Here We Go Again? Maliki Visits Hakim in Tehran to Discuss a “Consolidation of the UIA”

Ostensibly, the visit by Maliki to Tehran was for “private” reasons, but he did manage to find time in his schedule to visit Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim of ISCI. According to a press release, both men stressed the importance of “strengthening” the United Iraqi Alliance.

Disputed Territories in Iraq: The Practical Argument against Self-Determination in Kirkuk

If history should provide the guidelines, it would be relatively easy to prescribe a solution to what is frequently seen as one of the most “complicated” issues in current Iraqi politics: The status of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. A variety of different historical sources prior to 1957 and dating back several centuries unequivocally designate Kirkuk as a town dominated demographically by Turkmens, who for their part were famous throughout the Iraqi region from Basra to Mosul for their leading role in the Ottoman and later Iraqi administrations. Traditionally, the Kurds in this area, whose relationships with the Ottomans and later the Iraqi government in Baghdad were far more tenuous, had their strongest presence in the rural hinterland outside Kirkuk. Accordingly, any attempt to sever the longstanding ties between Baghdad and the city of Kirkuk itself on the basis of two waves of Kurdish immigration to the city itself in the late 1960s and since 2003 would be ahistorical in the extreme, and not incomparable to, say, a Scottish bid to annex selected slices of Northumbria in the north of England.

In the early twentieth century, many observers saw the north of Iraq as consisting of towns dominated by Turkmens (and sometimes Christians), and a countryside where the Kurds were often in the majority, as in this account in an article from the Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society from 1937, where it is even claimed that Arbil maintained a certain Turkmen character (most observers agree that Arbil was Kurdified much earlier than Kirkuk).

However, today’s Iraq presents a confusing situation, and many commentators reject the validity of any attempt to use ancient history as a determinant for tomorrow’s political maps. To them, what matters is the current situation on the ground. In particular, many advocate a solution based on self-determination, mostly in the shape of some kind of decisive referendum – a solution which reportedly features in all four scenarios for Kirkuk presented in a recent (but as of yet unpublished) report on Iraq’s “disputed territories” by UNAMI, the primary ÙN political agency in Iraq. Despite considerable attempts by the Baathist regime to gerrymander the population balance in Kirkuk to the disadvantage of the Kurds towards the end of the twentieth century, it is expected that the mass influx of Kurdish migrants to the city of Kirkuk in the late 1960s and early 1970s plus additional immigration since 2003 (when Kurdish militias acquired control of the city and encouraged Kurds to settle there) mean that a there might be vote in favour of annexation by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) if a referendum were to be carried out under present circumstances.

But in addition to the historical argument against this kind of outcome, two very practical considerations also militate against any use of the self-determination principle in Kirkuk. The first has to do with lessons from the recent history from the 1960s and 1970s, and the way in which the very idea of using plebiscites or censuses for determining the borders of Kurdistan became the focus of attention of the autonomy negotiations between the Baathist regime and Mulla Mustafa Barzani, the main Kurdish leader at the time. Towards the end of those negotiations, Barzani introduced claims for the annexation of a host of territories (such as Kirkuk) where the Kurdish population element was thin or only recently-established; the Baathists accordingly sought refuge in the principle of ethnic demography as a determinant for the allocation of territory. This formed the background to the 1970 peace agreement, where Baghdad confidently agreed to autonomy for all areas with a “Kurdish majority”, believing it would be restricted to the governorates of Sulaymaniyya, Arbil and the newly-constituted Dahuk (which had been separated from Mosul as a concession to Kurdish demands). But the recourse to demography also constituted the beginning of the end of the peace agreement. The promised census never materialised (first both sides agreed to a postponement, later Baghdad put it off unilaterally), and the Kurds refused to use the previous censuses of 1965 and 1957 as a basis (knowing they would show no Kurdish majority in Kirkuk). Then followed a dirty game in which both sides appear to have applied unscrupulous methods to secure an outcome in their own favour. The Kurds accused the Baathist regime of flooding Kirkuk and its neighbouring areas with Arabs in order to neutralise growing Kurdish demographic weight, whereas the central government suspected that Barzani and his allies were importing Iranian Kurds to settle them near Kirkuk. It seems likely that misdeeds were committed on both sides, and the regime’s decision to expel tens of thousands of Fayli Kurds (indigenous to Iraq but many of their forefathers held Persian passports in Ottoman times in order to avoid conscription) represents a particularly brutal aspect of the developments.

