Political dynamics in Iraq need to change

Amir Taheri:

WHEN President Bush launched the surge in Iraq, he based it on a key assumption: As America improved security in Baghdad and its environs, the Iraqi leadership would take the steps to translate military gains into political progress.

With the surge in its third month, even the most critical observers agree that, while violence still rages daily, the security situation in Baghdad and the two most turbulent provinces, Diyala and Anbar, has improved.

There has, however, been no corresponding progress on the Iraqi political scene. Although The National Assembly (parliament) has dealt with no more than a quarter of the legislative agenda it set for itself, its members voted themselves a long holiday.

Worse still, those politicians still in Baghdad have resumed their favorite game of plotting against one another.

Former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari is offering lavish dinner parties in which fesenjoun - a Persian meal of duck cooked in pomegranate juice and ground walnuts - is the favorite dish. Jaafari claims that - since the Americans are bound to run away once Bush is out of office - the Iraqi Shiite leadership had better restore its damaged ties with the Islamic Republic in Tehran.

To do that, Jaafari claims, the Iraqis should replace Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whom the Iranian mullahs dislike, with someone acceptable to the Iranians. One need not probe too deep to find out that "someone" means Jaafari himself.

Jaafari belongs to the Islamist party Dawa (The Call), which only last month elected Maliki as its leader. The former premier has approached Muqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand mullah with ties to Tehran, offering an alliance.

Sadr, however, has his own plans: He is lying low until the Americans crush the Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda - and then, once a Democrat takes the White House, pack and leave. At that time, Sadr could re-emerge, revive his Mahdi Army as the largest militia in the country and bid for power with the help of Tehran and the Lebanese Hezbollah.

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ot only pro-Tehran groups threaten Maliki's fragile coalition. The pro-Arab Shiite groups are also working to unseat the prime minister, arguing that he has failed to reassert Iraq's "Arab identity." Leading the pro-Arab onslaught on Maliki is Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite who served as interim prime minister in the first post-Saddam Iraqi administration.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan - three of the four key Arab players in Iraq - may back Allawi. But the fourth, Syria, mistrusts Allawi and is uneasy about his anti-Iranian stance. And the Iranian mullahs would regard a new administration headed by Allawi as a provocation. Forced to tolerate Maliki, they would find it impossible to put up with Allawi.

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The new dynamic in Iraq is not mentioned by Taheri. It is the grass roots reconciliation among the Sheiks both Sunni and Shia that is taking places in the provinces and that is leading to the destruction of al Qaeda's operations in Iraq. It is this new dynamic that the politicians in Baghdad either fear are don't comprehend that is probably the best chance for Iraq to come together politically. the politicians who do not recognize it will be in serious peril.