Home
There is a kind of agreement among the different political parties in Iraq to organize early elections in order to avoid further complication of the current political crisis in the country, Head of the Iraqiya bloc Iyad Allawi told Al Arabiya.
Tensions are rising after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite, sought the arrest of Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi over charges of running death squads. Maliki also asked parliament to fire Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq.
Allawi shed the light in details on the Iraqi current crisis in an exclusive interview with Al Arabiya that will be aired on Tuesday at 19:00 KSA (1600 GMT).
Meanwhile, Iraq’s Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaify arrived in Suleimaniya in an attempt to mediate a kind of resolution to the current crisis.
Nujaify met with Shiite and Sunni clerics and tribal leaders and explained that Iraq was passing through a political crisis, but some people want to turn it into a sectarian strife.
The political party loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called Monday for the dissolution of Iraq’s parliament and new elections in another move that could escalate the country’s growing sectarian crisis.
Several thousand Iraqis in Sunni Muslim strongholds protested on Friday against Maliki a day after fatal bombings hit the capital Baghdad.
The events threaten to splinter Iraq’s fragile sectarian and ethnic faultiness and highlight the risk of the country tumbling into the kind of bloody slaughter that a few years ago led the OPEC oil-producer to the edge of civil war.
Sectarian divisions
After Friday prayers, with Sunni imams warning Maliki was seeking to foment sectarian divisions, protesters were on the streets of Sunni-dominated Samarra, Ramadi, Baiji and Qaim, many waving banners in support of Hashemi, and criticizing the government, according to Reuters.
The crisis could scuttle a delicate power-sharing agreement that splits posts among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders just days after the last American troops withdrew nearly nine years after the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.
“What’s happening in Iraq is settling political scores,” Allawi, Maliki’s predecessor, told Al Arabiya earlier in the week.
An emergency session in parliament among leaders of political blocs to debate the crisis was cancelled on Friday.
For many Sunnis who feel marginalized by the rise of Iraq’s Shiite majority since the fall of Saddam, Maliki’s measures have deepened worries the Shiite leader is making a power grab to consolidate Shiite power.
“Hashemi, fear not, with our blood we support you,” one banner read in Samarra.
Hashemi denies charges his office ran an assassination squad. After the interior ministry broadcast what it said were confessions from Hashemi’s bodyguards, the Sunni leader left for semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, where he is unlikely to be handed over to central government authorities.
The last American troops left Iraq around ten days earlier, nearly nine years after the invasion that toppled Sunni dictator Saddam. Many Iraqis fear a return to sectarian violence without a U.S. military buffer.
U.S. officials are trying to stay engaged in Iraq. Vice President Joe Biden called Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to support efforts to resolve tensions and Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno met with Maliki on Thursday.
U.S. intelligence agencies had warned that security gains in Iraq could degenerate into sectarian violence after the withdrawal.
Al-Qaeda claims Iraq bombing
Al-Qaeda’s Iraq franchise claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings last week that killed scores of people.
The self-proclaimed “Islamic State of Iraq,” inspired by the late Osama bin Laden, issued a statement Monday referring to “Thursday’s Invasion” and vowing to protect Iraq’s Sunni Muslims from an “Iranian project.”
“With permission from Allah and his guidance, the Islamic State of Iraq knows where and when to strike,” the group said in a statement posted on jihadist forums, according to the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group.
“The mujahideen (holy warriors) will never stand with their hands tied while the pernicious Iranian project showed its ugly face and what it wants with Sunnis in Iraq became obvious and exposed.”
The statement referred specifically to a suicide car bombing in the Karrada district of Baghdad, part of a wave of attacks on Thursday that killed 60 people and wounded nearly 200 amid a deepening political row.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq played a central role in the sectarian violence that gripped the country in 2006 and 2007, before Sunni tribes and militias allied with U.S. troops -- then numbering some 170,000 -- suppressed the radical Islamist group and dramatically reduced the bloodshed.
Turmoil in Iraq would have wider consequences in a region where a crisis in neighboring Syria is becoming increasingly sectarian, and Shiite Iran, Turkey and Sunni Arab Gulf nations are all positioning for more influence.
