What “the assassination of Al-Qaeda leaders” means to Maliki?

The Iraqi secu­rity scene wit­nessed a very inter­est­ing devel­op­ment, infor­ma­tion revealed by Bagh­dad and Wash­ing­ton that the mil­i­tary forces have suc­ceeded in the assas­si­na­tion of two top Al-Qaeda lead­ers in Iraq: What is the cred­i­bil­ity of this story and what the polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions of this secu­rity event?

Accord­ing to the infor­ma­tion reported by the media, the Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Al-Maliki, as well as U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, both have announced the death of the two Al-Qaeda men.

The most inter­est­ing and remark­able this time is that the announce­ment of the news didn’t came from the secu­rity and mil­i­tary forces as usual, but announced by Maliki him­self in a press con­fer­ence, show­ing images of the two dead Al-Qaeda lead­ers to con­firm their death.

Al-Maliki claimed that the Iraqi secu­rity forces played a sig­nif­i­cant role in gath­er­ing the intel­li­gence and imple­mented a series of oper­a­tions which resulted the ulti­mate suc­cess­ful assas­si­na­tion of (accord­ing to Maliki, it took months for the Iraqi secu­rity cell to chase and assas­si­nate Al-Qaeda leaders).

On the other hand, Amer­i­can mil­i­tary sources revealed that the intel­li­gence are offered by the U.S. forces to their Iraqi coun­ter­parts. The source also revealed that Wash­ing­ton would not allow the Iraqi secu­rity forces to join the mil­i­tary oper­a­tion against the two Al-Qaeda men, but because the secu­rity agree­ment signed by the both coun­tries, which doesn’t allow the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary to move freely between cities and vil­lages, forced the U.S. to inform the Iraqi forces before the start of the operation.

By killing both Al-Qaeda lead­ers (if it’s true), It is impor­tant for the U.S. mil­i­tary to achieve some sym­bolic vic­tory before the with­drawal of the U.S. armed forces, but they also allowed Maliki to share this vic­tory as a A sign of ongo­ing coop­er­a­tion between Wash­ing­ton and Maliki. The Amer­i­cans are now in need of a strong leader capa­ble of ensur­ing the future inter­ests after the withdrawal.

Thus, the death of Al-Qaeda lead­ers may open the door again for Al-Maliki to seize the power, with empha­sis on the prin­ci­ple of national part­ner­ship which is not rejected by Maliki as a principle.

And that was a very short vic­tory … Next time we will see why ..