Trapped in Iraq since it invaded the country in March 2003, the US
and its allies face a wide range of complications. Not only has it
become the most expensive war in history, costing US tax-payers more
than $2 bn a week, but it has caused the worst refugee problem since the
Palestine tragedy as 4m Iraqis are homeless - within Iraq and in the
neighbouring countries - and a Sunni-Shi'ite war is compounded with
a looming confrontation between the Kurds of the north and Turkey.
The Shi'ite-led government of Nouri al-Maliki is sectarian.
Its make-up is based on a sectarian/ethic distribution of quotas. It was
formed in 2006 out of necessity, rather than the basic requirements of
re-building Iraq's political and socio-economic structures - with
no national reconciliation made in four years of US-led occupation. The
38 ministries were divided up among Iraq's leading parties. Each
ministry is the fiefdom of a particular sect or ethnic group. With the
Shi'ite theocracy of Iran accused to sending devastating weapons to
both Shi'ite and Sunni militias in Iraq and the
Alawite/Ba'thist dictatorship of Syria allowing a steady flow of
Neo-Salafis who provide more devastating human bombs, there is an odd
alliance of the two extremes in Islam - the Ja'faris from the
Shi'ite end and the Neo-Salafis from the Sunni end - against the US
(see news17-QaedaApr23-07).
With this in mind, the trap into which the US finds itself is at
the mercy of sectarian opportunists where hypocrisy is dominant and
comes from both ends of Islam, as well as from the neo-cons of the US.
Muqtada al-Sadr, a power-hungry mullah among Shi'ites whom senior
ayatullahs scorn as unlearned hotheads, on April 16 got his six
ministers to quit Maliki's cabinet. Replacing them will involve
long bouts of deal-making among the various parties. Sadr still has 30
MPs in parliament.
Sadr's ministers are incompetent at best. The Health Ministry,
run by Ali al-Shammari, has had one of the worst reputations. Sunni
Arabs have been afraid to visit certain hospitals in Baghdad and the
central morgue because of the presence of Sadr's Jaysh al-Mahdi
militia on the grounds. Transport Minister Karim Mahdi Saleh left Iraq
in 2006 and has not been running his ministry since. The minister of
tourism and antiquities is accused of imposing a Ja'fari ideology
on the workings of the ministry. Donny George, the former director of
the Baghdad museum, fled to Syria in 2006 and wrote scathing articles
hitting the ministry for purposefully neglecting valuable ruins and
artifacts which did not pertain to Iraq's Ja'fari Shi'ite
past.
Maliki, a colourless and ineffective politician, is experiencing
the worst of two options. Sadr insists the government set a timetable
for US withdrawal from Iraq. He cannot say no; if Sadr's party
turns against him, he could lose his house majority. Nor can he say yes
as the survival of his cabinet depends on the US.
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