All of this escalation and human suffering was the singular result of the promise that “demographic realities” would be used to demarcate the boundaries of Kurdistan. It does not require much fantasy to imagine that something similar could take place in the future if “self determination” were employed as the main criterion for settling the current dispute. In fact, to some extent, this has already happened. Since 2003, Kurdish authorities have been accused of bringing in huge numbers of Kurds in and around Kirkuk in order to bolster their own claim to the city. With tendencies of growing assertiveness by the Iraqi central government since 2008, a counter-campaign focused on beachheads among their potential allies – particularly the non-Kurdish population elements of Kirkuk such as the Turkmens, the Arabs and the Christians – seems perfectly possible. In other words, any promise of “self determination” along the lines of what UNAMI is now apparently considering would almost inevitably set off a violent tit for tat process which could easily surpass the 1970s and the immediate post-2003 period in intensity and violence. What the international community needs to realise today is that “self determination” in Kirkuk has become completely meaningless as an exercise of democracy because so much gerrymandering and dirty tricks have already been brought to bear on the situation. Essentially, in Kirkuk the slogan of “self determination” is like a greasy old rag that will never become clean and dry again, no matter how many times it is washed.

There is also a second practical argument against any application of self determination in Kirkuk: The likely domino effect in the rest of Iraq. This represents a danger because the concept of “disputed territories” was never defined at the time of its fateful insertion in the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) in March 2004, from where it was transplanted into the 2005 constitution. Hence, in theory, today, any politician anywhere in Iraq can invent a case of a “disputed area” for whatever piece of land he or she might wish to politicise. Thankfully, so far, few other than the Kurds have been keen to exploit this option (the Kurds have declared targets of expansion along the entire current border of the KRG), with most other Iraqi politicians seemingly holding on to the existing framework – perhaps even more so after the spectacular failures of recent initiatives to create federal regions south of Kurdistan, whether in Basra (where a formal initiative was launched last December), or in all the Shiite-majority areas south of Baghdad (where the scheme hardly progressed beyond the drawing-board level). But, for a considerable time, a small group of Iraqi Shiite politicians have been interested in projecting the same concept of territorial conflict on governorates south of Baghdad. As early as in 2005, just weeks before the launch of the project by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) to create an all-Shiite federal region of nine governorates south of Baghdad, press reports suggested that Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim had voiced an interest in redrawing the boundaries of the Karbala governorate so that it would also comprise the desert area of Nukhayb, presently a part of Anbar. And since April this year, other Shiite-oriented politicians – ranging from the Maliki-supported new governor of Karbala to Ahmad Chalabi – have joined a growing chorus of leaders calling for changes to Karbala’s border. Nukhayb is wanted by Karbala politicians not for its ties to Shiism – most of its tribes are Sunnis – but because of its strategic location on the road to Saudi Arabia, where many Iraqi pilgrims have been killed by terrorists in the past.

 Map of Western Iraq from the late 1960s showing Nukhayb in the province of Ramadi (Anbar). The governorates of Najaf and Muthanna did not exist back then

The case of Nukhayb illustrates the serious problems of exporting the notion of “disputed territories” to the rest of Iraq. During the monarchy area, boundary delineation in the desert areas was approximate at best, and a 1957 map of Iraq, for example, shows lines in the sand extending from the river areas of the Euphrates towards the west, but stopping shortly after Bahr al-Milh and thus leaving the jurisdiction of the rest of the vast territory between Iraq and Saudi Arabia to the imagination. The exact subsequent development remains a matter of dispute, but certainly government maps from the late 1960s showed Nukhayb firmly within what was then called Ramadi province and today is Anbar. Importantly, at this stage, a number of other administrative changes – only some of which are currently considered as “disputed” by the proponents of the concept – had yet to be made. For example, there was no Dahuk province (the area was part of Mosul and was only detached to form a separate governorate after the peace treaty with the Kurds in 1970). Also, the governorates of Najaf and Muthanna did not exist (they were carved out from Karbala and Diwaniyya/Nasiriyya later on). Hence, if the Baath era is to serve as basis for some kind of status quo ante logic, it will be exceedingly hard to pinpoint exactly when the “original sin” of the former regime took place. In other words, the consistency and the assumed objectivity of the whole process disintegrate entirely as soon as a pick and choose approach is applied.