Iraqi Shiite leaders worry a shift to a hardline Sunni government in Damascus if Syrian President Assad falls would unbalance their country’s own delicate sectarian makeup, or spill instability over the border.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Tensions are rising after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite, sought the arrest of Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi over charges of running death squads. Maliki also asked parliament to fire Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq.
Allawi shed the light in details on the Iraqi current crisis in an exclusive interview with Al Arabiya that will be aired on Tuesday at 19:00 KSA (1600 GMT).
Meanwhile, Iraq’s Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaify arrived in Suleimaniya in an attempt to mediate a kind of resolution to the current crisis.
Nujaify met with Shiite and Sunni clerics and tribal leaders and explained that Iraq was passing through a political crisis, but some people want to turn it into a sectarian strife.
The political party loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called Monday for the dissolution of Iraq’s parliament and new elections in another move that could escalate the country’s growing sectarian crisis.
Several thousand Iraqis in Sunni Muslim strongholds protested on Friday against Maliki a day after fatal bombings hit the capital Baghdad.
The events threaten to splinter Iraq’s fragile sectarian and ethnic faultiness and highlight the risk of the country tumbling into the kind of bloody slaughter that a few years ago led the OPEC oil-producer to the edge of civil war.
Sectarian divisions
After Friday prayers, with Sunni imams warning Maliki was seeking to foment sectarian divisions, protesters were on the streets of Sunni-dominated Samarra, Ramadi, Baiji and Qaim, many waving banners in support of Hashemi, and criticizing the government, according to Reuters.
The crisis could scuttle a delicate power-sharing agreement that splits posts among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders just days after the last American troops withdrew nearly nine years after the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.
“What’s happening in Iraq is settling political scores,” Allawi, Maliki’s predecessor, told Al Arabiya earlier in the week.
An emergency session in parliament among leaders of political blocs to debate the crisis was cancelled on Friday.
For many Sunnis who feel marginalized by the rise of Iraq’s Shiite majority since the fall of Saddam, Maliki’s measures have deepened worries the Shiite leader is making a power grab to consolidate Shiite power.
“Hashemi, fear not, with our blood we support you,” one banner read in Samarra.
Hashemi denies charges his office ran an assassination squad. After the interior ministry broadcast what it said were confessions from Hashemi’s bodyguards, the Sunni leader left for semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, where he is unlikely to be handed over to central government authorities.
The last American troops left Iraq around ten days earlier, nearly nine years after the invasion that toppled Sunni dictator Saddam. Many Iraqis fear a return to sectarian violence without a U.S. military buffer.
U.S. officials are trying to stay engaged in Iraq. Vice President Joe Biden called Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to support efforts to resolve tensions and Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno met with Maliki on Thursday.
U.S. intelligence agencies had warned that security gains in Iraq could degenerate into sectarian violence after the withdrawal.
Al-Qaeda claims Iraq bombing
Al-Qaeda’s Iraq franchise claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings last week that killed scores of people.
The self-proclaimed “Islamic State of Iraq,” inspired by the late Osama bin Laden, issued a statement Monday referring to “Thursday’s Invasion” and vowing to protect Iraq’s Sunni Muslims from an “Iranian project.”
“With permission from Allah and his guidance, the Islamic State of Iraq knows where and when to strike,” the group said in a statement posted on jihadist forums, according to the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group.
“The mujahideen (holy warriors) will never stand with their hands tied while the pernicious Iranian project showed its ugly face and what it wants with Sunnis in Iraq became obvious and exposed.”
The statement referred specifically to a suicide car bombing in the Karrada district of Baghdad, part of a wave of attacks on Thursday that killed 60 people and wounded nearly 200 amid a deepening political row.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq played a central role in the sectarian violence that gripped the country in 2006 and 2007, before Sunni tribes and militias allied with U.S. troops -- then numbering some 170,000 -- suppressed the radical Islamist group and dramatically reduced the bloodshed.
Turmoil in Iraq would have wider consequences in a region where a crisis in neighboring Syria is becoming increasingly sectarian, and Shiite Iran, Turkey and Sunni Arab Gulf nations are all positioning for more influence.
Iraqi Shiite leaders worry a shift to a hardline Sunni government in Damascus if Syrian President Assad falls would unbalance their country’s own delicate sectarian makeup, or spill instability over the border.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
