Al-Maliki’s supporters describe his moves, made shortly after his Washington visit, as his way of shoring up his power within the delicately balanced coalition government and of confronting opponents who have repeatedly described his position as weak and who have spoken about bringing about the collapse of the government.
Al-Hashimi repeated this threat as recently as last week in an interview with NIQASH. Al-Hashimi has also been outspoken critic of the influence that the Iranian government, a Shiite Muslim-dominated theocracy, has over the Shiite Muslim politicians in Iraq. He has criticized the fact that this influence is never spoken about by Shiite Muslim politicians and last week, al-Hashimi told NIQASH that after the US withdrawal, “the real challenge for the Iraqi people is how they’re going to manage their own country, by themselves.” This was in reference to Iranian influence.
There is no doubt the current situation has been building up for some time.
After the 2010 elections in Iraq, the two major political groups – one Sunni Muslim-dominated, the other Shiite Muslim-dominated - in the country emerged with almost equal representation within the Iraqi parliament. After much manoeuvring and negotiation, Al-Maliki’s State of Law list, which is Shiite Muslim dominated, won the right to rule.
However, in order to do so, they had to make a number of deals with opposition parties, including the Kurdish representatives from the semi-autonomous state of Iraqi Kurdistan as well as with the Iraqiya list, led by former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayed Allawi. They also had to dispense high ranking positions to opposition politicians, like al-Hashimi and al-Mutlaq.
The tricky power sharing deal between the three major blocs – the Shiite and Sunni Muslims and the Kurdish – was supported by the US but the results have not been pretty. Far from settling the country down, almost every mildly controversial decision the Iraqi government has had to make since then has been either been endlessly debated or postponed.
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