Nuri al-Maliki to stay as Prime Minister

Oct 1 (Reuters) — An alliance of Iraq’s Shi’ite political blocs has chosen the incumbent, Nuri al-Maliki, as its nominee for prime minister, ending months of wrangling that had stalled formation of a government. While Saddam Hussein was the President of Iraq, Ali al-Adeeb was exiled to Iran, where he headed the Teheran-based Political Bureau of the Dawa party and took the nickname "Abu Bilal".

Assassination in Iraq Politics

dashar hamid ahmed










During the past 72 hours alone, at least eight Iraqi police officers, an Iraqi Army general, a government intelligence official, a member of an Awakening Council, a tribal sheik, and a high ranking staff member of Baghdad’s local government have all been assassinated in either Baghdad or Mosul. here

Iraq increasingly relying on politics

White House officials say Iraqis are increasingly relying on politics, rather than violence, to deal with disputes, diminishing the need for U.S. forces. But the situation on the ground demonstrates that Iraq remains fractured.

Rival factions have yet to establish a new government, nearly three months after close national elections, and politicians have begun warning of a power vacuum as neighboring Iran works to influence the outcome.

Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum

Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum belongs to a distinguished clerical family in the holy city, but has a technical Ph.D. from the US. . Ibrahim's father, Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, is considered a leading moderate cleric, and had served in the American-appointed Interim Governing Council.

Mahmoud Othman

Mahmoud Othman, Kurdish Socialist Party (Sunni Kurd)

Safaldin al-Safi

Haidar al-Ebadi

Hayder al-Ebadi
Lawmaker Haider al-Ebadi, a State of Law candidate and member of Maliki’s Dawa party,

Haidar al-Ebadi

Fattah al-Sheikh

Political Parties and Coalitions

Iraqi National Alliance

The coalition is the successor to the United Iraqi Alliance (U.I.A.), the Shiite coalition that dominated the 2005 election but fell apart soon after. It is now the main Shiite opposition to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and includes the powerful Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (I.S.C.I.) and the political followers of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, as well as smaller parties. Leading candidates will be a former prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and one of Iraq’s two vice presidents, Adel Abdul Mahdi.

This coalition primarily grew out of the United Iraqi Alliance, which held 47 percent of the seats in Parliament in 2005.

State of Law Coalition

Led by Prime Minister Maliki, and dominated by his party, Dawa, which broke off from the U.I.A. Largely Shiite, it also includes 40 smaller parties from across Iraq’s ethnic and religious spectrum. The group did well in last year's provincial elections by focusing on security and the establishment of effective local governments.

Mr. al-Maliki was one of the leaders of the United Iraqi Alliance, which held 47 percent of the seats in Parliament in 2005.

Iraqi Unity

Secular alliance between Shiites and Sunnis, particularly in sprawling Anbar Province. Led by the interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani, a Shiite, and Anbar’s most prominent tribal leader, Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha. Many of its candidates were disqualified because of pasts or sympathies with Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. The coalition’s members considered joining other larger coalitions, but could not agree on terms.

Some of the leaders from this group were part of the Iraqi Consensus Front, which held 16 percent of the seats in Parliament in 2005.

Iraqiya

A largely secular Sunni and Shiite coalition that has emerged as a potent challenger to the Shiite-led blocs. Led by a former prime minister, Ayad Allawi, a Shiite, and the country’s other vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni. Two of its other leaders, Saleh al-Mutlaq and Dhafir al-Ani, both members of Parliament, were disqualified from running because of alleged sympathies with the Baath Party.

Members of this group came from two coalitions, the Iraqi List and the Iraqi Consensus Front, which together held a quarter of the seats in Parliament in 2005.

Kurdistan Alliance

The two dominant Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (K.D.P.) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (P.U.K.), have formed a formidable alliance, but face an opposition movement called Gorran, or Change. Expected to form a unified Kurdish bloc in Parliament — in keeping with the old Kurdish saying, "We have no friends but the mountains" — and could be a swing vote in determining the next prime minister.

This group has most of the same players as the Kurdistan Alliance, which held 19 percent of the seats in Parliament in 2005. here

tariq al-hashimi

sheik ali hatemal suleiman

sheik ahmed abu risha

sheik abdul ghafour al-samarrai

osama tikriti

nurikam al-almaliki

nawshirwan mustafa

moktada al-sadr

jawad albolani

ibrahim al-jafaari

hajim al-hassani

ayad al-samarai

ayad allawi

Ammar al-Hakim

Election: key to all political alliance – patronage

Sunni Sheikh Hamid al-Hayis (C), head of the armed wing of an alliance of Sunni tribes in the western Anbar province, joins hands with Shiite clerics close to rebel cleirc Moqtada Sar, in the Baghdad Shiite-stronghold of Sadr City, 22 May 2007.


Sheikh Hamid al-Hayis, ambitious middle-aged Sunni has done what some in Anbar consider to be heresy, by joining the Shia religious list of young cleric Ammar Hakim, whose late father led the largest Shia bloc in the Iraqi parliament until his death last year. he is a key Sunni chief and his words are uttered from a base where once they would have been seen as a profanity – Ramadi, the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency.

