Why the U.S. wants a coalition of Allawi and Maliki?

The U.S. stressed many on its neu­tral­ity in the cur­rent “coali­tion for­ma­tion” cri­sis, but deep inside they prof­fered to Allawi and Maliki in one coali­tion. This is expressed very plainly by the for­mer U.S. ambas­sador in Iraq Ryan Crocker in his inter­view on the French news­pa­per 20 Min­utes:

Q- What do you think of Iyad Allawi?

A- Allawi and (his rival, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter) Nouri Al-Maliki are two sides of the same coin. Both are nation­al­ists. They held a sim­i­lar speech dur­ing the cam­paign, speak­ing of the Iraqi identity.

The U.S. finds itself faced with two options for the lead­er­ship in Iraq (exclud­ing the Kurds), the first led by Maliki, and the sec­ond posed by Allawi. Here, both men through their state­ments and the media are try­ing to give the impres­sion that they pre­ferred by Washington.

The U.S. loves Maliki, and beliefs that he is straight, not cor­rupt, and seri­ous to lead Iraq towards a bet­ter future. But the Prime Min­is­ter raised some fears among U.S. offi­cials in some of his actions, such as ten­dency to dom­i­nate power, and rais­ing con­tro­versy about the pos­si­bil­ity to turn into an Iraqi Vladimir Putin” (who suc­ceeded in reach­ing to the one-man rule with a democ­racy cover).

The U.S. also does not mind the return of Allawi to head the gov­ern­ment, but still, Allawi is lim­ited to the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Sun­nis, who are still feared by both the Kurds and the Shi­ite majority.

Despite the fact that the U.S. will accept to see Al-Maliki and the Kurds in power,  but they would like to see Allawi and his Sunni  allies also.

Accord­ingly, the most favorite U.S. sce­nario in Iraq is a coali­tion cab­i­net that brings Maliki, Allawi, and the Kurds. A solid coali­tion dom­i­nates the major­ity of the seats in the par­lia­ment, and will rep­re­sent all the three groups in Iraq (Shi­ites and Sun­nis and Kurds).

But the Amer­i­can offi­cials aware of the dif­fi­culty of achiev­ing the above sce­nario because mul­ti­ple fac­tors (ie … per­sonal hatred between Alawi and Maliki), which forces the U.S. to accept a worst-case sce­nario, Iran’s allies in power, along with Maliki, at the expense of Allawi.

Here the United States will con­tinue to play a “neu­tral role”, and will con­tinue to seek long-term part­ner­ship with Iraq, no mat­ter who in the Iraqi gov­ern­ment or the presidency.