Iraq’s new prime minister may, like his predecessor, be a Shia Islamist politician from the Dawa party, but he is more pragmatic and less sectarian than the man he replaces.
That was the international media consensus in 2006, when Nouri Al Maliki was voted in to replace Ibrahim Al Jaafari, Iraq’s first democratically elected prime minister. Mr Al Jaafari’s hardline sectarian instincts were blamed for the failure to forge a post-Saddam Hussein national consensus that would unite Shias, Sunnis and Kurds and put an end to the insurgency and the civil war that was taking hold.
But today, Mr Al Jaafari is a forgotten man. It’s Mr Al Maliki who has, for years, been blamed by frustrated domestic and international stakeholders for the failure of the national project to avert the forces incarnated by the Islamic State insurgency and, as ever, the independence-minded Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).
And so, today – in an echo of eight years ago – the hype from politicians and media outlets in distant capitals holds that Mr Al Maliki’s replacement by Haider Al Abadi is the key to reversing the unravelling of post-Saddam Iraq. That hype has it that: the Kurds can be persuaded that their future lies with Baghdad; the Sunni Arabs can be persuaded to rise up and expel the Islamic Front from their midst, as the new man in Baghdad welcomes them back into a power-sharing arrangement; and Iraq will boldly go into a new future that somehow manages to satisfy the visions of foreign stakeholders from Tehran, the Gulf and Washington who have endorsed Mr Al Maliki’s ouster.
The grievances with Mr Al Maliki – his sectarianism, his autocratic and authoritarian tendency to monopolise control of the security forces and use them against his political opponents, and the sheer ineptitude and paralysis that had set in over his eight years in charge – were real and widely held. That was why, by the end, he had no support base either inside or outside Iraq.
But the fact that Mr Al Maliki ultimately conceded and allowed a peaceful transition in Baghdad was a reminder that however poor his record of governance had been, he was not a Saddam Hussein-style personality-cult dictator.
The urgency of replacing him had been underscored by the fall of vast swathes of northern Iraq to the Islamic State – a self-appointed “caliphate” whose sense of its own domain makes nonsense of the Sykes-Picot borders that created the modern system of Arab states, but whose fantasies are made dangerously real by its growing military capability.
The Islamic State has prompted an unlikely alliance of forces ranging from the US, Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga militaries to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and fighters of the PKK, the Kurdish separatists branded a terrorist organisation by the US. And it was in that context that the same array of forces agreed to get rid of Mr Al Maliki, in the hope that Mr Al Abadi could strengthen the Iraqi state to roll back the Islamic State advance.
It should be obvious that there’s no common strategic agenda uniting the forces fighting Islamic State – Iran, the Kurds, Turkey, the Saudis, the western powers and the Iraqi Shia and Sunni mainstream all have a common foe in a “caliphate” that threatens all their interests, but many of those same forces remain fundamentally divided.
The US is arming the Peshmerga, but the Peshmerga have also taken over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in the war against Islamic State and have made it clear that they have no intention of returning it to control by Baghdad – a situation intolerable not only for the Shia parties that have long ruled Iraq, but also for the Sunnis. The US wants the KRG to remain within Iraq, but recent history suggests that even Washington’s closest allies no longer pay much heed to the US when its desires conflict with their own.
The Islamic State insurgency is not a product of Sunni alienation from Mr Al Maliki’s style of governance; it is grounded in a vicious sectarian outlook that has never accepted the principle of Shia rule in Baghdad even if that was the logical outcome of Iraqi democracy.
US air power and a handful of special forces troops on the ground are unlikely to be enough to roll back the Islamic State. Doing that will require substantial numbers of ground troops over a protracted period. The idea that the 2007 Anbar Awakening in which local Sunni tribes made common cause with the US military against Al Qaeda can be repeated is missing the obvious ingredient of a massive American military presence.
The US remains highly unlikely to commit ground forces in Iraq again, not least because there’s no plausible endgame.
And while Mr Al Abadi may surprise everyone, it would not be prudent to bet on that. Whatever history he makes will not be made on terms of his choosing.
If the US military intervention seems halting and uncertain, that’s because Washington lacks a clear exit strategy. Many of the loudest champions of invading Iraq are pushing for more muscular US military intervention, once again on rosy assumptions about a new government in Baghdad.
The problem with the fantasy that replacing Iraq’s prime minister is the key to changing its fate is that since Saddam Hussein’s fall, Iraq’s politics – and its political discord – has been anything but personal. Reversing Iraq’s unravelling will require a new regional consensus among long-standing adversaries for whom Iraq is but one battleground in an increasingly bitter and complex geostrategic contest.
Real progress in Iraq becomes possible only if the consensus over the emergency imperative of rolling back the “caliphate” becomes a basis for new regional security compact.
