Through Individual Lists in Provincial Elections"), 503 separate lists have registered, including 300 for Baghdad alone. That the Sunni factions would be fragmented, with tribal Awakening (Sahwa) groups running in separate lists against the Sunni political parties now in parliament, is not surprising. Tariq Hashemi's Iraqi Islamic Party in particular has been allowed to have disproportionate weight in national and provincial politics because they ran unopposed in 2005. The Awakening are now eager to run against them, with the contest more heated in Anbar than anywhere.

With the Shia it is a somewhat different matter. Only the followers of Muqtada Sadr boycotted in 2005, and all others are represented at the provincial and national level (the Sadrists are present at the national level, of course, but among the Sunnis the Awakening have no representation at either level). If the governing parties had performed well since that time, then we could expect for candidates to want to run on their lists this time. This is evidently not the case. No one is running under the list of the United Iraqi Alliance, and even Petroleum Minister Hussein Shahristani is running as an independent (the fact that he is running at all is somewhat disturbing, unless he plans to resign his national post). According to a June 13 article in al-Quds al-Arabi ("UIA Factions to Run in Provincial Elections on Individual Lists"), the Dawa Party - Organization of Iraq is also running independently, and in my mind they stopped supporting the government last fall. Of course, as noted above, some Shia candidates are running under Jaafari's group. This is especially a bad reflection on the Supreme Council, which currently controls seven of the nine provinces in the south.

SISTANI MOVES AGAINST U.S. AGREEMENT

Popular Opposition to Long-Term Security Agreement with U.S. Increases with Clerical Support; Sadr Moves to Exploit Fissure

Popular opposition to the long-term military agreement that the Iraqi government is currently negotiating with the United States has been clear for some time, as is the fact the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the Najaf hawza would be attempting to block it. On Friday, Muqtada Sadr moved to take advantage of the issue and his followers protested widely, and now the American media has taken notice (see "Growing Opposition to U.S. Security Pact," New York Times, "Sadr Urges Followers to Protest U.S.-Iraq Pact," and "Shiites Across Iraq Protest U.S. Presence,"Washington Post).

While I do not discount the value of having a military pact in place, a successfully negotiated treaty will not be worth much if it cannot be implemented. Part of the problem is a lack of clarity as to precisely what the terms would be (discussed to some degree in the articles linked above), and part is due to the paranoia-mongering which is common in these kinds of debates. Nevertheless, it is looking increasingly likely that any final agreement - whatever its terms - will have a very hard time being approved.

Opposition to the treaty first began to crystallize in January, when 150 members of parliament (275 seats) reached a voting agreement which, among other things, stipulated opposition to a long-term military agreement with the United States. The primary items on the voting agreement related to the Kurds - the Kurdish oil contracts issue and the potential annexation of Kirkuk - but Arabic media reports generally also included this item. Prior to this past week, there were also indirect indications that Sistani and the Iraqi marja'iya was opposed as well. For example, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Iraq at the beginning of March, he had intended to visit Najaf and meet with Sistani, but was turned back. According to the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jarida al-Jadida, Sistani refused to meet with Ahmadinejad because he didn't want to give the impression that his opposition to the U.S. agreement was due to Iran (other sources simply said that Najaf didn't want Ahmadinejad around). Other sources claiming Sistani was opposed were similarly indirect.

Yet over the past week, prior to the Sadr-organized protest on Friday, it became clear that Sistani was now directly opposing the Iraqi government over the issue, a key fact largely overlooked in U.S. media coverage (the Post article referenced the issue by saying that "Aides to Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, have also expressed concerns," which is not really accurate - they are opposing it). The Arab newspaper al-Hayat as followed this closely. Last Thursday, May 29, al-Hayat reported that Sistani told Prime Minister Nuri Maliki during their most recent meeting that he should hold a popular referendum to approve the agreement
(Marja'iya Najaf Demands General Referendum on U.S.-Iraq Agreement). This was a blocking tactic; Sistani knows well that Maliki is unlikely to risk such a referendum, and public knowledge that he was refusing Sistani's demand for a referendum would firm up opposition within parliament (which, as noted above, was a majority anyway). Contrary to what is suggested by the headline of the second Post article linked above, this opposition is not necessarily to U.S. presence per se, but rather to the signing of a long-term security pact. (The Sadrists, of course, are opposed to any U.S. presence per se.)

Sistani's representative in Karbala, Ahmad Safi, used his Friday sermon to make Najaf's opposition to the pact more public and explicit ("Sistani Representative in Karbala: Marja'iya Against Agreement which Limits Future Generations," al-Hayat, May 31). The article noted that Sistani was not only opposed this agreement, but favored removing Iraq from Article 7 of the UN Charter, which limited its sovereignty. A separate article published the same day ("Hakim Confirms Negotiations with Washington have not Reached a Final Result and Hashemi Warns Against Crossing 'Red Lines'") quoted Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim and Tariq Hashemi, the country's most important Shia and Sunni politicians, respectively, as saying that the agreement was necessary but that they were opposed to certain elements put forward by American negotiators. So even those who favor the treaty are on the defensive.

Two additional considerations relating to the current political environment should be borne in mind.

First, Sadr may be able to use this issue to end his political isolation among Iraqi factions. During the recent and ongoing government operations against the Sadrists and the Mahdi Army, all the Sunni factions Sadr had been trying to court supported the government against him, and the Shia factions that weren't supporting the campaign essentially stood aside. No one stood with him. Sadr is enough of a problem when working against the Shia clerical establishment; now he is working with the wind to his back.

Second, Maliki's political base is extremely narrow, and he is in no position to push an unpopular treaty through parliament, much less mount a national referendum. His government has been a minority in parliament since last September, and attempts at negotiating a new governing majority have repeatedly failed. I estimate that only about 100 members of the 275-seat parliament support him generally. This would be an uphill fight.