Nuri al-Maliki & Ayad Allawi (Photo: Reuters)Michael S. Schmidt and Tim Arango write for The New York Times:
Fifteen months after an election that was supposed to lay the groundwork for Iraq’s future, the government remains virtually paralyzed by a clash between the country’s two most powerful politicians, who refuse to speak to each other.
The paralysis is contributing to a rise in violence, and it is severely complicating negotiations on the most difficult and divisive question hanging over the country: Whether to ask the United States to keep a contingency force here after the scheduled withdrawal of American troops at the end of the year. The longer the deadlock persists, the harder it becomes for the American military to reverse or slow the withdrawal of the roughly 48,000 troops, the pace of which will pick up over the next few months.
In December, the two politicians, Ayad Allawi, the leader of the Iraqiya bloc, and the country’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, entered into an American-backed power-sharing agreement. But since then, the men have been unable to agree on who should run the Interior and Defense Ministries, the government’s two most important departments.
The United States has been unable to end the stalemate, demonstrating to some analysts and Iraqis its waning influence here.
Mr. Allawi, whose party received the most votes in last year’s election, has yet to show up in Parliament. Mr. Maliki has run the government on his own, and his aides have threatened to sue Mr. Allawi for calling them lying tyrants and claiming they are supported by Iran.
As the deadlock grinds on, political assassinations and attacks on American bases have increased significantly.
“This is the biggest dispute that has occurred here since 2003, and it will continue to escalate if a solution is not found, and that is our concern,” said Jabir al-Jabiri, a member of Parliament from Mr. Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc.
Without leaders in place at the Interior and Defense Ministries, decisions have been delayed about whether to single out terrorists, and the government has been unable to properly assess its military capabilities as it weighs whether to ask for the United States’ troops to remain, according to American officials.
“I think they have a very, very hard time having a meaningful rational debate and fully exploring all of their capabilities and limitations” without interior and defense ministers in place, said Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the United States military’s top spokesman in Iraq.
He added: “These are big decisions. So is your government going to be formed to make those decisions? Or is somebody going to make it in isolation? So I think that’s why I see the issues being connected.”
The power-sharing agreement in December allows Mr. Allawi’s party to appoint the defense minister, although Mr. Maliki has to approve the selection. It also said that Mr. Allawi would become the head of a largely undefined strategic council that was supposed to provide a counterweight to the prime minister.
But at the first session of Parliament, the agreement unraveled when Mr. Maliki appointed himself as the minister of both interior and defense, claiming that because of the country’s tenuous security environment he needed more time to vet the candidates.
Mr. Maliki has continued to refuse to fill those jobs, claiming that many of the names submitted by Mr. Allawi are not suitable. Mr. Maliki has also refused to give the strategic council any power because he says it is unconstitutional, and Mr. Allawi has declined to become the council’s leader.
“After the United States failed to put together the government they wanted after the election, they pushed for a national unity government that took all of Iraq’s political problems and put them into the government,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, an expert on national security issues at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “There is a widespread recognition now among American officials that inclusiveness over effectiveness was a mistake.”
The tensions between the men have fueled the simmering sectarian issues.