.Nuri Kamal al-Putin?
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has been on quite a roll lately, enough so that he seems for the first time of becoming a force that shapes his country’s destiny. And so, for the first time as well, the question of how Mr. Maliki plans to govern Iraq, as opposed to merely survive politically, has taken on some urgency.
From Basra, to Baghdad, in Sunni and Shia areas alike, he has moved aggressively against threats and rivals, curbing at least for now the militias of Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric, in Basra and Baghdad. In this he is preparing the ground, most Iraq experts think, for provincial elections in which his Dawa party and other Shiite parties in the governing coalition had feared losing ground. He has even made some threatening moves against the Kurds, the other partners in his governing coalition.
“He’s trying to consolidate control at the expense of all these rivals,” says F. Gregory Gause, a Middle East expert at the University of Vermont. “He isn’t trying to gain their support as much as atomize them and crush them.” Part of his strategy, Mr. Gause says, is to destroy his opponents’ financial bases by breaking their control of smuggling, other criminal rackets and, in Basra, shipping — making it hard to compete in elections, whenever they occur.
Hardly the actions of a confirmed democrat, some have begun to notice. So what’s the plan?
In a generally upbeat assessment of Iraq’s prospects in an article in the current Foreign Affairs, Michael O’Hanlon and co-authors Kenneth Pollack and Stephen Biddle, throw in this jarring thought: the disturbing possibility of “a clique of politicians aligned with the security services” taking over the government and proceeding “to hoard its vast energy wealth and parcel out the rest of the state to organized crime.”
Sound familiar? “Maliki as Putin, to make a topical analogy,” says Mr. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, referring to Vladimir V. Putin, the former Russian president. “If it happened in Russia, it can happen in Iraq. Putin may have maneuvered his way in as a democratic leader, but he had allies in the security forces and ended up with a network that included the same types of actors.”
While noting that Mr. Maliki is “not a master conniver with a grand plan,” Mr. O’Hanlon says that the Iraqi leader’s focus has shifted. “Through mid-2008, his main concern was war fighting,” Mr. O’Hanlon said. “Now, his main concern is political maneuvering.”
Lately, Mr. Maliki has shown a deft and steely political manner, demanding that his Shia-led government take control over the Sunni dominated groups of former insurgents known as the Awakening Councils, even while arresting some of their leaders as terrorists and criminals.
Mr. Gause says that Mr. Maliki may be overreaching by taking on the Sadrists, Awakening Councils and even possibly the Kurds all at once. But he may not have a choice. “He knows this is the end of the Bush administration,” Mr. Gause says. “Who knows what will happen next? You’ve got American troops there that will back you up. You don’t know in six months what the situation is in Washington.”
Going forward, Mr. Gause says, Mr. Maliki’s fate will depend on the United States presidential election, whether he can manage the provincial elections — assuming they eventually come off — and his relationship with the Iraqi Army. Just recently, Adel Abdul Mahdi, the Iraqi vice-president, talked openly about the possibility of a coup.
Of course, it is always possible that Mr. Maliki will be more Mandela than Putin, nurturing democracy and, if a loser at the polls, gracefully ceding power to his bitter rivals, whether Sadrists or Sunnis. And all this in a country where politics is traditionally a zero-sum game and in a region where democracy is a foreign concept.
Baghdad Bureau
From Basra, to Baghdad, in Sunni and Shia areas alike, he has moved aggressively against threats and rivals, curbing at least for now the militias of Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric, in Basra and Baghdad. In this he is preparing the ground, most Iraq experts think, for provincial elections in which his Dawa party and other Shiite parties in the governing coalition had feared losing ground. He has even made some threatening moves against the Kurds, the other partners in his governing coalition.
“He’s trying to consolidate control at the expense of all these rivals,” says F. Gregory Gause, a Middle East expert at the University of Vermont. “He isn’t trying to gain their support as much as atomize them and crush them.” Part of his strategy, Mr. Gause says, is to destroy his opponents’ financial bases by breaking their control of smuggling, other criminal rackets and, in Basra, shipping — making it hard to compete in elections, whenever they occur.
Hardly the actions of a confirmed democrat, some have begun to notice. So what’s the plan?
In a generally upbeat assessment of Iraq’s prospects in an article in the current Foreign Affairs, Michael O’Hanlon and co-authors Kenneth Pollack and Stephen Biddle, throw in this jarring thought: the disturbing possibility of “a clique of politicians aligned with the security services” taking over the government and proceeding “to hoard its vast energy wealth and parcel out the rest of the state to organized crime.”
Sound familiar? “Maliki as Putin, to make a topical analogy,” says Mr. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, referring to Vladimir V. Putin, the former Russian president. “If it happened in Russia, it can happen in Iraq. Putin may have maneuvered his way in as a democratic leader, but he had allies in the security forces and ended up with a network that included the same types of actors.”
While noting that Mr. Maliki is “not a master conniver with a grand plan,” Mr. O’Hanlon says that the Iraqi leader’s focus has shifted. “Through mid-2008, his main concern was war fighting,” Mr. O’Hanlon said. “Now, his main concern is political maneuvering.”
Lately, Mr. Maliki has shown a deft and steely political manner, demanding that his Shia-led government take control over the Sunni dominated groups of former insurgents known as the Awakening Councils, even while arresting some of their leaders as terrorists and criminals.
Mr. Gause says that Mr. Maliki may be overreaching by taking on the Sadrists, Awakening Councils and even possibly the Kurds all at once. But he may not have a choice. “He knows this is the end of the Bush administration,” Mr. Gause says. “Who knows what will happen next? You’ve got American troops there that will back you up. You don’t know in six months what the situation is in Washington.”
Going forward, Mr. Gause says, Mr. Maliki’s fate will depend on the United States presidential election, whether he can manage the provincial elections — assuming they eventually come off — and his relationship with the Iraqi Army. Just recently, Adel Abdul Mahdi, the Iraqi vice-president, talked openly about the possibility of a coup.
Of course, it is always possible that Mr. Maliki will be more Mandela than Putin, nurturing democracy and, if a loser at the polls, gracefully ceding power to his bitter rivals, whether Sadrists or Sunnis. And all this in a country where politics is traditionally a zero-sum game and in a region where democracy is a foreign concept.
Baghdad Bureau
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