Editorial: Crisis in Iraq Wednesday, 21 December 2011 05:04

Fears are rife about a new round of sectarian warfare erupting in Iraq after Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, a Shia, ordered the arrest of Vice President Tariq Al Hashemi over killings allegedly committed five years ago. The latter denied accusations that he organised death squads, describing the charges as trumped-up and fabricated.  The accusations date back to the height of the war in 2006 and 2007, when neighbours turned on neighbours and whole sections of Baghdad were expunged of one Muslim sect or the other. Kurdish leaders were trying to work out a solution, sheltering Hashemi from arrest in their semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq. Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, but they are a different ethnic group from the Arabs that make up the vast majority of Iraq’s population.

Over the past year, as the US prepared to leave Iraq, the Sunni regions had grown increasingly hostile to Maliki, who had been coerced into sharing power with the more secular Ayad Allawi. Allawi leads Hashemi’s largely Sunni-supported Iraqiya political bloc. Hashemi is one of two vice presidents, the other being from the Shia majority, while the president is an ethnic Kurd - a system devised under US occupation to divide up power. Iraqiya, though avowedly non-sectarian, benefited largely from Sunni votes to secure first place in a parliamentary election last year. But it ended up joining an uneasy coalition under Maliki, who has been prime minister since 2006. Iraqiya recently began to boycott parliament, complaining that it had been marginalised in a country where the Shias were now dominant. It was not immediately clear whether Hashemi’s Iraqiya coalition would remain as part of the Maliki-led government. Iraqiya, which holds 91 seats, encompasses different factions with their own agendas.

Maliki has made a series of moves in recent months to secure his hold on power. Hundreds of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party have been rounded up, allegedly as security threats. The trial-by-television aspect of the case against Hashemi raised questions about the ability of the judicial system to prosecute the case fairly. Despite years of US-funded training to bolster up their security forces, many American military commanders have quietly questioned Iraq’s and especially Al Maliki’s commitment to the rule of law.

The crisis risks unravelling a fragile power-sharing deal among Shia, Sunni and Kurdish blocs that have struggled to overcome tensions since sectarian slaughter drove Iraq to the edge of civil war in the years after Saddam fell in 2003. The political struggle between Maliki and his Sunni rivals has intensified during the withdrawal of the last US troops,  completed on Sunday, nearly nine years after the invasion. Iraq sits on a Sunni-Shia faultline that is generating conflict throughout the Middle East. The need of the hour is that all the parties need to work out a solution and thereby avert another sectarian clashes looming on the horizon.