Nouri al-Maliki - Tag Search

We've heard a lot of talk about voter fraud in the days since the election -- but how much of it is legitimate, and how much is simply political parties trying to sow doubts about the election to discredit the winner?

Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission released preliminary results today from two provinces, Babel and Najaf, both predominantly Shi'ite.

Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition has a modest lead over the Iraqi National Alliance, the Shi'ite coalition between the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the Sadrist movement. Iyad Allawi's Iraqiyya coalition placed a distant third in both provinces. Maliki doesn't have a majority in either province: He won about 47 percent of the vote in Najaf, and 42 percent in Babel.

No surprises here, really, and this first batch of results basically correspondents with the rumors we've heard in the Iraqi press. The numbers are after the jump.

Polls closed in Iraq a few minutes ago after 10 hours of voting. The ballot was marred by a few dozen insurgent attacks around the country -- but casualties are remarkably low, and voter turnout (anecdotally at least) seems to be fairly high.

We'll update this thread throughout the day with new developments. Today's news will largely come from non-Iraqi sources: Many Iraqi newspapers suspended publication for the day to allow their staffs time to vote. Here's Al-Rafidayn's statement on the suspension (عربي), for example; As-Sabaah has a banner across its homepage (عربي). So most of today's news comes from Western and pan-Arab news sources.

I forgot to make this point in yesterday's Maliki/SOFA post -- thanks to Joel Wing (in comments) and Michael Hanna (via e-mail) for reminding me.

I do think the Iraqi and American governments will renegotiate the status of forces in a very limited sense, either later this year or next, to provide for a small contingent of U.S. trainers in Iraq. This is standard practice in countries that receive U.S. military aid: If the Pentagon gives high-tech military hardware to another army, someone has to teach that army how to use its new equipment. And Iraq will continue to receive billions in military aid for years to come.

But we're talking about, at most, a few thousand troops -- not the Korea on the Tigris envisioned by Tom Ricks. When I said yesterday that Maliki is unlikely to renegotiate the SOFA, I was referring to that latter scenario.

I nearly fainted earlier today when I glanced up at CNN and saw a reporter doing a live shot from... Iraq! I thought U.S. networks forgot the country existed -- but for a week, at least, it's back on television.

The reporter in question was CNN's Arwa Damon, and she was rolling clips of an interview with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, who hinted at asking U.S. troops to stay beyond 2011 -- a decision that would require amending the Status of Forces Agreement.

The campaigning might be over in Iraq, but Ali Faysal al-Lami's Justice and Accountability Commission never rests. Nor does Reidar Visser, who flags this bit of last-minute de-Ba'athification news:

... sources in the accountability and justice board say they have written to the Iraqi elections commission (IHEC) to have the name of candidate number 10 for the State of Law list in Najaf, Abbud Wahid al-Eisawi, struck from the ballot paper. Eisawi is a tribal adviser to Nuri al-Maliki.

Visser makes two points, both worth repeating: First, the last-minute timing of this decision -- we're forty-eight hours before election day, folks -- shows how inherently political the de-Ba'athifiation process has been; second, the fact that Maliki's adviser got de-Ba'athified shows that the Iraqi National Alliance is running the show.

Never a dull moment! In more encouraging news, the Iraqi government says there's really no warrant for Moqtada al-Sadr's arrest, and that his inclusion on the warrant was a typo (عربي).

After a final campaign push today, Iraq's parliamentary campaign season is drawing to a halt, and the Iraqi electoral commission is getting ready for the ballot on March 7.

Voting started today for the disabled, and for soldiers and medical personnel, most of whom will be on duty during the general voting on Sunday. Iraqi newspapers say sandstorms throughout the country didn't disrupt the balloting (عربي).

Government offices and schools have shut down so election officials can prepare polling places. And checkpoints are going up across the country; more than 200,000 police and soldiers will be on duty in Baghdad alone.

Iraq's Supreme Court has reportedly reissued a six-year-old warrant for Moqtada al-Sadr's arrest.

This story isn't getting much attention in the English-language media -- everyone's focused on the Diyala bombings (more on those soon) -- but it has the potential to be quite significant.

The warrant is for the 2003 murder of Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a pro-American Shi'ite cleric who was hacked to death by a mob in Najaf. The Coalition Provisional Authority issued a warrant for Sadr's arrest in 2004, but he was never arrested, and the warrant was eventually buried as part of a reconciliation deal with his Mahdi Army.

78,000 Iraqi and international monitors are fanning out across Iraq (عربي) ahead of parliamentary elections on Sunday. It's an admirable effort by 30 international organizations and more than 300 Iraqi groups -- though I would argue that the worst shenanigans (i.e. the de-Ba'athification circus) have already happened. Low-level fraud on election day won't matter nearly as much as the political wrangling that preceded the vote.

It's the middle of the night in Baghdad, so we'll have to wait a few hours for Iraqi reaction, but Nouri al-Maliki unexpectedly decided to reinstate 20,000 former Iraqi officers who got the boot when the U.S. disbanded Iraq's army in 2003.

Maliki did this ten days before the election, so I think it's safe to say he's pandering for votes, particularly Sunni ones. A spokesman for the Iraqiyya coalition seems to share that analysis.

