Maliki Attempting Dangerous Squeeze Play To Stay In Power In Iraq

As you know, Iyad Allawi's Secular Shiite/Sunni alliance narrowly won a victory over Nouri al-Maliki's coalition....but Maliki has decided to use some questionable tactics to try and stay in power:

Iyad Allawi's grip on a lead in the Iraqi elections was in doubt last night after a committee said that four candidates on his winning list should be disqualified due to links to Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party.

If the recommendation by the Justice and Accountability Committee is upheld by the courts, the opposition leader Mr Allawi's two-seat advantage over the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki could evaporate. Mr Allawi's slender lead is already under threat from Mr Maliki, whose challenge to the electoral outcome escalated yesterday when he attacked the UN for not supporting his call for a recount on the grounds of vote-rigging and fraud.

Even before last night's news, a handful of newly-elected members of parliament opposed to Mr Maliki had already been arrested or gone on the run. The UN says that the poll was fair and transparent. {...}

Mr Maliki can harass his opponents by using his control of the security forces and the courts against them. His main political strength is that he remains Prime Minister while negotiations go on to form a new government.

"Nobody should place a bet on Allawi becoming Prime Minister," says the Iraqi political commentator Ghassan Attiyah, "and Maliki is only a little better placed."

Mr Allawi is in a weak position because his al-Iraqiya coalition is disunited and his election success was largely due to the support of the Sunni Arab community, which is only one fifth of Iraq's population. It is not clear how the Sunni community will react if they feel that the election is being stolen from them, but if marginalised they are likely to increase their support for armed action.

If you look at the numbers, it's difficult to see where Maliki could get the support to put together a coalition to form a government. He needs 163 seats and he only has 89, and the only other sizable blocs are the Kurds (between 43 and 57 seats, depending on who comes aboard) or Hakim and Moqtada al-Sadr's Shi'ite Iraqi National Alliance with 70 seats.

Both groups have major problems - to put it mildly - with Maliki.

If things spiral out of hand, our troops over there could be caught in an internal civil war.

More on this as it develops.

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