This blog post was published on June 12 2011. §
Iraq: Allawi, Maliki .. Confrontation reached its climax
Anti-Maliki demonstration in London .. 10-06-2011 (see video below)
While al-Maliki succeeded in emptying the contents of the Friday’s demonstration by planning a mass demonstration led by tribal elders who started to attack Anti-Maliki demonstrators (video shows pro-Maliki groups attack the demonstrators) and accused Allawi of collaborating with the murder of “The Dujail wedding”.
Allawi managed to lift the spirits, appeared as a strong leader capable of retaliating, naming Maliki and his followers as “Bats of darkness” (video of allawi’s speech).
Currently, there are at least three political initiatives on table: 1) the revive of the old initiative of Massoud Barzani. 2) The initiative of President Jalal Talabani. 3) The initiative of the Sadrists Muqtada Al-Sadr.
We will skip Barzani’s initiative since there is nothing new to add to the old one, postpone Talabani’s initiative to the end because it is the most important, and start with the Sadr’s initiative. One thing I need to mention here, is that both Talabani and Sadr claim that there initiatives are completion of Barzani’s.
Al-Sadr
We know very little about Al-Sadr’s effort, but the few available information says that the Sadrists sent a delegation to Erbil and met with President of Kurdistan Region Masoud Barzani and other Kurdish leaders, pointing out that the delegation will meet with Ayad Allawi’s Al-Iraqiya coalition.
According to the Sadrists Jawad al-Hasnawi the initiative aims to reduce the size of the government through dialogue and to pressure the political blocs to sit round the table. Another Sadrists Hassan al-Jubouri complains that some political blocs try to block AL-Sadr’s initiative because they do not want the Sadrists to play a role to resolve all outstanding issues. In other words no one takes Al-Sadr’s initiative seriously.
Talabani
President Talabani has already started a series of meetings with each Ammar al-Hakim, and Ahmed Chalabi (who already has bad relationship with Maliki recently). Talabani’s aim is revive the old project of the quartet alliance (Islamic Dawa Party, Supreme Council, and the two Kurdish parties.
The two obstacles are the fragile relationship between the Supreme Council and Dawa Party, on the one hand, and the unstable relation between Maliki and Sadr’s movement on the other hand (despite the recent “honeymoon”).
I am not sure where is Maliki and Dawa Party in Talabani’s plan, but pro-Maliki demonstrators started to accuse President Talabani of collaborating with the murders is suspicious
As reported by Al-Hayat:
Baghdad Municipality, headed by the Dawa Party agreed to give a permission to those protesters who have criticized President Jalal Talabani.
In his speech Allawi did not mention Nouri al-Maliki by name but by degradation, the names he called Maliki indicate that the conflict between the political rivals has reached its climax. There are news reported today that Dawa Party wants the arrest of Allawi.
Available video: Iraqis demonstrate against Maliki in London .. Friday 10-06-2011