That didn't last long: Salah al-Mutlak's National Dialogue Front, which dropped out of the Iraqi elections less than a week ago, announced today that it will run after all.

Mutlak held a press conference in Baghdad with Iyad Allawi, the head of the Iraqiyya coalition. He didn't elaborate much on why he changed his mind -- saying only that "we decided to participate for the sake of change." And he rejected calls for a Sunni boycott, urging all Iraqis to vote in the March 7 election.

Marc Lynch has details on the latest de-Ba'athification gambit in Baghdad: Ali Faysal al-Lami moved yesterday to ban 376 military, police and intelligence officers for their alleged links to the Ba'ath.

Iraq's "four presidencies" -- Jalal Talabani (the president), Nouri al-Maliki (the prime minister), Ayad al-Sammaraie (the parliament speaker) and Midhat al-Mahmud (the head of the judiciary) -- convened for a meeting yesterday. Details of the meeting are scarce, but the group agreed to overturn last week's appeals court decision which overturned the de-Ba'athification decision.

I'm a little unclear on what legal authority they're exercising -- but then this whole sorry de-Ba'athification affair has operated in a legal gray area.

Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, isn't happy about yesterday's court decision allowing hundreds of banned candidates to run in the March 7 parliamentary election.

A spokesman for Maliki, Ali al-Dabbagh, said the appellate court's decision is illegal and unconstitutional, and that the law "must be applied as it is." Maliki said the decision is not binding -- a position also adopted by Ali Faysal al-Lami, the chairman of the Justice and Accountability Commission -- and called yesterday for an emergency session of parliament to review the candidates.

There was some good news out of Iraq this morning -- the de-de-Ba'athification decision -- but also a bit of awful news: A suicide bomber killed more than 20 Shi'ite pilgrims in Karbala, and wounded nearly 120 more.

The bomber detonated his bus amidst a crowd of pilgrims traveling on foot from Hilla to Karbala for Friday's Arbaeen holiday. A provincial official said the bombing killed at least several women and children (عربي).

It's the second high-profile attack on Shi'ite pilgrims in three days: A bombing on Monday in Baghdad's Bab al-Sham neighborhood killed 41 people. Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a statement (عربي) blaming that Monday attack on the Ba'ath Party.

Ahmed Abu Risha, a prominent sheikh in Anbar province and a key figure in the Sunni Awakening movement, is threatening to call for a Sunni boycott in the March parliamentary election.

"They will not care about the election, they will ignore it, maybe, if these decisions stand," Abu Risha said in an interview this week at his sprawling compound just outside Ramadi, about 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of Baghdad. "I will make my decision later about encouraging people to go to vote or not," he added.

Sheikh Kadhom al-Tai'e, a Sunni tribal leader in southern Iraq -- who pointedly refused to join the Awakening movement in 2007 (عربي) -- has also threatened a boycott.

The Iraqi prime minister is getting hammered from all sides this morning. Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister and head of the Iraqiyya coalition, accuses Maliki of staging a coup (عربي) against a "peaceful transfer of power" in Iraq.

"The government has made a decision, in collusion with suspicious forces inside and outside Iraq, to exclude important politicians from participating in the political process. The Iraqi people know this is a conspiracy to ignore the will of voters and to exclude opponents of the parties in power... it is a preemptive coup."

Then we have Motqada al-Sadr, who condemns the Maliki government (عربي) for failing to protect the Iraqi people from ongoing violence. "Shame, all shame" on Maliki, Sadr says, "and the blood of the people is on... this government."

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside the forensics department of Iraq's interior ministry, killing at least 18 people and wounding nearly 100.

The bomber blew himself up near a security checkpoint in Tahariyat Square, in Baghdad's central Karrada district. Most of the casualties are police officers (عربي). The forensics department is separate from the main interior ministry building, and its position in a busy square makes it a fairly exposed target.

Iraqi newspapers are generally dismissive of Biden's trip to Iraq: Many accuse him of meddling, and few expect any concrete results from his visit. They do have some interesting details about his meetings with Iraqi leaders, though. Biden met today with the entire Iraqi presidency council, which was unexpected: The White House said last night that Biden would not meet Shi'ite vice president Adil Abdul Mehdi, because the two men talked in Washington last week.

But they did end up meeting -- and Mehdi, just back from a trip to Tehran, briefed Biden (عربي) on the Iranian position on Iraq's electoral crisis.

News reports don't explain exactly (عربي) what the Iranian position is, but you can probably guess: Remember, many Iraqis accuse Iran -- acting through Ahmed Chalabi -- of orchestrating the de-Ba'athification decisions.

As we reported yesterday, U.S. vice president Joe Biden is in Baghdad meeting with Iraqi officials. Two posts this morning on his visit: First, an assessment of the trip from Biden's national security adviser, Antony Blinken; second, reactions from Iraqi media, which have been pretty brutal.

Biden had dinner last night with Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador in Iraq, and Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. He'll hold individual meetings today with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, parliament speaker Ayad al-Sammaraie, and president Jalal Talabani; and then a larger meeting of lower-level officials, including deputy prime ministers Rafi al-Issawi and Roush Shaways.