MICHAEL JANSENprofiles the Iraqi prime minister, who is desperately seeking to hold on to power
SECTARIAN SHIA and Iraqi nationalist Nuri al-Maliki is fighting to stay on as Iraq’s premier in spite of the March 7th electoral victory of his main rival, Iyad Allawi. His secular Iraqiya bloc won 91 seats in Iraq’s 325-member national assembly; Maliki’s State of Law slate took 89. He is using every trick in the book to deprive Allawi of his edge, risking rebellion by secularists and Sunnis.
Maliki was born in 1950 in Abu Gharaq, a town located between the Shia holy city of Karbala and the industrial city of Hillah. He studied at a nearby school. Inspired by his grandfather, a Shia cleric and poet who served as Iraq’s education minister during British rule, Maliki attended a theological college and took a Master’s degree in Arabic literature at Baghdad University, where he joined the Shia fundamentalist Dawa (Islamic Call) party. Since then Dawa has framed his life.
During the early 1970s Dawa launched a campaign to overthrow Iraq’s secular Baathist government and in 1979 backed Iran’s Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Threatened with arrest, Maliki fled to Syria. Dawa’s 1980 attempt on the life of Iraq’s deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz was one of the causes of the eight-year war between Iraq and Iran. In 1982, Dawa tried to assassinate Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and in 1983 Dawa bombed the US and French embassies in Kuwait.
Maliki shifted to Iran where he remained until 1990 when he returned to Damascus. Back in US-occupied Baghdad in 2003, he was appointed Ahmad Chalabi’s deputy on the commission to purge members of the outlawed Baath party from public service. He was elected to parliament in 2005 on the Shia fundamentalist slate and designated prime minister in April 2006.
Maliki authorised the 2007 US “surge” against Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda affiliates and commanded the 2008 campaign against the militia of radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Maliki signed the agreement with the US to pull its troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011. Pressed to reconcile with the Sunni community, sidelined and alienated by Shia domination, Maliki demurred. He broke with Shia partners to establish his own bloc which formed alliances with Sunni tribal leaders, adopted a nationalist platform and was successful in the 2009 provincial elections. But his government was castigated by Iraqis for the lack of security, rampant corruption, and lack of services. When he failed to win a plurality of seats in last month’s legislative election, Maliki became a loyal Shia sectarian once again and turned to Tehran to persuade his former Shia allies to back his bid for a second term as prime minister.