Time: A Challenge to Maliki in Iraq (Allawi on his way back?)

It's make-or-break time in Iraq. A massive, U.S.-led security operation is under way in Baghdad, but the results have been decidedly mixed. Elsewhere, Sunni terrorists continue to strike with impunity at Shi'a targets — and there's growing fear of a backlash. A critical summit of world powers and Iraq's neighbors is about to take start in Baghdad, setting the stage for prickly verbal exchanges between the U.S. and Iran. In Washington, the Pentagon is looking to send even more American troops to Iraq, despite mounting bipartisan opposition.

Under the circumstances, the last thing Iraq needs now is political instability. Enter Iyad Allawi.

The former prime minister has recently returned to Baghdad after an absence of many months, and he's wasted no time in trying to undermine the government of Nouri al-Maliki. Iraqi political analysts say Allawi is trying to cobble together a caucus of disparate groups — Kurds, Sunnis, former Baathists and secular parties — to pry power away from the Shi'a coalition that dominates the Iraqi parliament. He may already have scored one coup: Fadila, one of the junior partners of the coalition, has announced it is breaking away. It is widely assumed the party, which has its power base in and around the southern city of Basra, will join Allawi's bloc. That's not enough to bring Maliki down, but analysts say Allawi is hoping to drive a wedge between the Shi'a coalition's main groups: Moqtada al-Sadr's faction, Maliki's Dawa Party and the Iran-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). (Allawi turned down TIME's requests for an interview.)

But these shenanigans are ultimately doomed: there can be no stable government in Baghdad without the full backing of the main Shi'a parties, which have twice demonstrated their popularity in general elections. (On both occasions, Allawi's own party got less than 15% of the vote.) And the caucus he is trying to build is highly unstable: it is hard to see the Fadila leadership, which loathes everything Saddam Hussein stood for, coexisting with the unrepentant Baathists who make up the Sunni caucus in parliament.

Although Allawi is himself Shi'a, his politics are secular, which is a red flag for the Islamists who dominate the Shi'a coalition. His other great handicap: both Shi'a and Sunni extremists believe he has Iraqi blood on his hands. Shi'a groups loyal to the anti-American cleric al-Sadr (who commands the second-largest block within the parliamentary coalition) have never forgiven Allawi for authorizing the 2004 American crackdown on the Mahdi Army. Sunni hardliners, meanwhile, remember him as the man who signed off on the massive U.S. offensive against Fallujah. Both sides deride him as an American puppet, pointing to his CIA connections during the 1990s, when he was in exile.

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Iraq: Sunni Arab Leader Discusses National-Salvation Front

Salih al-Mutlaq (file photo)
(epa)
March 9, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Controversial Sunni Arab politician Salih al-Mutlaq, who heads the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, tells RFE/RL Iraq analyst Kathleen Ridolfo that his party and several other political groups will join the national-salvation front proposed by former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.


RFE/RL: What can you tell us with regard to Allawi's proposal to form a national-salvation front?

Salih al-Mutlaq: As you know, the political situation in Iraq is very complicated now, and anyone who has a personal interest or shows a personal interest cannot lead at the moment. The only ones who can lead are those who put their self-interests aside and advance the country's interests.

Unfortunately, most of these political leaders nowadays look out for their own interests before the country's interests. Therefore, the blocs they are trying to make, they in order to who will speak first, who will speak second. They made the situation in Iraq more complicated. We, as you know, asked for the formation of a national-salvation front, and it includes those who are in the political process and those who are outside the political process, who believe in specific aims.


There were about 32 political groups in it. At that time, Al-Tawafuq was part of it; Allawi's group was part of it, Al-Fadilah; some of the Sadrists; the Ba'athists; the old army leadership; the Arab tribe organizations; some influential political groups from the south; especially al-Sarkhi's group; the Turkoman Front; the Kurdish movement, apart from the two Kurdish parties. So we only excluded the two Kurdish parties -- to be negotiated with them later because they have their own project, which is a non-Iraqi project nowadays.... And we excluded SCIRI because it's looking for sectarianism in Iraq and its aim is to divide Iraq.

So all those who believe in the unity of Iraq, the freedom of Iraq, and the unity of the country, could be in this front.

RFE/RL: What makes this the right time for this national-salvation front to be formed?

Al-Mutlaq: Actually, for this front to be formed, it actually needs some political support from the region, especially from Arab countries. And we were negotiating with them six months. And it looks these Arab countries are waiting for the Americans to give them the green light to support this movement, because the Americans are changing from time to time and they are gambling between al-Maliki's plan and the other plans. They are trying to take their last chances to prove that they were right in occupying Iraq. And every time they fail, they look for another attempt, another security plan, another strategy. So we know eventually they will have to come back to this front, because we believe this is the only alternative that is left for the Iraqis.

m0re: http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/03/b5142db1-fb0e-4a97-bf1f-6578c1898e0e.html