Nevertheless, for politicians willing to fish in these waters, there are certainly plenty of options. Already, there is talk about other potentially “disputed areas” between Baghdad and Salahaddin, Baghdad and Babel, Babel and Anbar, and Karbala and Babel. Initial reactions to the emergence of Nukhayb as an issue suggest that some of these conflicts may well contribute to renewed sectarian polarisation, with the Sunni-dominated parties of Anbar – from the sahwa to the Iraqi Islamic Party – mobilising against any idea of redrawing the borders (and accusing the protagonists of the Karbala claim of disguising their real goal of annexing areas potentially rich in oil and gas in the proximity of Nukhayb). A promising sign, though, is that so far much of the opposition has actually been framed in national terms, with outspoken aversion against petty quarrelling over borders between inhabitants of areas that all consider themselves Iraqis first and foremost.

In sum, then, a good solution for Kirkuk should seek to bring an end to the logic of “disputed territories” instead of proliferating it. Rather than pursuing a maximalist demand that is dangerous to Kirkuk as an urban community and to Iraq as a society of coexistence, Kurdish politicians should try to envisage the potential value of alternative incentives, of which quite a few have been proposed. Liam Anderson has suggested using as a model the case of the Åland Islands from the post–World War One settlement, where the autonomy of the Swedish-speaking archipelago west of Finland had its autonomy guaranteed by the international community, in a robust “autonomy plus” arrangement that should be of interest to Kurds (whose main concern during the twentieth century, after all, has been distrust of Baghdad). Internationally-guaranteed autonomy for the areas the Kurds currently control would offer them assurances of non-interference that are stronger than the 2005 constitution, and could be a good reason to reverse their maximalist approach to Kirkuk. Similarly, the International Crisis Group has come up with a proposal that would give the Kurds other advantages in return for giving up their claims to Kirkuk: “Oil for Soil”, or an arrangement whereby Kurdistan is given the exclusive control of oilfields within Kurdistan proper (which, again, they would not be able to achieve under the 2005 constitution), but would at the same time withdraw the demand for the inclusion of Kirkuk in Kurdistan. As for the Kurds of Kirkuk, an emerging “Kirkuk first” attitude can already be found among some of them, and this could be promoted further. In an interesting development, Kurdish politicians in Kirkuk recently emulated Basra regionalists in calling for a “half dollar per barrel of exported oil” to be set aside in a local development fund – the kind of negotiable, “soft” federalism that would be relatively easy to integrate within a unitary state structure.

Finally, a one-off territorial compromise at the elite level could be used to round off these negotiations (this is also an integral part of the suggestions by both Anderson and the ICG). The best solution for Iraq would of course have been if the troublesome “disputed territories” concept had never entered the TAL in the first place – it would in fact have been perfectly possible to deal with the issues of forced resettlement during the Baathist era on a family by family, property by property basis, without any resort to the abstract and problematic concept of ethnicity that is implied in the “disputed territories” nomenclature. Nevertheless, expectations of some kind of territorial settlement are now very strong in the Kurdish camp, and could be difficult to reverse. Equally important, to some extent it should be possible to achieve this without deviating very much from past attempts at compromise. In the 1970s, the regime was for example prepared to cede Kurdish-dominated areas near Kirkuk such as Chamchamal and Kalar for the sake of peace. In general, from the point of view of history, the idea of the sacrosanctity of the territorial integrity of the Tamim governorate – reportedly another cornerstone of UNAMI’s report – is less readily understandable than the principle that Kirkuk, the city, should stay within the unitary-state framework of Iraq under any circumstances. In that kind of perspective, it could make sense that certain rural parts of the Tamim governorate in the future should gravitate towards the autonomous KRG. At any rate, whatever course of action is chosen, a grand compromise for the north of Iraq should be done as a one-off affair at the elite level. The inhabitants of the area have already suffered enough and should not have their lives destroyed by serving as pawns in a long-winded, fictitious process of “self determination”.

Zurfi Takes Over as Governor in Najaf; Maliki Participates in UIA Revival Talks

Playing second fiddle? Nuri al-Maliki seated to the right of Humam Hammudi at UIA revival talks

Nuri al-Maliki’s ally Adnan al-Zurfi has finally assumed the governorship of Najaf, after initial attempts by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) to mount a legal challenge to his candidacy (see entry for 8 May, below). Part of the story is an internal Shiite quarrel about the authenticity of a letter from the legal committee of the Iraqi parliament, ostensibly signed by the Sadrist Baha al-Araji and supporting the challenge by ISCI to Zirfi. Araji now claims the letter is false and that he could not have possibly signed it since he was in Istanbul with Muqtada al-Sadr on the 3 May, when the letter was issued.

