ABSTRACT
In the following reading, Phebe Marr’s analysis of Iraq since the American intervention of 2003 focuses on the consolidation of power by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Under Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab minority ruled Iraq, but with his fall, the Shiite Arab majority has a much greater role in national politics, though the Sunni Arab and the ethnic (and chiefly Sunni) Kurdish minorities each maintain a significant political and military presence within the country. Maliki’s incursion against the militias of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Basra helped mollify accusations that Maliki was merely a Shiite partisan. His decisive actions against Kurds in disputed territories of the north strengthened his concept of a strong central government in Iraq. Likewise, Maliki gained stature by negotiating the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), by which the United States would (and in fact did) withdraw all its combat troops from Iraq by December 2011. In this chapter, Marr details how Maliki led a Shiite coalition, the State of Law, that staked out a largely nationalist, centralist position amid the highly charged ethnic and sectarian politics of the post-Saddam era. In the country’s 2010 national election, Prime Minister Maliki’s party was opposed by the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), another, more Islamist Shiite coalition that had the backing of neighboring (and Shiite) Iran. Also running slates in the elections were political alliances representing the Kurds and the cross-sectarian, Sunni-supported Iraqiyya coalition headed by Ayad Allawi. Allawi’s Iraqiyya coalition actually won the most seats in the election, though by a margin too narrow for it to form a new government. After a protracted stalemate, the two Shiite coalitions, State of Law and INA, realigned as a bloc, which ultimately led to Maliki’s remaining prime minister, despite the initial opposition of Sadr and other members to the new marriage of convenience between the secular and Islamist Shiite groups. Marr also considers the pressures exerted by Kurds and Sunnis on the central government and the influence of Iran on the Shiites of Iraq. Marr concludes by observing a conundrum of current Iraqi politics. A stronger and more effective central government will probably rely on a narrower political base and will likely become more authoritarian and less democratic. A stronger parliament, with a flourishing system of loyal-opposition parties, appears yet to be a distant aspiration.
