There has been an active attempt to get rid of Maliki on the part of many people in the Iraqi government—all sorts of ministers and the people who are pro-American have really tried. But they simply don’t have the votes. Then you have the whole problem of Moqtada al Sadr. You have Maliki fighting Moqtada al Sadr and then fighting the Shiite groups in Basra. New issues keep on coming up. There are still [a lot of] people in Washington who would like to put Ayad Allawi in because he is well liked. But he has no positive base in Iraq. [American Ambassador Ryan] Crocker is reluctant to go in and say, “Well, alright, you guys can put in Allawi.”
Some Middle East experts have suggested Moqtada al Sadr would be a good replacement for Maliki as prime minister of Iraq.
I think if Moqtada had enough votes he would just vote the US out [of Iraq]. He’s very much disliked by the Shiite bourgeoisie, he’s mistrusted by Sistani. [Once] in power, he would definitely attempt a social revolution. Maliki is basically an elitist. He was educated DAWA, he followed Mohammed Bakr Sadr. He comes from a different class of Shiite. So these people, and SCIRI, are trying to hold onto an old order. The oldest order is Allawi’s—Westernized, on Western payrolls, he is looked at as an agent of the British, sometimes of the Americans. He doesn’t stand a chance in a chaotic Iraq of having a popular base. Then you’ve got the older guys like Dr. Ibrahim al-Jaffari and Maliki who are feeling the pressure from Sadr. It’s a struggle of who is going to rule the country. I think that Sadr would probably kick us out if he became prime minister. In as much as he could force the vote and get people to follow him. [Editor’s note: Prime Minister Maliki’s conservative political party, DAWA, or the Islamic Call Party, was formerly a militant Shiite Islamist group. DAWA shares the majority of seats in the Iraqi parliament with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, SIIC, formerly known as SCIRI, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.]
Some sources explained to me that the recent fighting going on in Basra was more political party battling. Where Maliki was going in to try and weaken Moqtada’s base, or eliminate it, thus giving his DAWA party more clout in the south in the next general election. What do you think about that?
If you are Shiite and you want a beating economic heart in Iraq, it’s the south, it’s Basra, and it’s the oil. So if Maliki ever hopes to extend his writ, he’s got to take Basra. He’s got to take it from Fadhila, and you’ve got hundreds of groups there—we don’t even know who they are. He needs to go there and own that city. Obviously, he couldn’t do it. He didn’t have the army to do it. Iraq is a mess. I will not be surprised if we stayed there for a hundred years. But it would be a very unfortunate experience for this country. [Editor’s note: Fadhila, also known as the Islamic Virtue Party, is supported mostly by poor Shiites in the south and is considered one of many rivals to Moqtada al Sadr’s powerbase.]
In your Time article you also say that the irony is that the liberation of Iraq is undermining democracy in the region, not planting it. Could you give some examples?
Basically, anytime there is chaos in the region it gives central governments the justification for repressing rights. You’ve got Iran, which since the invasion has become more conservative. There are more people going to jail, their religious [faction] is stronger. You’ve got Bahrain cracking down on their Shiites. You’ve got the Kuwaitis fighting every day in Kuwait one way or another, where the royal family [is trying] to suppress any dissent. Just like in this country, any time you have warfare or chaos, civil rights go out the window. It’s a human law and I don’t know of any place where it hasn’t [been that way], from the Spartans to the Greeks. Once you have this gaping wound on the borders of Iran and Turkey, and Syria even, in Kuwait, in Bahrain, and even Saudi Arabia, you have a tendency of people to not tolerate dissent and the drift toward democracy.