Are the next-door-neighbours’ clerics seeking to prove Obama’s buffoonery?

By Harem Karem:

Obama’s use of fancy words such as ‘sovereign’, ‘self-reliant’ and ‘democrat’ after what was reported as a successful meeting with PM Nuri Al Maliki earlier this month took analysts by surprise. The premature withdrawal from Iraq did not exactly go according to the plan – which might ultimately cause epic embarrassments, force the US administration to renegotiate the deal with Iraq and make a few tweaks to its policy. Shortly after the withdrawal, ferocious heat was generated by a political crisis engulfing Iraq, precisely as the Kurds predicted and warned the White House months ago.

The VP Tariq Al Hashimi, whose brothers and sister were killed by terrorists, has been accused of involvement in terrorism and forced to take refuge in the Kurdistan region. This has made the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) involvement in the mayhem inevitable. Maliki is said to have been aware of Hashimi’s involvement in terrorism for three years but kept quiet about it until now.

This raises the following questions. Why now, when US troops have withdrawn and the majority of diplomatic and embassy staffs are on Christmas leave? Has the golden time arisen to grab power or is Iraq slowly slipping into becoming the battlefield for Iran on one side and Saudi Arabia and Turkey on the other? Are the next-door-neighbours’ clerics seeking to prove Obama’s buffoonery?

The dilemma Maliki has stumbled into, however, is not an easy one since he is leading a coalition government in a dysfunctional country that has been stuck together with chicken wire and glue – anything but democratic – while his clerical superiors play cat and mouse with the Iraqi opportunist corrupt demagogues. The harsh reality is that Iraq has become a three-legged table and anything placed upon it will most definitely slip towards Iran.

Maliki can please either his clerical superiors or his partners in the government. Pursuing the clerics’ agenda and chasing a fugitive who is a top leader in Al Iraqiya has left his party with no option but to boycott Parliament and the Council of Ministers while the Kurdistan Alliance turns its back on Maliki and shelters Al Hashimi. Maliki has not been keen on implementing the 19 points agreed with the Kurdistan Alliance and so they are looking for another partner that will – and on this occasion it happens to be Sunni. Maliki is on the verge of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire should he try to form another coalition with the Kurdistan opposition and other entities in Baghdad.

Maliki knows better than anyone that the KRG will not make a huge strategic mistake by extraditing Hashimi. Why is he insisting that Hashimi’s trial take place in Baghdad when he can be tried in Kurdistan? Members of the former regime were tried in Baghdad for committing crimes against the Kurds in the north and the KRG never made such requests.