Shedding The Sunni Contingent
"Nature abhors a vacuum, and the relative power vacuum in Baghdad is going to draw in the neighbours" Stephen Biddle, Council on Foreign RelationsWhat vacuum? Surely not the stable, democracy-dedicated, politically mature country that U.S. troops were just a week ago eased out of? In a country that had been laid low when its tyrant who maintained a restive peace between its ethnic factions and religious sects had been removed, releasing pent-up hatred and a renewed appetite for revenge?
Despite U.S. President Barack Obama's brave words of encouragement, describing Iraq as "sovereign, stable and self-reliant", the United States had, at this juncture, little other option but to withdraw its troops. Since, rather famously, Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his cabinet much preferred that they leave, refusing to agree with the U.S. that no American troops be held to Iraqi law superseding that of the U.S.
So withdraw they did. Giving the green light to proceed in an unseemly hurried manner, for the Shia Prime Minister and his Shia cohorts to accuse his Sunni counterpart of having fomented a murderous assassination campaign against his sectarian opposites. Engineering matters so that should the Sunni contingent of the government seek to walk out, they would be summarily replaced.
That's a fairly edgy game Prime Minister al-Maliki is playing, putting out wanted posters for Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi, to bring him into custody and try him for sedition, for murder, for plotting against the Shia majority. And since Saleh al-Mutlaq, another member of Mr. al-Hashemi's political party, Iraqiya, accused al-Maliki of being "worse than Saddam", he is accused of complicity with Mr. al-Hashemi.
The country is now riven by Shia and Sunni rivalries brought rather blatantly and unskillfully to the fore once again, each sectarian faction prepared to renounce co-operation, convinced the other is planning to assume the ascendancy at any cost. The cost to the country will be incalculable, with Iran goading the majority Shia, and the Sunni looking to Kurdistan for some advantage.
With al-Qaeda-in-Iraq celebrating another advantage of its own brought its way courtesy of an ambitious Shia-led government which cannot see the future for its own immediate advantage.
Labels: Chaos, Conflict, Iran, Iraq, Islamism
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, December 25, 2011
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