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In Blow to Government, Sadr Followers Call for New Elections
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and JACK HEALY
Published: December 26, 2011
BAGHDAD — A powerful political group led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr called on Monday for Parliament to be dissolved and early elections to be held, the first open challenge to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki from within his Shiite coalition in an escalating political crisis.
Leaders of Mr. Sadr’s faction said that scrapping the current government was the only way to steer Iraq out of the crisis, which has put Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, at odds with leaders representing the country’s Sunni minority and has quickly exploded since the withdrawal of American troops about a week ago.
The move by the Sadr bloc is not enough to immediately bring down the Maliki government, and new elections could take months to organize. But even the prospect of a new vote adds more uncertainty to Iraq’s fragile political landscape, possibly setting the country’s main factions — Shiites, Sunnis and ethnic Kurds — and its byzantine networks of political allies scrambling for turf, influence, money and votes.
After the national elections in March 2010 failed to deliver a clear winner, Iraq sank into nine months of political stalemate as parties competed to form a new government. Efforts to deliver electricity and rebuild the economy faltered. Finally, Mr. Maliki built a coalition that relied on the 40 seats in Parliament controlled by the Sadr faction, a nationalist voice for the Shiite working class.
And even if there are no new elections, and the government survives, the political brinkmanship is another blow to Mr. Maliki’s stature as a national leader.
On Dec. 19, a day after the last American combat troops left the country, the government issued an arrest warrant for the Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, on charges that he ran a death squad. Mr. Hashimi, who has denied the charges, has been in the semiautonomous Kurdish region in Iraq’s north, and the Kurds have angered Mr. Maliki by refusing to hand him over.
Many Sunni leaders saw the move against Mr. Hashimi as part of a campaign by the government to arrest or intimidate its sectarian or political opponents. Mr. Maliki has also sought to unseat the Sunni deputy prime minister, and in recent months his security forces have arrested hundreds of people accused of having ties to Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Baath Party.
“We have a lot of problems,” said Baha al-Aaraji, a leading lawmaker with Mr. Sadr’s bloc. “The Americans, when they came to Iraq, they gave power to some blocs and some leaders — and they had power.”
He added: “We need new elections.”
The Sadr bloc’s call won support from a leading member of the predominantly Sunni Iraqiya coalition, one of Mr. Maliki’s main rivals. However, some members of other powerful Shiite groups dismissed the bid as hollow gamesmanship.
“This is ridiculous,” said Hassoun al-Fatlawi, a member of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council. “The problems we have can be solved, but not this way. Let them sit down together if they really want to solve it.”
Some analysts speculated that the Sadr faction simply wanted to increase Mr. Maliki’s troubles.
“My hunch is that the Sadrists are trying to capitalize on the political disarray,” said Marisa Cochrane Sullivan, the deputy director of the Institute for the Study of War, a research group in Washington, and an expert on Shiite movements. “While they may have an alliance now, I think Maliki and the Sadrists are headed for a collision in the longer term in the battle for Shi’a dominance of Iraq.”
Before they formed an alliance, Mr. Maliki and Mr. Sadr were bitter foes who squared off for control of several Shiite strongholds.
In 2008, Mr. Maliki, then the prime minister, sent his forces to drive Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi Army militiamen from the southern oil city of Basra and forced them to cede control of the city of Amara, a provincial capital in southeastern Iraq. It was a turning point that gave Mr. Maliki standing as a national leader who was willing to confront powerful Shiite forces to secure Iraq.
In recent weeks, Mr. Sadr has been particularly critical of Mr. Maliki. He criticized the handling of the Hashimi case and condemned Mr. Maliki’s recent visit to Washington as “a submission and political weakness” and an insult to “the blood that flowed in the homeland because of the occupation.”
Hatem Baidhani, an official in the Parliament offices of the Sadr bloc, offered a glimpse of the coalition’s broad ambitions in a recent interview, saying, “The next prime minister will be from the Sadrists exclusively.”
