Four months have passed since the Iraqi election was closed.
However, the Iraqi government has not been set up. A "political
vacuum" presents in the Iraqi political arena. Just the same as the
Iraqis, both the US and British governments are worrying about the
vacuum. Recently, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw and US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suddenly visited Iraq together.
Their intent is very clear: Iraq should establish a unified and
powerful government as soon as possible. They also dropped a hint
to Iraq, suggesting the current Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari
abandon his second attempt to form a cabinet. Will al-Jaafari stay
or not? It is of various possibilities.
Being mired in the Iraqi chaos, both the US and British
governments are being subjected to strong criticism from their
people. So far, more than 2,300 US solders have been killed in
Iraq. Approximately two third of the Americans oppose the US
government's manner of being involved in the Iraq issue. Voices for
withdrawal from Iraq have been getting higher and higher. However,
there are analysts believe that if the US government hastily
withdraws from Iraq before the Iraqi government assume their
security responsibilities, a full-scale civil war and a
humanitarian disaster possibly will take place in the country. In
that case, all the previous efforts of the United States and
Britain will be destroyed. Therefore, the US and Britain are
extremely dissatisfied with al-Jaafari and in different ways
expressed their hope that al-Jaafari should resign.
The reason why al-Jaafari has not been able to set up his
cabinet is he lost the support of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and
Iraqi Consensus Front. Since April 2005 when al-Jaafari became the
Iraqi Prime Minister, the other two factions thought that
al-Jaafari has been over partial to the political demands and
material interests of the Shiite factions, to a certain extent
given a loose rein to the conflicts and disputes between the
Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish fractions. Therefore, they asked
al-Jaafari to quit the position of Prime Minister and advocated
letting the Parliament rather than the Shiite fractions' United
Iraqi Alliance to decide whether al-Jaafari will stay or not.
However, it is not that easy to force al-Jaafari to give up his
position. Although the United Iraqi Alliance holds less than a half
of the seats in the Iraq parliament, their seats are far more than
those of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Sunni fractions' United
Iraqi Alliance. Even within the United Iraqi Alliance, in spite of
some streams of forces that echo US and Britain's pressure and
request al-Jaafari to quit, the seven parties of the Alliance, in
general, are more anxious about the possible split up of the
Alliance if al-Jaafari resigns, especially they are worried that
the Muqtada al-Sadr's group will take some extreme actions if
al-Jaafari quits. Thanks to the support of Shiite extremist Muqtada
al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army, Ibrahim al-Jaafari won the vote by
64:63 in February's election on prime minister candidates within
the Alliance. The Alliance's attitude indirectly demonstrated a
rejection on the US and Britain's attempt to expel al-Jaafari.
Now al-Jaafari is using the "democracy" banner to justify
himself, saying whether he will stay or not should be decided by
their own "democratic mechanism", but not by a decision as a result
of compromise to the US and Britain. Obviously Al-Jaafari's
unspoken lines are: the United States and Britain have long been
advertising that they were establishing "democracy" and "rule of
law" in Iraq. So they cannot use force to expel Iraqi prime
minister who was nominated by a "democratic" election.
Right in this impasse, the US, Britain and the Iraqi factions
are casting their eyes on the most authoritative Iraqi Shiite
religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The 76-year-old
influential speaker with Iranian nationality perhaps to a large
extent will determine the future of al-Jaafari. But the real
problem is: can al-Jaafari's dismiss or remaining in position
immediately vanish the "political vacuum" in Iraq?
The author Wang Suolao is associate professor with the
Institute of International Relations, Peking University.
(People's Daily Online April 19, 2006)
