Iraqi Government Increasingly Unstable Since Our Military Left a Few Weeks Ago
While all the news is focused on the presidential race, some pretty disturbing news coming out of Iraq. Not that it’s all that surprising, and ultimately it is absolutely necessary for them to figure out how to make a go of it without big brother us watching over them… but it’s still a potentially major problem if things really go to pot over there.
Just a small sample of what is going on, from McClatchy:
The downhill spiral takes a new turn every week, sometimes daily. Responding to a boycott by his Sunni partners in the power-sharing government, Maliki last week locked them out of their jobs, ordering ministries to bar their doors to cabinet officers, even though they still have a mandate from the Iraqi parliament.
A day later, the Iraqiya bloc headed by secular Shiite Ayad Allawi, which has 94 seats in the 325-seat parliament, said that if Maliki did not agree to curbs on his power, he should be replaced, either in new elections or by a vote of Maliki’s Shiite backers in parliament.
Iraqi politics today is a constellation of clashes, many in plain view, but others below the surface. “It’s just one-fifth of the iceberg that we are seeing,” said Tahseen Shekhli, an adviser to the prime minister. “The more dangerous disputes are still hidden.”
What’s visible is disturbing enough.
The country’s vice-president, a Sunni, fled last month to Kurdistan, where he’s safe from Iraqi justice authorities seeking his arrest on allegations that he directed hit squads against prominent Shiites. Maliki has attempted to oust the deputy prime minister, also a Sunni, but Sunni and Kurdish legislators refuse to hold a vote, paralyzing the parliament.
Maliki has sent troops and tanks into the streets of the Green Zone, where most prominent politicians live, and warned top leaders that he is keeping “files” on them.
Allawi, who’s been a no-show at parliament and seems to be abroad more often than in Iraq, says that Maliki has arrested more than 1,000 political opponents on the pretext of preventing a coup by members and supporters of the Baath party of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.
As with just about everything, it’s bound to get worse before it gets better… but let’s hope that it does indeed get better. With NATO being a bit tapped out after Libya, and the world community in general split between being focused on internal economic matters, and being tired of so much turmoil in the Arab world… now is probably the worst possible time for Iraq to start coming apart.
About Solomon Kleinsmith
I started this site in the summer of 2010, really just as a hobby at first. But I'm pretty ambitious, and between being able to recruit some great bloggers to join the team here, putting a ton of work into the site and attracting a lot of traffic through Twitter, we've grown very fast for a young blog with next to no budget.
- Web |
- More Posts (1401)
I sincerely hope that the people of Iraq get a stable and fair government. However, if they don’t, this only proves that no matter how many of our troops die, no matter how many of their civilians die, no matter how much money we borrow from China to pay for it all, there really isn’t much we can do. I’d love to be able to fix the whole world, but it just doesn’t work that way. We need to accept that being a “Super Power” doesn’t give US unlimited power.