Our Last Best Chance_ The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril - King Abdullah II [141]
The security situation in Iraq was gravely deteriorating when Maliki took over. Sectarian violence was on the rise. According to UN reports at the time, an average of one hundred civilians were killed a day in Sunni-Shia confrontations that started to escalate after an attack at an important Shia religious site, Al-Askari Mosque in the city of Samara, in February 2006. People began to speak about the possibility of a countrywide civil war.
In an attempt to restore security, Maliki announced a national reconciliation plan in June. The plan included steps to rein in militias and to open dialogue with rebels. But violence continued, raising concerns that the plan was not achieving its objectives. The Iraq Study Group, an American bipartisan panel established by Congress in March 2002 to assess the situation in Iraq, said in a report in December that the situation in Iraq was “grave and deteriorating.”
In the beginning, I got a lot of positive reports about Maliki from the Shia and Sunni tribal sheikhs, in part because he took on the Iranian-supported militias. But over time, the reports became more mixed, with some in Iraq and the region arguing that he started to become more sectarian, supporting Shia over Sunni communities and refusing to spend government money in Sunni provinces. He took over at a terrible time, when Iraq was racked by sectarian strife and multifaceted violence. It is to Maliki’s credit that the country started to stabilize during his premiership.
As things slowly began to improve in Iraq, with levels of violence subsiding, many Iraqis began to ask why Arabs were not coming to talk to them and why no Arab leaders were visiting Baghdad. And the truth is, it was not all that easy to do. Though some other Arab leaders did want to reach out to Iraq, they did not want to appear in front of their people to be in cahoots with the Americans. Even now, when Iraqis are running the country, the government still bears the stigma of being seen as American-led. People use this to attack Arab leaders who are perceived to be too close to Iraq.
In December 2006, Saddam Hussein was executed. A widely circulated amateur video of the execution showed men crowding around the gallows chanting, “Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!” as the noose was placed around Saddam’s neck. They were referring to Muqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand Shia cleric who leads the powerful Al Mahdi Army and who is believed to be an ally of Iran and Hezbollah. Arabs have, in the main, a common language and culture, so one image on satellite television can impact the whole region. In a flash, the mood in the Arab world changed. Saddam’s execution was seen not just as an act inspired by the West against an Arab dictator. Many Sunnis around the region saw it as an act of revenge by Iran and Shia groups allied with it. The implications of this perspective were serious. Following Saddam’s death, violence in Iraq took a new course, degenerating into Sunni-Shia tit-for-tat assassinations. Militias roamed the streets. It was widely felt that a dangerous divide between Shia and Sunni was threatening to spread across the region. The legitimacy of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah and others like him linked to Iran was diminished as a result. Many now saw them as proxies, working for Iran against the interests of the Arabs. The mask had slipped.
I tried to explain to the Bush administration, and in particular to Secretary of State Condoleezza