A series of intertwined political crises that began with accusations that Iraq’s prime minister was consolidating power have escalated into calls to unseat him, and paralysed the country’s government.
The protracted drama has seen Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s deputy revert to decrying him as a “dictator” and the leader of the autonomous Kurdish region call for him to go on one side, while the premier insists he has sufficient backing to stay on the other.
“The political crisis has reached its highest level since its beginning, but it is still running within the framework of the democratic game,” Iraqi political analyst Ihsan al-Shammari said.
“The country is paralysed on all levels; there is a clear political paralysis paralleled by governmental negligence and a failure of the legislative authority, while the people are disappointed and afraid of the security consequences,” Shammari said. The trouble began in earnest in mid-December, when the secular Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc began a boycott of parliament and the cabinet over what it said was Maliki’s centralisation of power.
For his part, Maliki sought to sack Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlak, an Iraqiya member who had labelled the premier “worse than Saddam Hussein.” That month, an arrest warrant was issued for Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, also of Iraqiya, for allegedly running a death squad. Hashemi fled to the autonomous Kurdistan region in north Iraq, which declined to hand him over to Baghdad and then permitted him to leave on a regional tour that took him to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. He is now being tried in absentia in Iraq.
Kurdistan further entered the fray when its chief, Massud Barzani, launched a series of attacks against Maliki.
In April, the region stopped oil exports, claiming Baghdad has allegedly withheld more than $1.5 billion (1.2 billion euros) that Kurdish officials say is owed to foreign oil companies working in the region. And powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose parliamentary bloc is part of the national unity government along with Iraqiya and the Kurdish alliance, referred to the premier as a “dictator” hungry for acclaim, and accused him of wanting to postpone or cancel elections.
But Maliki opponents have now moved from merely criticising the premier to talk of actually removing him from office.
