Allawi’s lost momentum, and Maliki’s comeback

There are some mis-information report­ing the state­ment of the Sadrists spokesman Salah Al-Ubaidi. News agen­cies reported that the Sadrists lift the ban on Maliki, while Al-Ubaidi said:

Maliki’s nom­i­na­tion in the new coali­tion is a pri­vate mat­ter to his party, and and his office, but we still have our reservations.

Allawi’s last hope are the con­di­tions put by the Sadrists to accept Maliki, the media reported that the Sadrists demand is to stop the arrests of the Sadrists, which is true but this one of many, such as:

Maliki to rec­og­nize the resis­tance against the occu­pa­tion and to refuse to advance any attempt to extend the stay of the U.S. troops or ask them for assis­tance. These con­di­tions accepted by most of Al-Iraqiya com­po­nents (except Allawi’s bloc “Al-Wifaq”), will be ham­pered by forces within the Iraq National Alliance, espe­cially the Supreme Coun­cil, sup­ports the exten­sion of the stay of the U.S. occu­pa­tion forces.

I men­tioned last week U.S. role in the for­ma­tion of the two Shi­ite coali­tion “Two rul­ing coali­tions with two dif­fer­ent sto­ries”, Haroun Mohamad is Allawi’s lob­by­ist in Jor­dan wrote the fol­low­ing on Al-Quds Al-Arabi news­pa­per (image above):

An influ­en­tial White House offi­cial advised the White House to pre­vent any polit­i­cal con­fronta­tion with the joined Shi­ite coali­tions (State of Law and Iraq National Alliance) at this stage until the end of the with­drawal of 50.000 U.S. sol­diers next August.This is is also rep­re­sents the U.S. army Gen­eral Odierno’s view, who believes that a clash with the pro-Iran polit­i­cal forces now does not serve the prepa­ra­tions for the with­drawal of the U.S. troops and equip­ment in an orderly manner.

Although the U.S. point of view does not fit With the view of the U.S. State Depart­ment and the CIA, who want the U.S. Admin­is­tra­tion to play a role to weaken the Shi­ite par­ties, but there are signs that the Obama’s admin­is­tra­tion, accepts the mil­i­tary view at this time.

The above posi­tion is even crit­i­cized by Saudi funded news­pa­per Al-Sharq Al-Awsat today “Is uncle Sam sleep­ing?”:

Since the end of the elec­tion, Wash­ing­ton sus­pi­ciously and strangely silent, Accord­ing to Obama’s Admin­is­tra­tion, they decided not to inter­vene, pre­fer­ring to let the Iraqis decide for them­selves their pres­i­dent, their prime min­is­ter, and their next gov­ern­ment … In another view, the Obama’s Admin­is­tra­tion wants to escape from Iraq … A cor­rect posi­tion if there is room to escape! … But regional states exert tremen­dous pres­sure, par­tic­u­larly Iran, who wants to decide the fate of Iraq … If the United States believes it can deal with a coali­tion imposed by Tehran, it must think again.

The Ira­ni­ans unstood the above, and speed up the for­ma­tion of the Shi­ites coali­tion, bet­ting that the Sunni blocs (Allawi’s Al-Iraqiya) can choose one of the two options: 1) Boy­cott and with­draw from the polit­i­cal process. 2) Par­tial par­tic­i­pa­tion in the polit­i­cal process. In both sce­nar­ios, Iran is the winner.

Al-Iraqiya lead­ers spoke in a way that sug­gests that they have formed the gov­ern­ment already, and they do not mind if the oth­ers would join them as long as they agreed to their con­di­tions. This arro­gant tone raised the fear and con­cern of other coali­tions, who started furi­ous reac­tion to the method in deal­ing with Iraqi polit­i­cal forces in the Iraqi polit­i­cal arena.

Even though Allawi him­self had shown some accept­able level of flex­i­bil­ity in deal­ing with fun­da­men­tal key issues in the nego­ti­ate with oth­ers, other Al-Iraqiya’s polit­i­cal enti­ties took Firm posi­tions towards a num­ber of these impor­tant issues (fed­er­al­ism, Kirkuk, Mosul, presidency).

Another rea­son is the inter­na­tional and regional role, where Allawi con­tra­dicted him­self when he crit­i­cized the oth­ers for their deal­ings with inter­na­tional and regional pow­ers and their accep­tance of med­dling in inter­nal affairs, while Allawi him­self went toward neigh­bor­ing and non-neighboring coun­tries, threat­ened to inter­na­tion­al­ize the issue of form­ing the Iraqi gov­ern­ment. This con­tra­dic­tion was a rea­son to enable an inter­nal anti-Allawi front related to the regional hubs policy.

The out­come of these and many other rea­sons, mar­gin­al­ized Allawi and Al-Iraqiya List, which led other polit­i­cal forces to search for alter­na­tive sce­nar­ios enable them to pur­sue their inter­ests. The only alter­na­tive avail­able and ready for seri­ous nego­ti­a­tion is Nuri al-Maliki, and that’s what hap­pened dur­ing the announce­ment of the alliance between the State of Law and the Iraqi National Alliance, which is expected to attract oth­ers later.

Although this alliance is not a firm alliance, but it is expected to reach a set­tle­ment between the allies, some­thing which will increase the dif­fi­culty of Allawi’s posi­tion (unless Maliki destroy this with the renewed Al-Sadr arrest war­rant if he come back to Iraq as reports said today) .