N.Y. TIMES, MICHAEL GORDON & DAVID SANGER
A senior American diplomat met with his Iranian counterpart in Vienna on Monday to explore whether the United States and Iran could work together to create a more stable Iraqi government and ease the threat from Sunni militants.
The initial meeting took place after Secretary of State John Kerry signaled that the Obama administration was open to cooperating with Iran on Iraq,
The Obama administration’s strategy is to pressure Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and his Shiite-dominated government to form a multisectarian government with Sunnis and Kurds in an effort to heal the rifts being exploited by the insurgents. But that goal could be frustrated if Iran decided to back hard-line Shiite leaders or sent Quds Force fighters into Iraq, aggravating the already inflamed tensions.
Complicating the picture are the parallel talks between Iran and world powers on its nuclear program.
With an initial July 20 deadline for an agreement looming, one expert who has periodically advised the American negotiating team said there was already “a recognition the Iranians will try to milk any help on Iraq to get any advantage they can” as they haggle with the lead negotiators over how much of their nuclear infrastructure can remain if a final nuclear agreement is reached.
 |
| Iranian President Hassan Rouhani |
----
In a sign of the growing dangers in Iraq, Mr. Obama notified Congress on Monday that he is sending as many as 275 military personnel to augment security and provide support for the heavily fortified American Embassy in Baghdad. The United States has already announced plans to evacuate a significant number of embassy personnel.
----
The outreach to Tehran was a surprising turnabout for the Obama administration, which has not held talks over regional crises with Iran. Cooperation between the United States and Iran to contain the Iraqi crisis would represent the first time the two countries have jointly undertaken a common security purpose since they shared military intelligence to counter the Taliban in Afghanistan after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Mr. Kerry, in fact, worked furiously in January to persuade the United Nations to disinvite Iran from the Geneva peace talks on Syria, arguing that Tehran’s military support to Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, disqualified it from participating.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has presented himself as the man who could bring Iraqis together, but with the collapse of his army before a Sunni militant assault, he has taken on only one role — that of commander in chief of Iraq.
He is spending much of his time on the military side of the presidential compound, while some of his close civilian aides have taken to wearing starched military fatigues. He spends the better part of his day running the war.
He meets with military commanders, travels to the front lines, makes speeches at recruiting drives rallying young Shiite men and, not infrequently, falls into fits of anger, according to members of his inner circle.
What he does not do, by all accounts, is spend much time on the political reconciliation with the Sunni Arabs and Kurds that his international allies in Washington and Tehran have insisted is his country’s only possible salvation. Even his top aide in charge of reconciliation said Monday that he thinks it is all but hopeless at this point.
President Obama has made it clear that the United States will not provide military support unless Mr. Maliki engineers a drastic change in policy, reaching out to Sunnis and Kurds in a show of national unity against the Sunni militants, whose shock troops are the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Without that, analysts say, the country is at risk of a renewed sectarian war in which Baghdad could lose control over nearly a third of the country for the foreseeable future.
But Mr. Maliki is showing few signs of changing his ways. Just as he did in a similar, though not nearly as threatening, crisis in 2008 in Basra, he is pinning his hopes on the military option. He is determined to use the Shiite fighters he trusts to stabilize the country and, he hopes, rout the Sunni insurgents and reimpose the government’s control over its territory.
For now, Mr. Maliki’s public message to Mr. Obama is that it is just not possible to work with the Kurds and Sunnis right now, that the army first needs to retake lost ground.
Mr. Maliki, 63, has long shown a stubborn streak, an unwillingness to bend his principles. He spent much of his life as a dissident, working to oust the former president, Saddam Hussein.
Sectarian civil war: Shiite tribal fighters raise their weapons and chant slogans against the al-Qaeda-inspired ISIS group in Baghdad as Iranian-backed militias move in to spearhead what Shiites see as a fight for survival against Sunni militants |
| In the southern Iraqi city of Basra, Shiite tribal fighters on Monday chanted slogans against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Credit Nabil Al-Jurani/Associated Press |
He lived in exile for 24 years, and secrecy became a way of life, in order to avoid arrest. The experience left him wary of all but his closest associates. He did not appear destined for higher office but was encouraged to run for prime minister in 2006 by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, in part because he was viewed as incorruptible.
Mr. Maliki surprised the United States and other Western governments by sending his army forces in 2008 against Shiite militias loyal to the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, which at the time were destabilizing the country. But in more recent years he has not appeared willing to repeat that step and has hewed more to sectarian policies.
At times it has looked almost as though Mr. Maliki was going out of his way to alienate the Sunnis. After the Sunni tribes helped to defeat Al Qaeda in 2008, he cut off much of their funding.
In search of insurgents, Mr. Maliki has authorized mass arrests of Sunnis and held many of them in prisons outside the law. He has also accused a prominent Sunni politician, Tariq al-Hashimi, of running a death squad, driving him into exile in Kurdistan, and has similarly gone after other prominent Sunnis.
 |
| Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq led a meeting with military officers during a visit to the city of Samarra on Friday. Credit via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
Convinced that there is a conspiracy to undermine him, Mr. Maliki speaks often of “failed politicians” who are working with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, while his associates describe “dirty deals” between the Kurds, ISIS and the Sunnis. Sunnis have lost patience and now simply want the prime minister to resign.
Shiite politicians have said there are some immediate gestures Mr. Maliki could make that would help ease the tensions. He could release the thousands of Sunni prisoners detained by his security forces and being held without trial. He could make common cause with Sunnis and Kurds with statements against the Sunni militants, and he could work with them to bolster the military instead of turning to Shiite militias.
The worry is that, barring reconciliation, Iraq will split into a Sunnistan and a Shiastan, said a former ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker.
“Either we intervene at the White House and the secretary of state level or this is going to devolve into a bloody stalemate,” he said, “a line of demarcation between north and south, to be determined, but probably just north of Baghdad and the establishment of a de facto Al Qaeda state, and that’s completely terrifying.”
Many Shiite politicians, worried about the fate of the country, have begun offering alternatives to Mr. Maliki’s approach. [They urge him to] reach out to Kurds, thanking them for receiving refugees and recommending a national reconciliation.
That does not mean that Mr. Maliki has lost faith in all Sunnis. He still has words of praise for the Sunni tribes with whom he has long worked, and who have fought and lost large numbers in battling Qaeda-type extremists in western Iraq.
But Mr. Maliki has little faith in the Sunni political leaders,
As recently as last week in the wake of the fall of Mosul, Mr. Maliki appeared to have a chance to create a unified multisectarian, multiethnic block to fight ISIS and those who support it. In a long late-night meeting with Sunni and Kurdish leaders, it appeared they might emerge with a unified stand. Hours passed, and when they emerged there was no agreement.
It turned out the Sunnis proposed raising in effect a Sunni army, a sort of new version of the tribal Awakening Councils that fought Al Qaeda in 2007 and 2008. But that idea was rejected by Mr. Maliki, even as the Shiite militias were beginning to organize.
While the idea of separate Sunni and Shiite armies is an indication of the depths of the sectarian divide, Mr. Maliki’s inability to use the moment to try to build trust is telling,
The suggestion of many is that Mr. Maliki has lost so much credibility that the best thing that could happen would be to form a new government with a different leader who might inspire more trust. But for now Mr. Maliki is not stepping down, and it seems unlikely that there would be enough unity to anoint a successor anytime soon. [Further,] it is widely accepted in Iraqi politics that any plausible candidate for the post of prime minister must also be acceptable to Iran.