As bickering over the results of Iraq's March elections turns into horse-trading, the country still has no new government, writes Salah Hemeid More than two months after Iraqis went to the polls in the third election to be held in the post-Saddam Hussein era, the nation's divided political and ethnic groups have made little progress towards forming a government after the inconclusive vote in the 7 March parliamentary elections. Worse, various extremist groups, mainly Al-Qaeda in Iraq, have been taking advantage of political differences and carrying out more attacks in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities to create further turmoil. The protracted political wrangling, which comes as Washington prepares to reduce by nearly half US troops in the country by the end of August, has dampened hopes that forming a cross- sectarian alliance might bridge the nation's sharp divides. In a move that might cast new doubt on the process of forming a new government, Iraq's two main Shia groups have formed a parliamentary alliance that is widely believed to be intended to keep the country's Sunni minority marginalised and could spark a new round of sectarian violence. Under the deal, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki's State of Law Coalition and the Iraqi National Alliance agreed that they would pool their 159 parliamentary seats, leaving them just four seats shy of an overall majority. However, the new bloc still has to resolve the long-standing sticking point of who will be its nominee for prime minister amid fierce competition for the crucial post among rival leaders of the alliance. The two Shia groups' main challenger, the mainly Sunni Iraqiya List which won the most votes in the elections, immediately denounced the planned alliance, warning that violence may result if it is barred from taking office. "This conflict will not remain within the borders of Iraq," said Iraqiya List leader Iyad Allawi in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian on Monday. "It will spill over, and it has the potential to reach the world at large, not just neighbouring countries," he said, in a clear signal to the international community and regional powers to intervene. Allawi, a secular Shia, insisted that his bloc has the right to form the next government. Earlier he had demanded that an internationally backed caretaker government be formed and new national elections held. Allawi's warnings underscored a deepening conviction within his coalition that a Shia-dominated alliance is trying to undermine their slate's lead by any means possible. The Sunni boycott of the previous 2005 parliamentary elections led to the emergence of a Shia-led government. This in turn left the once-ruling minority feeling alienated and resulted in a bloody insurgency and sectarian war that gripped Iraq for years following the toppling of the Saddam regime in the 2003 US-led invasion. Further complicating the dispute are the Kurdish parties that allied themselves with the Shias in forming a government following the 2005 elections. The Kurdish parties have also expressed their support for the new Shia alliance, signalling that a Kurdish-Shia governing agreement may be imminent. The Kurdish move came as signs emerged that the long-standing Iraqi- Kurdish oil dispute may be edging closer to a resolution. Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein Al-Shahristani said this week that agreement had finally been reached with the Kurds to allow their regional government to be remunerated for oil production in areas under their control, ending a long-standing dispute over oil revenues. The Kurdish decision to support the Shia alliance, though it has not yet been finalised, was widely expected, since key Sunni groups in the Iraqiya List have made it clear that they are not ready to make concessions to the Kurds on crucial issues such as oil and the future of the city of Kirkuk and other disputed areas. However, any Kurdish-Shia agreement that excludes the Iraqiya List from government is likely to pay a heavy price in terms of the country's political stability, given that Sunni participation will be the key to ending the Sunni insurgency and facing up to the Kurds' demands. To prevent this from happening, Al-Maliki is reported to be reaching out to Allawi in an attempt to include the Iraqiya List in the new government, though he will never agree to any deal that excludes him from forming the new government. Analysts have raised fears that if Iraq's Sunnis feel disenfranchised as a result of the political horse-trading currently going on in the country, a new era of sectarian bloodshed could result and maybe even another round of civil war. The current political uncertainty has also fuelled violence in the country. On Monday, dozens of people were killed or wounded in a coordinated series of 20 attacks on civilians, police and security forces in Baghdad and beyond. Gunmen used silenced and automatic weapons, roadside bombs and cars packed with explosives to hit six checkpoints manned by local and federal police and the Iraqi army in the capital. The worst single incident came in the shape of a car bombing outside a textiles factory in the central city of Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad, which left 20 dead. A double bomb attack near a mosque in Suwayra, south-east of the capital, killed 11 people and wounded 70. Attacks were also reported in the cities of Falluja and Mosul. Sunni insurgents have often targeted the Iraqi police and army as a way of undermining the country's already fragile security and intimidating the security forces. Meanwhile, the Mahdi Army, a militia group loyal to the radical Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, has also reportedly started to regroup, adding street muscle to a group that won 40 of parliament's 325 seats in the March elections and emerged stronger as a result. Al-Sadr disbanded the paramilitary group in 2008, and its return is a result of the political vacuum in the country resulting from the failure to form a new government. All these developments raise the question of what steps the Obama administration will now take to help end the chaos in Iraq before drawing down US troop numbers in the beleaguered country. The US military is scheduled to draw down its troops in Iraq at the end of August, leaving a "residual force" of 50,000 on a non-combat mission. According to the agreement between the two countries, all US troops are scheduled to be out of Iraq by the end of next year. Momentum towards making this agreement reality has now been threatened by the rising tensions in Iraq and the seeming inability of the Obama administration to take action to resolve the conflict. Many pundits in Washington are now urging senior administration officials, including US President Obama himself, to become more engaged in efforts to end Iraq's stalled political process. Some are also suggesting that the administration show more flexibility in implementing the troop draw-down. Worries about Iraq's slipping into anarchy have also spread throughout the region. During a visit to Cairo this week, the Iraqi president Jalal Talabani appealed to the Egyptian leadership and the Arab League to try to help defuse the dispute over forming a new government in the country. Talabani's plea came as the leaders of Qatar, Syria and Turkey met in Istanbul on Monday to discuss the Iraqi political impasse, among other issues. Al-Maliki himself dispatched envoys to Syria and Turkey to urge their leaders to help end the deadlock, even though he has also bitterly complained in the past about interference in Iraq by the country's neighbours.
