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Politics amidst turmoil

Four months after the December 2005 election, Iraq's parliamentarians finally picked nominees to fill the seven top spots in the governmental structure. But the political situation is not likely to improve in any significant fashion. It was known from the beginning that the posts would be distributed among the country's three main ethnic/sectarian groups in accordance with their relative strengths. The Kurd leader, Jalal Talabani, who was functioning as the President in the transitional administration that ran Iraq in 2005 has now been given the mandate for another five years. The two other sects have each got a vice-presidency. Similarly, while a Sunni, Mahmoud al-Meshhedani, has been chosen as the Speaker, the two deputy speakerships have been allotted to the Shias and the Kurds. Since the Shias constitute around 60 per cent of the country's population there was never any doubt that the person eventually chosen as Prime Minister would be from this community. However, the preferences of the other sects and ethnic groups could not be ignored because the cabinet cannot take office if it does not have two-thirds support in parliament. The Sunnis, the Kurds, and secular parties used this constitutional leverage to dissuade the Shias from installing Ibrahim al Jaafari as the Prime Minister. After resisting for several weeks, Mr. Jaafari's party, the United Iraqi Alliance, withdrew his candidature. The person now chosen for the Prime Minister's post, Jawad al Maliki, is likely to face an unenviable task as he tries to form a cabinet. The smaller groups in parliament, having once tasted blood, are very likely to demand that they be allotted prime portfolios in a multi-party government.

The smaller ethnic and sectarian groups cannot really be faulted for insisting that the Alliance give up control of the Interior and Defence Ministries. Under Mr. Jaafari's interim dispensation, Shia ministers allowed the community's two militias virtually to take over the police and paramilitary forces. The troops of the Interior Ministry are believed to have formed "hit squads" that tortured and murdered people belonging to the minority communities. It is unlikely that Mr. Maliki will be either able or willing to rein in the Shia militias, which pledge their loyalty to other leaders. The Mahdi army, which obeys firebrand cleric Moqtada al Sadr, and the Badr Organisation controlled by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq have carved out separate fiefdoms in the south of the country. They have also apparently infiltrated pockets in the north such as the city of Kirkuk. The Shia militias appear to be intent on imposing their writ over large parts of Iraq. Sunni and Kurd fighters will almost certainly resist and the civil war conditions that already exist could soon become irreversible. Given this situation, the choice of office-bearers who can barely venture out of the parts of Baghdad protected by the United States military can hardly be counted as an achievement.

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