How will a national unity government, led by Jawad Al-Maliki as prime minister, fare in the face of the now critical security situation in Iraq? The undoubted victory of the Iraqi people in the elections last December has been frittered away over the last four months as the MPs voted to represent them have bickered over the composition of a government. Time is now of the essence. Some commentators are saying that it may yet take a further month before the allocation of the ministerial portfolios has been agreed to. We can only hope they are wrong.
During all the wrangling over Ibrahim Jaafari in the prime minister’s job, politicians ought to have been working their way toward agreement on other ministerial posts. If they have not, perhaps because they believed that nothing could be done until the top jobs of president, prime minister and parliamentary speaker had been agreed upon, then it is now imperative that minds be concentrated immediately. Another month of uncertainty is totally unacceptable. As it is, the national unity government now faces a task far more challenging than it would have had it emerged within a few weeks of the election.
The insurgents, defeated by the spectacular success of the general election, have since won a victory because they have managed to trigger intercommunal violence. The tit-for-tat killings among Shiites and Sunnis, the alleged involvement of Shiite members of the security forces in these crimes and the reprehensible attacks on religious sites are all the result of unbridled terrorist activity. As long as the insurgents can keep the pot of intercommunal suspicion and violence boiling, they will be preserving the bloodstained shadows in which they themselves lurk. The insurgents’ next priority is clearly to sow divisions within the new government. It will be the responsibility of Iraq’s new legislators to demonstrate in Parliament that a representative, pluralist democracy can succeed. If, despite all the provocations to come, they can manage to do this, then they will have demonstrated to the wider country that the issues which appear to divide it can be resolved successfully by debate and compromise rather than by violence.
The major tipping point for the terrorists, however, will be the presence of foreign occupation troops. President Bush needs the excuse that Iraq has a stable functioning government in order to begin unraveling America’s part of the disaster his invasion created. Many Iraqi politicians, however much they deplore the blunders of Washington’s policy, fear that a premature withdrawal of coalition forces, not least of the intelligence assets they provide, will expose Iraq’s own army and police to an unequal struggle with the terrorists. It may well be therefore that once Iraq has its unity government, the insurgents will shift their attacks toward further humiliation of the occupation forces in an attempt to accelerate their withdrawal. Last night Maliki was on the threshold of one of the most difficult political jobs in the world. He and his ministerial team will carry the fate of 27 million Iraqis in their hands.
