Iran Will Not Allow a Democracy to Stand in Iraq
April 8, 2010
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Begin Excerpt from U.K. Guardian via World News
Al-Sadr’s movement backs neither Iraq front-runner
HAMID AHMED
AP foreign, Wednesday April 7, 2010
Associated Press Writer= BAGHDAD (AP) — An influential Shiite movement did not back either front-runner in a poll on who to support for Iraq’s next prime minister, further muddying on Wednesday the political situation in the aftermath of the inconclusive March elections.
In a survey, supporters of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr voted 24 percent for him to support Shiite politician Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who was interim prime minister from 2005 to 2006, the movement’s spokesman Salah al-Obeidi announced.
Iraq’s incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his chief rival Ayad Allawi received only 10 percent and 9
percent of votes respectively.
Al-Obeidi left open whether al-Sadr would follow the guidance of his supporters in the course of future negotiations, saying that “each event has its own way,” but the results seemed certain to at least add further complications to the already long drawn-out negotiating period that has followed the March 7 election.
Allawi’s bloc came out ahead in the vote by two seats over al-Maliki’s coalition, but both parties are far short of the necessary majority needed to govern alone. The candidates are now scrambling to muster the support needed to form a government.
The poll of al-Sadr’s supporters was widely viewed as a way for the cleric to give himself the opportunity to back someone other than al-Maliki, under the guise of following the people’s will.
Al-Sadr rose to prominence after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, forging a political dynasty based on the network and prestige of his father, a leading Shiite cleric killed by Saddam Hussein in 1999.
Many see him now as a potential kingmaker, after his followers won at least 39 seats in the 325-seat parliament in the March 7 vote, up 10 seats from their current standing. That makes them the largest bloc within the Iraqi National Alliance, a Shiite religious coalition that placed third in the race.
There has been deep enmity between the Sadrists and al-Maliki since he turned on al-Sadr’s powerful militia in 2008, despite receiving key support from al-Sadr in 2006 when he formed his government.
Winning Kurdish support could also be key in helping either al-Maliki or Allawi form the next government.
On Wednesday, a representative of Iraq’s Kurdish President Jalal Talabani met with the country’s most revered and politically influential Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf for talks on the process of forming new government.
As he emerged from the talks, Talabani’s adviser Fakhri Karim said the cleric had told him that he was pushing for all factions to be involved in the political process.
Al-Sistani “stressed the necessity of the participation of all the parties in the political process without excluding any,” Karim told reporters without elaborating.
Renewed sectarian violence has broken out amid the struggle for power — most recently with a series of bombings Tuesday that killed 54 people and injured 187. More than 120 have been killed in a five-day spree of attacks in and around the capital, which Iraqi and U.S. officials have blamed on al-Qaida insurgents seizing on gaping security lapses created by the political deadlock.
Police investigating the Tuesday attacks said in one case, the suspected bomber rented a first-floor apartment in
one of the buildings a week ago and likely rigged it with explosives.
Police are working on the theory that the other buildings were attacked the same way, an investigator told the AP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk with the press, suggesting that the bombings were carefully planned an executed.
In reaction, the government said it would bolster enforcement of an Iraqi law that requires local police or other officials to approve any rental contracts before people move into a new home.
The recent violence, which has largely targeted families and homes, has been reminiscent of the sectarian bloodshed that tore Iraq apart from 2005 to 2007 and prompted the United States to send tens of thousands more troops to the front lines.
Hundreds of mourners on Wednesday marched through the streets of the predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad which was the focus of the attacks in funeral processions.
In one procession, families and friends of one victim carried his coffin and picture over their heads through the narrow streets, walking to the cadence of a gun being fired into the air in time to a drum.
Nearby, the Iraqi-flag draped coffin of another victim was carried to a car to be taken away for burial, as mourners wailed and fired gunshots into the air.
“The whole district is in mourning because even if you didn’t have a relative killed, it might have been a neighbor or a friend,” said shop-owner Saif Hassan, who blamed the government for not providing better security.
“Instead of improving our area with reconstruction and services, we face bombings and destruction,” the 25-year-old said.
Begin Excerpt from ‘THE NATION”
Tehran’s Coup in Iraq?
Robert Dreyfuss
Sun Mar 28, 9:47 pm ET
The Nation — Iran is losing no time in assembling a pro-Tehran government in Iraq, and in so doing Tehran may push the Sunni minority in Iraq into violent rebellion.