Meanwhile, whereas Maliki’s comments to al-Hurra television on 14 May about “majority rule” have been rendered with an unduly sectarian tinge in Western media (he also condemned the concept of sectarian-based alliances), it does seem both significant and worrisome to those who prefer a non-sectarian political atmosphere that he did participate on 20 May in a meeting presided over by ISCI’s Humam Hammudi and aimed at reviving the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance (see also entry for 13 May below). The meeting comes in the middle of a hectic round of consultations between ISCI’s leader Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim and various leading ISCI and Badr figures, apparently all taking place in Tehran where Hakim is being treated for cancer (photos below).

Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim meeting with senior Iraqi Badr figures on 22 May. The balcony and the furniture look very similar to the photograph of Hakim meeting with Ibrahim al-Jaafari below, confirmed as having been taken in the Iranian capital Tehran on 20 May 2009

The Iraqi Oil Ministry Clarifies Its Position on Oil Exports from Kurdistan and the DNO Deal

The two last weeks have seen considerable confusion about the Iraqi oil ministry’s position concerning oil exports from Kurdistan, where the regional authorities have signed a number of exploration and drilling deals with foreign oil companies without consulting Baghdad. News that Baghdad had given the go-ahead for exports from the fields concerned by these deals prompted wild news reports about some kind of “grand compromise” between the Kurds and Baghdad on an oil law, which has stalled since the first drafts were written back in 2006. However it soon became clear that there was no compromise at all, as the Iraqi oil ministry stated that it still does not recognise the deals that the Kurds have cut with foreign companies. Accordingly, the only interpretation that could reconcile the seemingly contradictive position by the Iraqi oil ministry would be that Baghdad would allow exports to go ahead, but would at the same time keep the oil income for itself in the centrally managed account before redistributing back to the Kurds the 17% agreed as Kurdistan’s share during the annual budget negotiations earlier this year. This, of course, would involve no payment to the foreign companies concerned: DNO (a small private Norwegian company) at Tawke, and the Turkish-Canadian joint venture that is involved at Taq Taq.

In interviews with the Arab press, Iraq’s oil minister Husayn al-Shahristani has now confirmed that this is indeed the way he intends to handle matters. In principle the Kurds are free to export oil from these fields. However, Baghdad will do the marketing, and all the revenue from these and Iraq’s other oil exports (the vast majority of which come from Basra) will be pooled into a central account controlled by Baghdad, from which the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in turn will receive its allocated 17%. The problem of how and whether to compensate the foreign companies involved will therefore most likely be left to the KRG, since it would be exceedingly difficult for Baghdad to pay any money for contracts it does not recognise. (Shahristani has offered to consider any contract that is submitted to Baghdad for review, but so far this has not been done by the Kurds because a key stumbling block in the oil-law and constitutional-review negotiations is that Kurdish politicians believe this kind of decision should be a regional prerogative. Also, Shahristani’s stance on this makes it perfectly clear that for the moment he does not see any difference between deals agreed before the drafting of the oil law in 2006/2007 and later contracts, a distinction which some of the foreign companies with agreements dating back to 2005 like to make.)

If Shahristani stands by his current position, this situation will involve dilemmas for the KRG. Like other administrative entities in Iraq (elsewhere known as non-federal muhafazas or provinces), the KRG will receive its share of Iraq’s total oil income. But even if the agreed share of 17% for Kurdistan is generally seen as inflated in proportion to the relevant demographic numbers, the KRG will have a problem in that it will probably have to use these funds to pay DNO (which apparently will not get any money from Baghdad) for operating the field. This could leave a net economic result that is worse for Kurdistan than other administrative entities in Iraq, which can use the oil money they receive in its entirety to finance local services for their inhabitants, without having to worry about payments to foreign companies.