He is a highly unlikely ally of Hakim's political grouping of mostly Shia theological parties, which is set to once again play a leading role in shaping the almost inevitable coalition that will be formed to lead Iraq after Sunday's vote. And the smattering of Sunni tribal elders who were prepared to discuss the strange political coupling said their leader had been offered the key to all political alliance here – patronage.

"It is not easy to stand in front of us and tell us to vote for a Shia list," said one Anbari man, a 78-year-old from an outer suburb of Ramadi who called himself Abu Bakr. "The only solution is to vote for Hamid al-Hayis as an individual candidate, rather than the list itself." But Iraqi Sunni Islamic Party spokesperson Omar Abdel Sattar said."First of all, al-Hayis is not a sheikh [tribal leader]. Not everyone who is wearing a disdasha and iqal [traditional tribal dress] should be considered a sheikh." He said al-Hayis belongs to a tribe led by Hamid al-Turk.

The 19 million Iraqis eligible to vote on Sunday have, for the first time, a choice to vote for a list made up of numerous parties, or for an individual candidate.

Iraqi election turn-out higher?

Amid the mayhem in Iraq in 2005, there took place an event that was quite unprecedented in the Arab world—the first Iraqi elections, conducted under the supervision of the unsung Paul Bremer. There were enduring images from that election, of ink-stained fingers held aloft by men and women who had exercised their brand-new right to vote—empurpled digits held up, for the cameras of the world, as an “up yours” to Saddam Hussein and his Baathists, to “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia,” and to every sanguinary insurgent who would kill to stop the implanting in Iraq of democracy. Iraq has seen other elections since that first one—sometimes twice a year. They have all been significant, though none has been as profusely emotional as the first. With the exception of the latter, which the Sunnis stupidly boycotted, turnout has been consistently high—certainly higher than the turnout in most American elections. And so it should be, one expects, on Sunday, March 7, when Iraqis vote—yet again—for the government of their choice. We have not, of course, reached a position where we can talk about “just another Iraqi election.” But if you look at how our newspapers are covering the run-up to the event, you will see in the reporting the sorts of observations that might be made in the last lap before an Indian general election, or a South African, Brazilian, or Turkish one. There are accounts of colorful billboards and posters, of infighting within parties over prospective alliances, of candidates doling out gifts—free chickens, sports shoes, clothes, even money—to cannily undecided voters. Accounts of violence do not predominate, and no one is asking—as they did with trepidation in 2005, and as they have done, often, since—whether Iraq will be safe enough for people to vote. here

Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq's Kurdish region, a former guerrilla fighter, has led the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) since 1979,

The KDP is one of the two dominant parties in the northern Kurdish region.The KDP banded together with the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by Jalal, Iraq's current president, to run the region.

De-Baathification: boon to the new Iraq

In the new Iraq, released by American power from its long nightmare, it was either de-Baathification or mass slaughter of yesterday's tormentors. The American regency in Iraq made its share of blunders. But that order No. 1 issued by proconsul Paul Bremer, banning the Baath, was a boon to the new Iraq. On the whole, the hand of vengeance was stayed. It was remarkable how little violence was unleashed on those who had perpetrated on Iraqis a reign of the darkest terror.

Nor is it true that a sister republic of the Iranian theocracy is emerging in Baghdad, as some American officials have suggested. This is a slur on Iraq and Iraqis, and on the vast Shiite majority to be exact.

So Iran has designs on Iraq. Well what of it? A long border, the traffic of centuries in faith and commerce, runs between the two countries. But no Iraqi project in the offing contemplates making Iraq a satrap of the Persian state.

There plays upon Iraqis the hope that their country can make its own way, defying the obituaries of doom written for their new order in neighboring lands and beyond. There is a transparent parliamentary culture in Iraq, and we for our part ought to be proud of what we have given birth to.

Leave it to the Egyptians and the Arabs of the Peninsula and the Persian Gulf to belittle the new order in Iraq. They threw everything at it but it managed to survive. Peace has not settled upon Baghdad, but this Iraq, even in its current condition, is a rebuke to the dynasties and the dictatorships of the Arab world.
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Iraq reinstates 20,000 Baath army officers

Iraq on February 26 reinstated 20,000 former army officers dismissed after the U.S.-led invasion, a landmark gesture at reconciliation ahead of the March 7 elections. The 2003 order by Iraq's then-American governor L. Paul Bremer to dissolve Saddam's 400,000-strong army, the largest in the Middle East on the eve of the 2003 invasion, is widely seen as a key factor that fed the alienation many Sunnis felt toward the new Iraq. "This measure has nothing to do with elections, rather it is related to budget allocations," In recent years, thousands of officers from the disbanded army have trickled back to service mainly officers from the rank of colonel down.

Sunnis and many secularists in the Shiite community are so eager to overturn the dominance of the Shiite religious parties that have controlled Iraq's government for five years.