Iraq's Parliamentary Standoff + Avakov Parades in Slovyansk

Yesterday an announcement was made that the Iraqi Council of Representatives would not meet for another five weeks, delaying the formation of a new government until August. After an outcry from Iraq's allies and its religious establishment a new statement was made. Parliament will convene this Sunday. According to the Alissa Rubin and Suadad al-Salhy, reporting in "Iraqi Parliament Wobbles Over Forming Government," the "Maliki Must Go" motto is a facade masking Sunni and Kurdish backroom demands -- Kirkuk for the Kurds and control of the defense ministry for the Sunnis -- that if acquiesced to by the Shiite majority will amount to the de facto partition of Iraq:

“The session was postponed until Aug. 12 because of the disagreement and the conflict between the blocs,” said Aboud al-Essawi, a member of Mr. Maliki’s predominantly Shiite State of Law party, referring to other political parties.

The Sunnis said they were ready to proceed, but wanted the Shiites to make the first move. “We are still saying that we are ready to present our candidate for speaker whenever the National Alliance presents its candidate for prime minister, and it can be anyone else but not Maliki,” said Dafar al-Ani, a spokesman for the main Sunni bloc, referring to a coalition of Shiite parties.

“The National Alliance asked for more time to make their final decision,” he added.

Beneath the blame game are real differences in what is acceptable to different groups. For instance, a large number of Shiites now want to remove Mr. Maliki, but his party won the most parliamentary seats, so he cannot be summarily kicked aside. And there are differences of opinion about who might be an acceptable successor, first to all the Shiite blocs, but then also to the Sunnis and the Kurds.

Mr. Maliki says that removing him just as Iraq is trying to reconstitute its demoralized army would undermine those in the fight. While that might seem a convenient argument to prolong his time in power, at least some lawmakers appear to agree.

Even a senior leader in the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a Shiite party that now opposes Mr. Maliki, said that “replacing Maliki now could be seen as a victory for the terrorists, and it also could adversely reflect the security leadership’s morale because if Maliki is not there anymore, they could be dismissed or accused of corruption.”

The Sunnis are demanding an amnesty for the tens of thousands of Sunni imprisoned — unjustly, they say, in most cases — by the Maliki government and a bigger say in how the country is run, including its security services. While some Shiites might be willing to give that to them, others are adamantly opposed.

The Kurds believe they have an absolute right to include Kirkuk and some surrounding disputed villages in the autonomous Kurdish region, but neither the Sunnis nor the Shiites want to cede that ground, especially since the Kurds have made it plain that their ultimate goal is independence.

While each group has defensible reasons for its views, taken together they amount to stasis.

I think Maliki is gone. The only way that he stays is if the Shiite National Alliance bloc agrees to all the demands of the Sunnis and Kurds. Then all the fulminating about the menace, the corruption of Maliki will disappear overnight and he will be touted as a singularly necessary statesman. But majority of the Shiites that constitute the National Alliance are not going to go for this. The next largest Shiite political formation to Maliki's State of Law coalition is the Sadrist Al-Ahrar Bloc whose raison d'etre is dump Maliki. Then there is the clerical establishment's willingness to part ways with the prime minister. Granted, Sistani has not come right out and said "Maliki must go," but this is only because the Grand Ayatollah does not believe it is his role to publicly dictate the official composition of parliamentary government.

My understanding last week was that the National Alliance had its PM lined up, and it wasn't Maliki. Realizing this and not wanting the Shiites to succeed so quickly in forming a new government the Kurds and Sunnis walked out. Now the Kurds and Sunnis want the Shiites to "show" their candidate for prime minister before they "show" their candidates for speaker (Sunnis) and president (Kurds). The Shiites are loath to do this because once they name Maliki's replacement, if the Sunnis and Kurds continue to delay, Maliki will be the lamest of lame ducks; his authority will be gone, and his ability to actively prosecute the war against Islamic State will be nil.

Absent complete capitulation by the National Alliance to Sunni and Kurdish demands, expect the stasis to continue.

Some words about Ukraine this morning. David Herszenhorn writes from Kiev, "Ukraine Rebels Are Retreating for Last Stand," about Strelkov's forces, retreating from Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, blowing up bridges leading to Donetsk and erecting barricades around that city as well as Luhansk. The junta military is establishing a blockade.

Two things. First, a passage reaffirming the position that Russia has already won the conflict, if one believes, as I do, that this conflict has always been about Germany's economic alignment with Russia. The United States wants to block that, wants to keep the European Union under the sway exclusively of the military North Atlantic alliance. The U.S has failed.

Negotiations have faltered since Mr. Poroshenko called off the cease-fire, saying it was playing into the rebels’ hands. An abridged session in Kiev on Sunday involved representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, but Mr. Lavrov described it as pointless without the participation of militants, who he noted could not travel to the capital “for obvious reasons.” 

Echoing Mr. Lavrov, the German government on Monday issued an urgent plea, calling for a rapid, unconditional and mutual cessation of hostilities, and said it was urgent to organize talks that included the separatists. However, in a television interview, the deputy chief of staff of Mr. Poroshenko’s administration, Valeriy Chaly, said Ukraine would follow its own course.

Finally, I am very critical of the Gray Lady and the reporters who labor for her. Yes, these reporters are careerists; but even when they are scribbling the party line, they often find ways to subvert the official narrative. Occasionally, they are even brilliant, as is Herszenhorn at the end of his story when he describes the Goebbelsian junta interior minister Arsen Avakov taking a victory lap in a shattered, terrorized, bomb-strewn Slovyansk:

On Monday afternoon in Slovyansk, Ukraine’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov, stood under a statue of Lenin, promising to bring the “terrorists” to justice and restore basic services to the city by the end of the day.

Residents greeted him with questions about reconstruction and compensation for damage as a light mist coated the central square. Some shed tears at the mere mention of running water.

“What kind of future is there for Ukraine?” one elderly woman in a blue plastic poncho asked the minister.

“A beautiful one,” Mr. Avakov said, flashing a smile.

But beauty was nowhere to be found in Slovyansk, where broken glass, severed electrical cables and a wasteland of unexploded mortar shells define the landscape. Control came at the expense of untold destruction.

Outside a gold-domed church on the northern edge of the square, Ukrainian soldiers distributed water from the back of a truck. While thirsty residents accepted the aid, their attitudes toward the new armed arrivals were decidedly mixed.

Sveta Zinovyeva, 17, spent the end of her school year holed up in a basement with her family. She said she had read romance novels to distract from the “horrible fear.”