This leaves Kurdish authorities with the quandary of whether they should pay the foreign companies in order to honour their own contracts or not. It is probably painfully clear to them that if the contracts had been submitted to Baghdad, Kurdistan would have received exactly the same sum of money without having had to pay anything to the foreign companies (who would instead be paid by Baghdad – that is, if the contracts were found to be “in Iraq’s interests”, as Shahristani has described it). True, Shahristani, too, is under considerable pressure to boost oil exports, but if he should choose to suddenly turn around and accept both production sharing agreements (PSAs) with two foreign companies and regional negotiation rights – traditionally red lines for Baghdad politicians – angry reactions inside and outside the Iraqi parliament would likely follow. There the mood is that Iraq can still afford to keep the constitutional process and the question of foreign oil investment separate from each other, without having to surrender entirely to foreign investors and the forces of international capitalism.

Hammudi Tapped for Leadership Role in Reviving the United Iraqi Alliance

According to a brief press release of today’s date described as “very important” by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim has charged another prominent ISCI figure, Humam Hammudi, with the job of reviving the (all-Shiite) United Iraqi Alliance (UIA). The communiqué lists the achievements of the UIA until this date but warns that Iraq’s future challenges, and especially the threat from insurgents (whether Islamists or Baathists), are such that no disunity between the UIA components can be allowed.

Of course, disunity inside the UIA has been the dominant theme since at least the summer of 2008 (when even its perceived centre began to crumble), to the point where the alliance today is almost defunct. But when Maliki in March tried to go ahead with forming provincial councils on an anti-ISCI platform and reached out to secularists and Sunni parties that are unfriendly with ISCI, criticism from inside the Shiite community (and most likely from Iran too) soon manifested itself. Going forward, the fate of Hammudi’s UIA mission will be an important indicator of what kind of political climate we can expect from the next parliamentary elections in Iraq, and above all whether the politics of fear will continue to prevail (more on the UIA revival scheme here).

Maliki Makes a Concession to Basra Regionalism?

News reports from Basra suggest that Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has made an interesting concession to regionalist sentiment in the southern oil-export city of Basra. According to a statement by the spokesman of the new governor in Basra (who is also a Maliki ally), one half US dollar will henceforth be deducted from every barrel of oil exported from Basra and placed in a special development fund for Basra.

In some ways, the move could be seen as compatible with – and indeed inspired by – the 2005 constitution, where a general provision for a temporary positive discrimination of particularly deprived governorates through the use of oil revenue is found. Most statistical surveys single out Basra as the area of Iraq where living standards remain at the lowest level, in glaring contrast to the governorate’s position as the major oil producer and exporter in Iraq.

However, while the relevant constitutional clauses focus on deprivation, the link to Basra’s role as producer has other roots. The half-dollar deduction will meet a long-standing demand by Basra politicians that their area’s role as the kingpin of Iraq’s economy be reflected in some kind of special political privilege. Actually, back in December 2007, Basra politicians of the Fadila party proposed an arrangement which is remarkably similar to what is now being talked about as a governmental “decision”: Basra should receive one dollar per barrel of oil exported from the south. The difference between Fadila in 2007 and Maliki in 2009 of half a dollar can reasonably be attributed to the general decline in oil prices and a bit of bazaar-style haggling between centre and periphery.

While one incarnation of Basra regionalism was roundly rejected by the local citizens as they chose to ignore the federalism initiative headed by Wail Abd al-Latif in the winter of 2008/2009, the apparent decision of a centralist like Nuri al-Maliki to make concessions to local sentiment even after his particularly strong result in Basra in the January provincial elections testifies to its survival in other forms. One cannot help wondering, though, whether this is really a decision that the prime minister is in a position to make without at least a little consultation with the Iraqi parliament?

ISCI Keeps Fighting for the Najaf Governorship

Just days after the provincial council of Najaf voted in favour of Adnan al-Zurfi as new governor – backed by a pro-Maliki alliance and against the votes of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) – a legal challenge against Zurfi’s accession to the governorship has been mounted.

Technically, the challenge has been initiated by the legal committee of the Iraqi parliament. Unsurprisingly, however, ISCI’s governor candidate for Najaf and Zurfi’s main competitor, Asaad Abu Gulal, has been foremost in publicising the decision, with a special press conference in Najaf on 4 May. The decision itself is procedural and relates to the way in which an extraordinary convening of the provincial council rather than a regular meeting produced the vote in favour of Zurfi, after an earlier meeting had ended inconclusively and without immediate recourse to the legally-mandated second round of voting for the two candidates with the highest number of votes. While all of this may be true, it has to be said that this sudden upsurge of fervent legalism by members of the Iraqi parliament does come across as somewhat remarkable in a context where the existing Iraqi legal framework has been routinely tested, bent and violated in a number of other key decisions relating to both provincial government as well as the constitutional provisions themselves. Also, the ISCI representatives and their partners did show up for the disputed vote and cast their ballots; the criticism of the decision to go ahead with the meeting seems to have emerged retrospectively.

