The embattled Iraqi leader, Nouri al-Maliki, has said he no longer wants to be prime minister, underlining the United States’s loss of control over events just as President George W Bush is poised to announce his new strategy on the war.
Bush is expected to announce early next week that he intends to increase the number of US forces in Iraq to try to contain the sectarian bloodshed that is now acknowledged to be the biggest barrier to a stable Iraq and that has worsened under al-Maliki’s watch.
But in a measure of the Bush administration’s waning influence over events on the ground al-Maliki now says he would like to stand down as prime minister of the US-backed government.
“I wish it could be done with, even before the end of this term. I would like to serve my people from outside the circle of senior officials, maybe through the Parliament or through working directly with the people,” al-Maliki told the Wall Street Journal in an interview on December 24 last year but published only this week.
“I didn’t want to take this position. I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again,” he said.
Al-Maliki’s latest demonstration of his independence from Washington comes amid increasing frustration within the US administration at his inability — or unwillingness — to rein in the Shia militia leading Iraq’s disintegration.
The polarisation of society under al-Maliki’s watch and the dangerous rise of the Shia militias was brought home this week with the spectacle of Saddam Hussein’s execution taking place amid cheers for the radical cleric leader of the Mehdi Army, Moqtada al-Sadr.
The US has been losing patience with al-Maliki, as became evident last November with the leak to the New York Times of a memo written by the National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley. It asked whether al-Maliki, a Shia who was an activist in the underground Dawa movement under Saddam’s regime, could harbour sectarian sympathies despite his duty to foster national reconciliation. He was “either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action”.
Al-Maliki fired back in his Wall Street Journal interview, saying US forces were hampered by their slow reaction time. “What is happening in Iraq is a war of gangs and a terrorist war. That is why it needs to be confronted with a strong force and with fast reaction.”
The Pentagon made a step in that direction this week, saying US commanders expect to hand over full control to local authorities by the end of 2007.
Major General William Caldwell, the main US military spokesperson in Baghdad, told reporters: “By the end of this year, the dynamics will be entirely different.” — Â