Tony Karon teaches in the graduate programme in international affairs at the New School in New York
India team for Sri Lanka series
Test squad: Rohit Sharma (captain), Priyank Panchal, Mayank Agarwal, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Hanuma Vihari, Shubhman Gill, Rishabh Pant (wk), KS Bharath (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Jayant Yadav, Ravichandran Ashwin, Kuldeep Yadav, Sourabh Kumar, Mohammed Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah.
T20 squad: Rohit Sharma (captain), Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shreyas Iyer, Surya Kumar Yadav, Sanju Samson, Ishan Kishan (wk), Venkatesh Iyer, Deepak Chahar, Deepak Hooda, Ravindra Jadeja, Yuzvendra Chahal, Ravi Bishnoi, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Harshal Patel, Jasprit Bumrah, Avesh Khan
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, (Leon banned).
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Company Profile:
Name: The Protein Bakeshop
Date of start: 2013
Founders: Rashi Chowdhary and Saad Umerani
Based: Dubai
Size, number of employees: 12
Funding/investors: $400,000 (2018)
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Ipaf in numbers
Established: 2008
Prize money: $50,000 (Dh183,650) for winners and $10,000 for those on the shortlist.
Winning novels: 13
Shortlisted novels: 66
Longlisted novels: 111
Total number of novels submitted: 1,780
Novels translated internationally: 66
How to donate
Send “thenational” to the following numbers or call the hotline on: 0502955999
2289 – Dh10
2252 – Dh 50
6025 – Dh20
6027 – Dh 100
6026 – Dh 200
Tonight's Chat on The National
Tonight's Chat is a series of online conversations on The National. The series features a diverse range of celebrities, politicians and business leaders from around the Arab world.
Tonight’s Chat host Ricardo Karam is a renowned author and broadcaster who has previously interviewed Bill Gates, Carlos Ghosn, Andre Agassi and the late Zaha Hadid, among others.
Intellectually curious and thought-provoking, Tonight’s Chat moves the conversation forward.
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Singham Again
Director: Rohit Shetty
Stars: Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ranveer Singh, Akshay Kumar, Tiger Shroff, Deepika Padukone
Rating: 3/5
Jigra
Starring: Alia Bhatt, Vedang Raina, Manoj Pahwa, Harsh Singh
Uefa Nations League: How it Works
The Uefa Nations League, introduced last year, has reached its final stage, to be played over five days in northern Portugal. The format of its closing tournament is compact, spread over two semi-finals, with the first, Portugal versus Switzerland in Porto on Wednesday evening, and the second, England against the Netherlands, in Guimaraes, on Thursday.
The winners of each semi will then meet at Porto’s Dragao stadium on Sunday, with the losing semi-finalists contesting a third-place play-off in Guimaraes earlier that day.
Qualifying for the final stage was via League A of the inaugural Nations League, in which the top 12 European countries according to Uefa's co-efficient seeding system were divided into four groups, the teams playing each other twice between September and November. Portugal, who finished above Italy and Poland, successfully bid to host the finals.
Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi
Director: Kangana Ranaut, Krish Jagarlamudi
Producer: Zee Studios, Kamal Jain
Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Ankita Lokhande, Danny Denzongpa, Atul Kulkarni
Rating: 2.5/5
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JAPAN SQUAD
Goalkeepers: Masaaki Higashiguchi, Shuichi Gonda, Daniel Schmidt
Defenders: Yuto Nagatomo, Tomoaki Makino, Maya Yoshida, Sho Sasaki, Hiroki Sakai, Sei Muroya, Genta Miura, Takehiro Tomiyasu
Midfielders: Toshihiro Aoyama, Genki Haraguchi, Gaku Shibasaki, Wataru Endo, Junya Ito, Shoya Nakajima, Takumi Minamino, Hidemasa Morita, Ritsu Doan
Forwards: Yuya Osako, Takuma Asano, Koya Kitagawa
If you go
The flights Etihad (www.etihad.com) and Spice Jet (www.spicejet.com) fly direct from Abu Dhabi and Dubai to Pune respectively from Dh1,000 return including taxes. Pune airport is 90 minutes away by road.
The hotels A stay at Atmantan Wellness Resort (www.atmantan.com) costs from Rs24,000 (Dh1,235) per night, including taxes, consultations, meals and a treatment package.
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Company profile
Name: Back to Games and Boardgame Space
Started: Back to Games (2015); Boardgame Space (Mark Azzam became co-founder in 2017)
Founder: Back to Games (Mr Azzam); Boardgame Space (Mr Azzam and Feras Al Bastaki)
Based: Dubai and Abu Dhabi
Industry: Back to Games (retail); Boardgame Space (wholesale and distribution)
Funding: Back to Games: self-funded by Mr Azzam with Dh1.3 million; Mr Azzam invested Dh250,000 in Boardgame Space
Growth: Back to Games: from 300 products in 2015 to 7,000 in 2019; Boardgame Space: from 34 games in 2017 to 3,500 in 2019
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