An interesting detail in all of this is that the letter from the legal committee of the Iraqi parliament communicating the rejection of the pro-Maliki Zurfi’s right to be governor was signed by Baha al-Araji, a prominent Sadrist and ostensibly an ally of Maliki at the moment. Back in 2007 he did something similar which also hurt the Maliki government, except that on that occasion his letter served to protect Basra governor Muhammad al-Waili against the combined efforts of Daawa and ISCI (then allies) to oust him from his job through a vote of no confidence. As such, this latest move, which may now end up being settled by the Iraqi federal supreme court, could be an indication of which way winds are blowing at least inside the “parliament of 2005” and some Shiite Islamist circles.

Mixed Outcome for Maliki as Muthanna and Najaf Elect New Governors

The Najaf provincial assembly

Through selecting Ibrahim Salman al-Mayali as new governor on 30 April, the provincial council of Muthanna became the third of the nine Shiite-majority governorates south of Baghdad to emerge with a stronger than expected position for the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) after their setback in the January local elections.

Even if the Muthanna council was always going to be a difficult one for Maliki given the high degree of fragmentation (9 parties are represented in the 26-man chamber, with no single list counting more than 5 representatives), the outcome may be an indicator of some of the internal Shiite resistance to the direction of his policies at the national level. Just a little more than a month ago, Maliki’s coalition believed it commanded the loyalties of around 14 members of the council, just enough to form a coalition. But then things changed, and a 13-13 stalemate ensued in early April. And now, yesterday, Mayali, originally an independent member of Maliki’s coalition list, defected so that the pro-ISCI members of the council could elect him with 14 votes as the 12 remaining Maliki loyalists absented themselves from the proceedings. The council also voted for pro-ISCI figures as head of the provincial council and as deputies to the governor.

On the other hand, in Najaf, things went Malikis way, as Adnan al-Zurfi, member of a secularist-leaning local list who served as governor of Najaf under Ayad Allawi back in 2004, was voted in as governor today, against the votes of ISCI. The outcome is remarkable because Najaf is one of the few places in Iraq where there seemed to be genuine enthusiasm among segments of the population for the pro-federal ISCI-led regime that lasted from 2005 to 2009, in this case under Asaad Abu Gulal. Abu Gulal was ISCI’s candidate this time too, reportedly after an internal split had caused friction as some members of the Badr Organization had wanted the former deputy governor, Abd al-Husayn Abtan, to stand instead.

Iraqi commentators are divided as to the reasons for the long delays in forming councils south of Baghdad, which only was completed today with these two latest appointments. Some claim that there existed some kind of central agreement on creating a repeat at the provincial level of the all-Shiite United Iraqi Alliance from the 2005 national elections (and hence, a rapprochement between Daawa and ISCI), and that any divergences from this model can be attributed to squabbling of a very local character. (As late as two days ago, for instance, there were reports that agreement had been reached to split the Muthanna posts according to a complex formula in which one coalition would obtain the governor position as well as the deputy of the speaker of the council, and the other would get the speakership as well as the two deputies of the governor.) This interpretation, however, seems to discount the fact that Maliki very clearly did make attempts at some kind of dialogue with anti-ISCI Sunnis and secularists (such as Salih al-Mutlak) back in March, which would have meant an alliance on the pattern of the 22 July parties (the inter-sectarian coalition that last year demanded special arrangements for Kirkuk to reduce Kurdish influence there) and the logical opposite of a return to the UIA. And in Najaf, too, there seems to be a case of Maliki preferring to distance himself of ISCI instead of rebuilding an alliance focused on sectarian unity. The selection of Zurfi may prove controversial among some Sadrists (many of whom were in conflict with him back in 2004 and may not have been impressed by the reconciliatory moves he made towards the end of his tenure), and therefore appears to be another example of Maliki trying to build bridges with secularist circles rather than stressing sectarian unity at any cost.

In sum, Maliki apparently pursued a policy of confrontation with ISCI in seven out of nine governorates. This ultimately succeeded in six places (Basra, Dhi Qar, Qadisiyya, Babel, Najaf and Karbala) and failed in Muthanna. In Maysan and Wasit, a different policy of cooperation with ISCI prevailed.