Already, there are reports from Iraq — from Iraqi political insiders — that former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi
who led a nationalist, anti-Iranian coalition of secular Sunni and Shiite voters, may opt to boycott the upcoming new national assembly if he isn’t given the right to form a government.
“We expect that there will be calls for a boycott of the parliament and for civil disobedience,” according to Aiham Alsammarae, an ally of Allawi’s. A violent reaction by Allawi’s supporters can’t be ruled out, he said, from voters who demand that Allawi be given the first crack at putting together a government. In the March 7 election, Allawi’s Iraqi Nationalist Movement won 91 seats, edging out the State of Law party of Prime Minister Maliki, who won 89 seats.
But top Iraqi politicians representing Shiite sectarian politicians and Kurdish separatists filed dutifully to Iran yesterday for meetings on the formation of a new Iraqi government despite Allawi’s win.
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader, vi sited
Tehran this weekend for meetings with President Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader. Talabani was accompanied by Adel Abdel Mahdi, a leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI)and Iraq’s vice president, one of the leaders of the pro-Iranian Shiite religious bloc, the Iraqi National Alliance (INA). In parallel, leaders of Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s State of Law party traveled to Iran to meet with Muqtada al-Sadr. Sadr and Abdel Mahdi are two key members of the INA, and behind the scenes Iran is knocking heads together to make sure that Maliki, the INA, and Talabani form a ruling alliance, according to Iraqi sources interviewed from Iraq and Jordan.
Their goal: to undercut former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Under Iraqi law, and according to previous procedures, Allawi would normally be asked to form a government.
But Maliki finagled a court decision that, he says, allows him to form a broader coalition first and t
hen claim the right to announce a ruling majority.
According to Iraqi sources, Maliki, the INA, and Talabani — who controls eight or nine seats within the Kurdish bloc — agreed in Iran to form a government, which could muster about 170 seats, more than the 163 necessary in the 325-member parliament. As a result, the sources report, Masoud Barzani, the chief Kurdish leader, will also throw in with the pro-Maliki bloc. (Recently, Allawi and Barzani reportedly reached an understanding about an alliance, but even together they don’t have enough votes to form a government.)
Allawi and his allies, including Saleh al-Mutlaq, who was banned from running for office by the so-called de-Baathification commission, have tried to reach out to the United States for support. But Washington, whose influence in Iraq is waning rapidly, and which plans to withdraw its last remaining combat forces from Iraq by August, hasn’t responded to Allawi’s overtures. Needless to say, the last thing that the Obama administration needs is to become embroiled in Iraq’s post-election crisis, and there’s little that Washington could do, anyway, to affect the outcome. Indeed, for years now it’s been clear that American influence in Iraq has been shrinking, and that Iran’s clout has been increasing.
But whether Washington likes it or not, Iraq may once again be pushed to the brink of civil war.
Begin Excerpt from Khaleej Times On Line via World News
Sadrists organise referendum to name Iraq PM
(AFP)
31 March 2010
BAGHDAD – The movement loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, which has emerged as a kingmaker in the aftermath of elections, will organise a vote to see who its supporters want to be Iraq’s next leader, it said Tuesday.
“We will conduct a consultation on Friday to find out which candidate the people want… from five proposed candidates,” Ali al-Anbari, a spokesman for the radical Shiite cleric’s bloc, told AFP.
Among the five names that will be put forward are sitting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his main rival, secular former premier Iyad Allawi.
Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc finished first in Iraq’s March 7 parliamentary elections with 91 seats in the 325-member Council of Representatives, two more than Maliki’s State of Law Alliance.
The three other candidates that will be put forward are former prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, current Shiite Vice-President Adel Abdel Mahdi, and Jaafar al-Sadr, the son of Mohammed Baqr Sadr, an ayatollah assassinated by Saddam Hussein in 1980 who founded Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party.
The Sadrist movement performed well in the elections, finishing at the head of the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a coalition led by Shiite religious groups, which finished third nationwide with 70 seats.
Its success has given it strong bargaining power as Iraq’s various political groups negotiate to form a 163-seat coalition and thus form a government, a process that is expected to take several months.
Sadr, said to be in his 30s, gained widespread popularity among Shiites in Iraq in the months after the 2003 invasion and in 2004 when his Mahdi Army militia battled US troops in two bloody revolts.
Born into a family of prominent religious leaders, he is believed to have moved to neighbouring Shiite Iran in 2007, apparently for concerns over his safety.
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