The Long Knives Come out in Baghdad

http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/knives-come-baghdad.html

The Long Knives Come out in Baghdad
By Juan Cole | Aug. 12, 2014

The coup-like atmosphere created by Nouri al-Maliki’s stationing of his troops at the Green Zone, checkpoints and bridges in Baghdad on late Sunday backfired on him with Iraq’s parliamentarians. Nearly half of the members of his Islamic Da`wa Party (Islamic Call or Mission Party) in parliament defected from him. Most of the other Shiites in parliament threw their vote to the new appointee, Haydar al-`Ibadi.

On Monday, President Fuad Massoum appointed Haydar al-`Ibadi as prime minister, and he has a month to form a government. Al-`Ibadi was born in 1952. He joined the Islamic Da’wa Party at the age of 15 and so has been a fundamentalist striving for an Islamic state all his life. He served in Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority for a while after the revolution. But he grew dissatisfied with it and wanted an elected Iraqi government. He seems to be an Iraq patriot.

Al-Maliki blamed the move on the Americans, called it unconstitutional, and pledged to “correct” this step and to prove “victorious.”

In other words, al-Maliki is refusing to go quietly, and troops loyal to him are still mobilized around key points in Baghdad, the capital.