Nouri al-Maliki has been the prime minister of Iraq since
2006. His reign has been marked by increasing controversy as he has reneged on
promises, and taken on his rivals using the security forces and corruption
charges. His approach to government can in part be explained by his past. He
joined Iraq’s first Shiite Islamist organization the Dawa Party in the 1960s,
which was then an underground movement. He was eventually forced into exile in
1979, because of his activities, and became a leader in the armed struggle
against Saddam Hussein in both Iran and Syria. After the 2003 invasion, he
served as an underling within the party until he was picked as a compromise
candidate for the premiership between the rival Shiite religious parties. Most
of his early history was unknown outside of Iraq until a recent article by
Ned Parker and Raheem Salman in the Spring 2013 issue of the World Policy
Journal. Here is an interview with Mr. Parker about Maliki’s life, and how it
has shaped him as the prime minister of Iraq. Ned can be followed on Twitter at
@nedparker1
 |
| (World Policy Journal) |
1. Today, there are
many in the Middle East and the West that claim Maliki is a tool of the
Iranians. In fact, his family had a long history with Iraqi nationalism
beginning with his grandfather and father. What positions did his family take,
and do you think that Maliki still holds onto their ideals?
Maliki’s
grandfather Mohammed Abu Mahesin served as an education minister in
the 1920s and participated in the revolt against the British occupation in
1920. Maliki’s father was an Arab nationalist, and described by his son as a
Nasserist. Maliki is proud of his family history and his grandfather’s example.
He sees himself as following in his father and grandfather’s nationalist
tradition. At the same time, Maliki is also a creature of Shiite revolutionary
politics. He turned to political Islam and the Dawa Party after the Arab
world’s failure in the 1967 war with Israel. His own suffering under Saddam
Hussein made him a staunch defender of his religious sect. One could argue his
grandfather represented the different strains of Maliki’s political beliefs.
His grandfather was a nationalist, a respected tribal figure and also a liaison
with the Shiite clergy in the shrine city of Najaf. Over time, Maliki has mixed and matched Shiite
Islamist and nationalist stances, all of which serve his belief that he is
Iraq’s savior, the one who rescued the country from civil war and the only one
capable of holding the nation together.
2. You mentioned the
1967 Arab-Israeli War as a prominent event in Maliki’s history that led him to
the Dawa Party. What other issues drew him to it?
Maliki grew up in an atmosphere blending rural conservatism,
a pride in tribal identity, nationalist fervor, and religious piety. Even
Maliki’s father, who was an Arab nationalist, was a practicing Muslim. The
teenage Maliki looked to political Islam in order to understand Israel’s defeat
of Arab states in the 1967 war. The loss had shocked him and he would later
refer to the war in a 2010 state television interview as “the defeat of the
Islamic nation”. It was at this time, Maliki was recruited to the Dawa Party. He
joined at his local mosque, according to his family. Maliki was the equivalent
of local aristocracy. His family was
prominent because of his grandfather’s political history and tribal and
religious affiliations. Dawa members asked him to study at a university in
Baghdad, associated with Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir Sadr, one of the Shiite
world’s leading clergy and a founder of the Dawa Party. Sadr’s teachings on
Islam and his vision of a strong vibrant modern Islamic state captured the imagination
of the young Maliki.
3. Maliki spent almost 25 years in exile.
What forced him to flee in 1979, what happened to his family after he left, and
how did he get revenge after he returned in 2003?
Maliki
fled as part of the larger crackdown against the Dawa Party and Shiite
Islamists in 1979 after Saddam Hussein became president and consolidated power.
Maliki escaped Iraq with police on his trail, and several of his friends
already detained or killed. After Maliki
left, over the course of the next decade, 67 of his family members were killed.
His village was put under watch by state security and his relatives lived as
outcasts. In an interview last year on state television, Maliki recalled
staging a funeral for victims of the Baath in his home region of Hindaya in
2003 shortly after he ended his exile. In his mock funeral address, Maliki had
publicly called for reprisals against Baathists who had killed or caused
suffering. Soon after his speech, some Baathists, implicated in the
persecution of local Shiites, were killed by vigilantes, including a former
police commander, who had been associated with the 1979 attempt to arrest
Maliki. Maliki expressed no remorse for the reprisals that took place in the
early period after Saddam’s fall. “Those who didn’t harm anyone are still
working in the area,” he explained in a 2012 state television interview.
“People differentiate between the good and the bad.”
After
becoming prime minister, Maliki alternatively advocated hardline politics
against the Baath Party and other times sounded more conciliatory. But in
difficult times, he often fell back on his image as a strongman and defender of
Iraq’s Shiites.
4. While in exile,
Maliki went back and forth between Syria and Iran organizing militant cells to
fight against the Baathist regime, and ran into major problems with both
governments. Tehran for example, demanded the loyalty of the Iraqis. What was
Maliki’s position on this, and what does this say about those who claim that
Maliki is a tool of Iran?
Maliki’s history with the Iranians has been fraught. He long
ago gave up any illusions about Iran’s intentions towards Iraq. As a young man,
Maliki was inspired by the Iranians in their 1979 revolution. Khomeini had
lived in the shrine city of Najaf and, at the time, the Iraqis in Dawa saw
kindred spirits in Iran’s Islamists. But when Maliki and others from Dawa took
refuge in Iran after 1979 and many, including Maliki, grew disillusioned. They
felt Iran wanted to control them and viewed Iraqis as inferior. Maliki watched
Iran prod the splintering of the Dawa Party, recruiting members for alternative
groups, and saw friends arrested. According to a classified U.S. report, Maliki
left Iran at one point fearful of assassination or arrest by the Iranians. Maliki
has not forgotten his past, but whether he likes it or not, Iran is a major
player in Iraq’s politics and to survive and to stay in power he must deal with
them, but this doesn’t make him a tool of the Iranians. He has some nostalgia
for the 1979 Iranian revolution and more trust for the Iranians than he does
for hostile Sunni Arab countries, but Maliki can never forget the way Iranians
tried to subjugate him to their goals.
