Editorial: Still not too late for Al-Maliki

IRAQIS deserve better than this. The Shiite dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki seems bent upon destroying the already frail inter-communal cohesion and returning his country to bloody conflict from which the greatest winners will be the evil forces of Al-Qaeda.
Rising tensions with the Sunni community in Kirkuk province have broken out into open fighting. Neither side is entirely blameless — Sunni fighters have been seeking to interdict supplies heading for the Assad regime in Syria and have attacked Iraqi government convoys. But should the Al-Maliki administration be intervening on behalf of the tottering Syrian dictatorship, almost certainly at the prompting of Tehran? Iraq has wounds enough of its own to heal, without exacerbating its own divisions with this shortsighted policy. The Assad dictatorship is doomed. When it falls, it will leave the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad exposed and deeply unpopular with a significant number of its own people.
After four months of confrontation and simmering violence, the situation has reached the point where in the last 48 hours, where at least 27 people have been killed in Kirkuk in fighting between government forces and local protesters. The process of attack and revenge attack seems to be gripping the region. In response to an ambush on an army patrol, at dawn on Wednesday, government units attacked a group of Sunnis, near Hawijah, killing 13 of them and injuring dozens more.
The assault prompted the resignation of the local MP, Mohammed Ali Tamim, who was also the minister of health. This means three Sunni ministers have chosen to quit in just over a month. With each resignation the balance of Al-Maliki’s government between Sunni, Shiite and Kurd becomes ever more skewed. Besides which, Sunni politicians have complained that they had great difficulty in carrying out their portfolios, because officials below them, the majority of them Shiite, declined to back their projects. Moreover, in Cabinet meetings, Sunni ministers were often ignored.
This marginalization of a key component of the country’s political make-up is producing predictable consequences. Ordinary Iraqis, including many Shiites, are losing faith in their government’s ability to direct the country toward the peace for which virtually everyone longs. This level of partisan politics is severely damaging confidence and with this loss of certainty, all communities are turning inward and looking to their own local leaders to protect and guide them.
Perhaps the greatest failure of the Al-Maliki administration was to find a way to negotiate with the leaders of Sunni-dominated communities, not just in Kirkuk but elsewhere in the country. As tensions rose this year, there has been no real effort to talk. Indeed it almost seems as if Baghdad has aimed at confrontation, rather than talking and seeking compromise solutions. If this is indeed the deliberate policy, then it opens up some terrible possibilities.
It has been claimed within Al-Maliki’s administration that Sunnis are helping Al-Qaeda. There is certainly a few who are, just as former members of Saddam’s Baathist party allied themselves with the terrorists after the US invasion and occupation of the country. However the majority of Sunnis see Al-Qaeda as the vicious and heartless bigots that they are, and want nothing to do with them.
Yet it appears that the Shiite political leadership wishes to pretend that every Sunni is allied to terror. Such a lie would open the way to portraying all Sunnis as terrorists, perhaps giving a green light for greater Iranian interference in Iraq, under the pretense of “defending the legitimate elected government .” The specter of the return of the death squads and carnage in the night is too horrific to contemplate, but that is the way the Iraq seems to be heading, back into the dark times of the US occupation.
What is so alarming is that Al-Maliki now seems totally unsympathetic to the principles of reconciliation and unity upon which his government was supposed to be built. Its behavior is provocative. It is creating discord where is should be sowing amity.
There may still be a way back. It may not be too late. But Al-Maliki must stop the army assaults in Kirkuk and send in negotiators not soldiers. Violence will only breed more violence and lead to further division. Now is the time for the Iraqi premier and his fellow Shiite leaders to show statesmanship and re-extend the hand of friendship to the Sunni community, a hand that should never have been withdrawn in the first place.