Meanwhile, violence continued to roil Baghdad. Around 7:30 a.m. on Monday, a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint in front of the Interior Ministry, killing five people, including two officers.
Just hours earlier, two makeshift bombs were detonated in the predominantly Sunni area of Abu Ghraib, which is policed mainly by Shiite security officers. Four officers were killed in the attack and four others were wounded, officials said.
No group claimed responsibility, but the attacks resembled those by Al Qaeda in Iraq, the insurgent group accused of trying to plunge the country back into sectarian conflict.
Elsewhere, it appeared that a standoff between the government and 3,400 Iranian dissidents living at a camp in eastern Iraq might be nearing an end.
Under a deal announced late Sunday night by the United Nations office in Baghdad, members of the Mujahedeen Khalq would leave Camp Ashraf, in Diyala Province, and move to a former American military base near Baghdad’s international airport. The United Nations refugee agency would eventually relocate the residents to other countries, most likely as refugees.
The group has not yet agreed to the deal.
The exiles are members of a paramilitary group that has tried to topple Iran’s government and is listed as a terrorist group by the United States. They were given refuge by Saddam Hussein during his war with Iran, but the current Iraqi government, which has closer ties to Iran, has vowed to dismantle the outpost by the end of the year.
Mr. Maliki, who under the Hussein government had fled to Iran to escape a death warrant, gave the group a six-month extension last week, suggesting some hope of resolving the situation.
American officials and United Nations diplomats hailed the deal as a major step that could prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and avert a confrontation between the camp’s residents and the Iraqi security forces stationed outside its perimeter. In April, the United Nations said more than 30 camp residents were killed in a raid by the Iraqi Army.
A camp spokesman said in a telephone interview on Monday that they had yet to see the terms of the formal agreement and did not know whether it would offer adequate security guarantees.
“The most important thing is the protection of the lives of the 3,400 people at the camp,” said Shahriar Kia, the spokesman. “That’s the main priority.”
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By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and JACK HEALY
Published: December 26, 2011
BAGHDAD — A powerful political group led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr called on Monday for Parliament to be dissolved and early elections to be held, the first open challenge to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki from within his Shiite coalition in an escalating political crisis.
Leaders of Mr. Sadr’s faction said that scrapping the current government was the only way to steer Iraq out of the crisis, which has put Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, at odds with leaders representing the country’s Sunni minority and has quickly exploded since the withdrawal of American troops about a week ago.
The move by the Sadr bloc is not enough to immediately bring down the Maliki government, and new elections could take months to organize. But even the prospect of a new vote adds more uncertainty to Iraq’s fragile political landscape, possibly setting the country’s main factions — Shiites, Sunnis and ethnic Kurds — and its byzantine networks of political allies scrambling for turf, influence, money and votes.
After the national elections in March 2010 failed to deliver a clear winner, Iraq sank into nine months of political stalemate as parties competed to form a new government. Efforts to deliver electricity and rebuild the economy faltered. Finally, Mr. Maliki built a coalition that relied on the 40 seats in Parliament controlled by the Sadr faction, a nationalist voice for the Shiite working class.
And even if there are no new elections, and the government survives, the political brinkmanship is another blow to Mr. Maliki’s stature as a national leader.
On Dec. 19, a day after the last American combat troops left the country, the government issued an arrest warrant for the Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, on charges that he ran a death squad. Mr. Hashimi, who has denied the charges, has been in the semiautonomous Kurdish region in Iraq’s north, and the Kurds have angered Mr. Maliki by refusing to hand him over.
Many Sunni leaders saw the move against Mr. Hashimi as part of a campaign by the government to arrest or intimidate its sectarian or political opponents. Mr. Maliki has also sought to unseat the Sunni deputy prime minister, and in recent months his security forces have arrested hundreds of people accused of having ties to Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Baath Party.
