Iraq's Nouri Maliki may gain power with U.S. security agreement
A security deal expected this week would bring glory, and more power, to Prime Minister Nouri Maliki as the man who brought an end to the U.S. troop presence.
Reporting from Baghdad — An increasingly bold Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has sanctioned politically charged arrests of prominent Sunnis, personally supervised military operations and moved to sideline rivals in recent months, actions that have evoked memories of the country's authoritarian past.
Now the Shiite leader, once considered weak and ineffectual, is on the cusp of greater powers with the likely approval this week of a security agreement with the U.S. that would anoint him as the man who brought an end to the American troop presence in Iraq.
That has left Sunni Arab, Kurdish and even some Shiite parties nervous about their future after the Americans are gone.
Maliki's defenders say the prime minister, who comes from a fiercely nationalist background, is trying to prevent the breakup of Iraq by establishing a strong central government. Detractors, including several Iraqi politicians and at least one Western official, suspect him of having ambitions to become "a benevolent Shiite Saddam."
By increasingly exerting authority, Maliki has broken from the model of a severely constrained central government championed by the Americans since they ousted longtime President Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003. Under the U.S.-promoted model, Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds were to share power in Baghdad, and Iraqi regions dominated by each of the groups were to be guaranteed clear protections.
"In some ways, we are seeing a return to traditional Iraqi political culture, where authority is centralized in the person of the leader in Baghdad," said a U.S. official, who asked not to be identified because of the subject's sensitivity. "That is the way Iraq has been run for decades prior to the American intervention in 2003.
"It's too early to say if a democratic state can emerge out of all this. It's messy and it's not going to get better any time soon, at least. It may become more violent."
Although mindful of the fears that a new dictatorship could emerge, Maliki's supporters don't necessarily view the term "strongman" as a negative, since the nation could easily fall into terminal ethnic and religious disarray without strong leadership.
"It is positive for people to refer to the prime minister as strong," said lawmaker Sami Askari, a key Maliki confidant. "Iraq needs a strong leader."
