In recent months, Maliki's office has created tribal councils that are seen as a direct challenge to Kurds in the north and Shiite competitors in the south. As well, the Iraqi army has arrested prominent Sunni members of such groups as the Sons of Iraq, an anti-insurgent paramilitary force that had been established and funded by the United States.
Such measures have many Iraqi and Western officials debating Maliki's true intentions.
They describe a man of contradictions -- incredibly modest, solicitous to friends, but deeply suspicious of the Americans, and given to rants about the Sunni-dominated Baath Party leaders that ruled under Hussein. Maliki, steeped in the ferment of the revolutionary Shiite Islamic groups that shaped him, feels an intense need to defend Iraq's Shiite majority and preserve its newfound power, they say.
Maliki has firmly rebutted the idea that a strong prime minister equals a return to Hussein's time.
This month, Maliki defended his government's assertive role. Otherwise, he said, "things would have slipped away."
He went on to warn that if too much power was ceded to regional governments, as envisioned by the Kurds and his party's competitor within the Shiite bloc, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the country could end up "with multiple central governments and dictatorships."
The prime minister urged instead that the constitution be revised to strengthen the national government.
In doing so, Maliki has moved audaciously to bolster his authority. In March, he dispatched soldiers to the southern city of Basra, where he directed them into neighborhoods to confront radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. He has approved controversial arrests of influential Sunni and Shiite figures. Once ignored by government ministers who had no loyalty to him, he now gives direct orders at ministries such as oil and electricity and has dismissed Trade Ministry officials he alleged were corrupt.
He has also fired employees in the Foreign Ministry, controlled by the Kurdish bloc, a move that his opponents have claimed is a power grab. And he has commanded his forces to challenge Kurdish forces in a disputed border area in Diyala province. That confrontation ended in a standoff.
Since Maliki was appointed in 2006, officials in Washington have debated his overall intent. While President Bush has long made clear his unwavering support for him, others in his administration have expressed doubts, seen most notably in a late 2006 memo by national security advisor Stephen Hadley, which questioned whether Maliki shared the same goals as the United States.