“We have a lot of problems,” said Baha al-Aaraji, a leading lawmaker with Mr. Sadr’s bloc. “The Americans, when they came to Iraq, they gave power to some blocs and some leaders — and they had power.”
He added: “We need new elections.”
The Sadr bloc’s call won support from a leading member of the predominantly Sunni Iraqiya coalition, one of Mr. Maliki’s main rivals. However, some members of other powerful Shiite groups dismissed the bid as hollow gamesmanship.
“This is ridiculous,” said Hassoun al-Fatlawi, a member of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council. “The problems we have can be solved, but not this way. Let them sit down together if they really want to solve it.”
Some analysts speculated that the Sadr faction simply wanted to increase Mr. Maliki’s troubles.
“My hunch is that the Sadrists are trying to capitalize on the political disarray,” said Marisa Cochrane Sullivan, the deputy director of the Institute for the Study of War, a research group in Washington, and an expert on Shiite movements. “While they may have an alliance now, I think Maliki and the Sadrists are headed for a collision in the longer term in the battle for Shi’a dominance of Iraq.”
Before they formed an alliance, Mr. Maliki and Mr. Sadr were bitter foes who squared off for control of several Shiite strongholds.
In 2008, Mr. Maliki, then the prime minister, sent his forces to drive Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi Army militiamen from the southern oil city of Basra and forced them to cede control of the city of Amara, a provincial capital in southeastern Iraq. It was a turning point that gave Mr. Maliki standing as a national leader who was willing to confront powerful Shiite forces to secure Iraq.
In recent weeks, Mr. Sadr has been particularly critical of Mr. Maliki. He criticized the handling of the Hashimi case and condemned Mr. Maliki’s recent visit to Washington as “a submission and political weakness” and an insult to “the blood that flowed in the homeland because of the occupation.”
Hatem Baidhani, an official in the Parliament offices of the Sadr bloc, offered a glimpse of the coalition’s broad ambitions in a recent interview, saying, “The next prime minister will be from the Sadrists exclusively.”
Meanwhile, violence continued to roil Baghdad. Around 7:30 a.m. on Monday, a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint in front of the Interior Ministry, killing five people, including two officers.
Just hours earlier, two makeshift bombs were detonated in the predominantly Sunni area of Abu Ghraib, which is policed mainly by Shiite security officers. Four officers were killed in the attack and four others were wounded, officials said.
No group claimed responsibility, but the attacks resembled those by Al Qaeda in Iraq, the insurgent group accused of trying to plunge the country back into sectarian conflict.
Elsewhere, it appeared that a standoff between the government and 3,400 Iranian dissidents living at a camp in eastern Iraq might be nearing an end.
Under a deal announced late Sunday night by the United Nations office in Baghdad, members of the Mujahedeen Khalq would leave Camp Ashraf, in Diyala Province, and move to a former American military base near Baghdad’s international airport. The United Nations refugee agency would eventually relocate the residents to other countries, most likely as refugees.
The group has not yet agreed to the deal.
The exiles are members of a paramilitary group that has tried to topple Iran’s government and is listed as a terrorist group by the United States. They were given refuge by Saddam Hussein during his war with Iran, but the current Iraqi government, which has closer ties to Iran, has vowed to dismantle the outpost by the end of the year.
Mr. Maliki, who under the Hussein government had fled to Iran to escape a death warrant, gave the group a six-month extension last week, suggesting some hope of resolving the situation.
American officials and United Nations diplomats hailed the deal as a major step that could prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and avert a confrontation between the camp’s residents and the Iraqi security forces stationed outside its perimeter. In April, the United Nations said more than 30 camp residents were killed in a raid by the Iraqi Army.
A camp spokesman said in a telephone interview on Monday that they had yet to see the terms of the formal agreement and did not know whether it would offer adequate security guarantees.
“The most important thing is the protection of the lives of the 3,400 people at the camp,” said Shahriar Kia, the spokesman. “That’s the main priority.”
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