5. After the Gulf
War, Maliki was sent to Saudi Arabia to meet with Shiites who had fled after
the failed 1991 uprising in southern Iraq. How did that shape his opinion of
the Americans and Shiite victimhood?
Maliki and other Shiite Islamists saw the Americans as
betraying the Shiites in their 1991 uprising, They believed the Americans consciously
supported Saddam in crushing the Islamists because U.S. officials saw Iraq’s
Shiites as pro-Iranian Islamic extremists. U.S. officials had to labor after
its 2003 invasion of Iraq to overcome this perception of the past which was
widely held among Shiite Islamists.
6. After 2003, Maliki
eventually gained a series of positions in the new Iraqi government. What
positions did he become known for?
Maliki built up his reputation after the war as a Shiite
Islamist enforcer. He served in the deBaathifcation committee that was formed
in 2003 to root out Baathists from government. Later in parliament, he served
on the committee writing the constitution, where he also defended Shiite
Islamist concerns. In addition, Maliki sat on the parliament’s security committee,
where he was a vocal critic of Sunni militants, and was perceived as a
political patron of Shiite militias, who were battling Al Qaeda and other Sunni
hardliners. He didn’t hesitate to criticize American military operations
against Shiite groups.
7. In 2006, Maliki
ascended to the premiership. The Americans were hoping that he would be better
than his predecessor Ibrahim al-Jaafari, also from Dawa, who was blamed for
spurring on the civil war. Maliki was not neutral however. What did he think of
the sectarian fighting, and how did that lead to his use of the security forces
and protection of Shiite militias?
Maliki looked to protect Iraq’s Shiite majority from a
return of the Baath party and to stave off Al Qaeda. He saw the Sadrists and
Badr militias as Shiite paramilitary forces defending Iraq’s Shiite elite from
Sunni extremists. Maliki frustrated the Americans by rarely sanctioning
operations in Shiite militia strongholds. He blocked U.S. forces from arresting
security commanders, who were abetting Shiite militants, and militia leaders.
He pushed instead for his commanders to go after Sunnis he suspected of
militancy and often wanted to go after Sunnis Americans saw as potential
allies. This changed in the spring of 2008, as Iraq’s civil war receded. Maliki
decided to move against his sometime partner and rival Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s
militia because he now viewed the lawlessness associated with armed Shiite
groups as a threat to his rule and the state itself. No longer were Maliki’s interests just
limited to combatting Baathists and Sunni Islamic extremists.
8. The prime minister
has surrounded himself with a close circle of Dawa members. Who are some of
these people, and what roles do they play in the government?
Maliki has surrounded himself with loyalists to push his
agenda. From the fall of his predecessor Jaafari, and the decline of Dawa in
exile, Maliki learned that the only way to guard against plots and maintain
authority was to have loyalists handle key folders. In Maliki’s case, this has
brought to the prime minister’s office and its security branches a coterie of
family members and longtime Dawa members, who suffered under Saddam. Among those
Maliki relied upon were his son Ahmed, who would serve as a deputy chief of
staff. In his father’s second term, Ahmed became arguably the most powerful in
the prime minister’s office with the power to command special army units, loyal
to Maliki. Another battle-tested ally was Abu Mujahid, a friend and former
driver for Maliki in exile in Damascus, who was named the prime minister’s
protocol secretary. Others were Abu [Ammar] Ali al-Basri, the son of a Dawa
member killed by Saddam, who ran the prime minister’s own special intelligence
service, and General Farouk Araji, a colonel in Saddam’s military, and former
Dawa sympathizer who Maliki used to give direct orders to the Defense and
Interior Ministries.
9. Since Maliki has
been in power he has consistently turned against his allies and coalition
members starting with Moqtada al-Sadr in 2008 with the Charge of the Knights
campaign to the present day with Iyad Allawi and his Iraqiya party. Why do you
think the prime minister has gone after people he was supposed to work with or
relied upon?
Maliki has witnessed the politics of betrayal his whole
life. In Iraq, to lose in politics often means death. There is no such thing as
a true ally or friend. He can only see a comparable power represented in Sadr
or Allawi as a potential threat that for him will result in in his own death or
exile. It is this conspiratorial mindset, and winner take all mentality, that
has hindered him from putting Iraq on the road to being a stable and prosperous
democracy.
10. At the end of
your article you wrote that there was hope that Maliki could change the way he
rules. Could you explain why?
Maliki harbors ambitions to be a true national hero. This is
a core belief for him. He cannot accept the idea of failure. He sees himself as
a defender of the country’s Shiites but also of all Iraqis. He has veered in
his rule from being overtly sectarian to attempts at compromise and bridge
building with the country’s Sunnis. His impulses are authoritarian from his
history as a clandestine revolutionary. If he sees pursuing more conciliatory
and consensual politics as benefitting his political fortunes and ensuring his
security, he could pursue the path of national reconciliation. Perhaps, it is
too late for him. Maliki has made too many enemies. But Maliki has always
proved himself tenacious and a survivor. He can never be counted out.
SOURCES
Parker, Ned and Salman, Raheem, “Notes From The Underground:
The Rise of Nouri al-Maliki,” World Policy Journal, Spring 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment