Middle East Focus-Arabia Deserta: Political Coups and Counter-Coups in Iraq and “The Nation”, J’accuse………

Arabia Deserta

Political Coups and Counter-Coups in Iraq and “The Nation”, J’accuse………

“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, visited 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…… 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 then claim the right to announce a ruling majority………”

According to Dreyfuss, all Shi’a politicians who reject a return of the Ba’ath henchmen are “sectarian”.
Interesting how the Western media see Allwi as some kind of a “democrat’, because he has worked with the CIA in the past and travels a lot to Riyadh and Amman, as did many other Iraqis. They seem to overlook the fact that Allawi is the only prominent Shi’a in his coalition (Iraqis are 65% Shi’a, and 15% Kurd), a coalition largely of former and current Ba’athists and a few (Sunni) Islamists like al-Hashemi. He was put thereas a figurehead, a Shi’a token behind whom those that led Iraq into three wars will resume their good work. Dreyfuss also puts himself above the chief of Iraq’ s Federal Court in interpreting the Iraqi constitution: he seems to know more about it or, more likely told by some Arabs, that the chief justice is wrong and the Ba’athits are right.
Oddly, these Dreyfuss views are similar to those of old British colonial administrators like Bell and Cox in 1920. They preferred the “moderate” Sunni minority, and they also thought they were handing Iraq to a “moderate” minority. We know what happened.
My fatwa about Allawi not becoming prime minister still stands, of course, with al-Maliki also on the list for clinging to the office, tentatively.
Cheers
mhg

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