Iraq's New Government

Amir Taheri, The New York Post:

HAS tried hard; but could have done better: This is how one could grade Iraqi Prime Minister Jawad Nuri al-Maliki's creation of his first Cabinet, just approved by the National Assembly (parliament).

At one level, the new Cabinet of 39 ministers could be seen as an accurate representation of virtually all shades of political opinion in Iraq today. This, in addition to the fact that all of Iraq's 18 ethnic and religious communities have at least one spokesperson in the new Cabinet, means that al-Maliki has raised a tent large enough for all those who wish to make the new Iraq a success.

Al-Maliki also deserves credit for having solved the thorny issue of who heads the three key ministries of Interior, Defence and National Security - whose task is to crush the insurgency and restore stability and security in areas still affected by the terrorist campaign. READ MORE

The three key ministries are no longer controlled by politicians linked with various rival militias. Al-Maliki has decided to keep the interior ministry under his own control for the time being. Zikam al-Zubaie, a Sunni Arab leader, becomes acting defence minister and Barham Saleh, a Kurdish leader, takes over as acting minister for national security.

Al-Maliki has also done well with regard to the explosive issue of how much federalism new Iraq should develop. By putting the issue on the backburner, he has deprived both Arab Sunni and Arab Shiite extremists of one of their key topics.

At another level, however, the new Cabinet may have some elements of an eventual failure written in its genes.

One problem: It was formed more on the basis of partisan considerations than agreement on any broad political orientations. For example, the nuclear scientist Hussein Sharestani receives the important post of Finance Minister not because he knows anything about his brief, but because his political bloc wanted a big job for him.

Worse still, the prime minister has not succeeded in forging a consensus on the three key issues that his government faces.

1) How to deal with the terrorist insurgency:

Several ministers in the new Cabinet insist that the only way to deal with the insurgency is to take the gloves off and fight without "Marquis of Queensbury" rules. They argue that the terrorists have been allowed to choose the time and the place for their attacks because they are seldom targeted by pre-emptive operations. Thus, they want the new Iraqi security forces to seize control of the three or four relatively small towns where the insurgents are hiding and conduct "combing out operations" against them - even if that could produce some " collateral damage."

That view, however, is opposed by al-Maliki himself, and by President Jalal Talabani (a Kurd). They both believe that a more patient approach is needed and that the "combing out" strategy, while it might crush the more active insurgent groups, could also produce long-lasting bitterness among the largely Arab Sunni population of the areas concerned.

What is certain is that the new government needs to quickly agree on a strategy for defeating the insurgency. Both the "combing out" method (which worked well in Algeria in the 1990s) and more "gradualist" policies (which worked in Malaya in the 1950s) could, if applied with resolve, produce the desired results. What won't work is a mixture of the two methods - which is bound to alienate the non-combatant populations while doing little harm to the terrorists. This was precisely the policy that the interim government, headed by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari tried for almost a year, with little success.

2) The future status of the U.S.-led Coalition forces in Iraq:

The new government and parliament have until the end of this year to devise a position before entering into negotiations with the United States and its allies. Unless a new agreement is reached, the Coalition could, at least in theory, terminate its mission by the end of the year. My current understanding is that a majority in the new parliament wants the Coalition to prolong its stay for at East another year. But what is needed is a longer commitment by the Coalition, one that would send a signal to all enemies of new Iraq that they can't hope to win simply by waiting out President Bush.

Yet the Americans are unlikely to support a longer-term insurance policy for Iraq, say three to five years, unless they are persuaded that this is what a clear majority of the Iraqis want. It is the task of the new government to take the lead on that issue and make sure that the forging of a new relationship with the Coalition is not turned into a political football in Baghdad. (This is all the more important because the issue has already become a political football in Washington.)

3) Corruption:

This now appears to have reached levels like that in most other Arab states:

• Over the past two years, tens of thousands of fictitious government employees have been put on the public payroll by political leaders and militia commanders. In other words, the government is actually paying those who are dedicated to preventing it from asserting its authority.
• At the same time, however, tens of thousands of public-sector employees, including doctors and teachers, do not receive their wages regularly. In some cases, in the Basra region for example, a government employee must first sign up with one of the local political parties and /or militias before he can receive salary.

Because the outside world is focused on terrorist incidents in Iraq - which, though they claim many lives, ultimately do not alter the overall political picture - not enough attention is paid to the gangrene effect of spreading corruption that is the real enemy of Iraqi democracy.

One reason for remaining optimistic, however, is that the new parliament is likely to witness the emergence of a robust opposition bloc headed by former Premier Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, and Salih al-Mutlak, the rising start of Arab Sunni politics. The fact that the Iraqi media appear determined to give al-Maliki a rough ride is also good news. The key to this government's success is the degree to which it might avoid to the kind of self-satisfied complacency that has been the road to despotism in most Arab countries.

Iranian author and journalist Amir Taheri is a member of Benador Associates.