Months after Iraq’s election Nuri Kamal al-Maliki finally wheedled together a coalition to retain power.  But the long term prognosis for Iraq is not good.  The election unveiled the deep fissures in Iraqi society.  Al-Maliki’s support is largely confined to his Shiite community. His opponent (and former Prime Minister) Ayad Allawi drew his support from the embittered Sunni minority.  Once again the Kurds hold the balance of power.  The trouble will erupt when they demand and receive their pound of flesh – the provinces of Kirkuk, Nineveh and Diyala which are also claimed by the Sunnis.

The Sunni community is deeply unhappy with al-Maliki’s conduct of the war against terror and his attempt to disenfrachise them after their block came so close to victory.  Al-Maliki will also have to contend with Moqtada al-Sadr with whom he clashed in the past, but whose support this week secured his re-election attempt.

Then there is al-Maliki’s desire to strengthen his divided country by concentrating more power in Baghdad.  That would reek of a Shiite attempt to dominate the other two communities could light a slow fuse towards civil war.

Joe Biden is often a late night punch line and for a man focussed on foreign policy has made more than his share of wrong decisions.  But in my opinion he has been prescient on two major issues in the last decade.  One, was the surge in Afghanistan last year.  The other was his plan to create a truly decentralized Iraq that drew bipartisan support in the Senate in 2007.  George Bush’s surge aided by a more competent local ally than our Kabul headache succeeded in military terms.   But it did not pave the way to the hoped for political reconciliation.  The nature of al-Maliki’s return to power makes that even less likely.

The examples of India and Pakistan show the perils of having an over-centralized government in an ethnically diverse country.  Unless Iraq’s factions discover so far unseen capacity for compromise and cooperation a Bosnian style conflict with foreign funding for their proxies may be the ultimate end result.

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Tomorrow, Sunday October 3, 2010 marks a milestone.  Ninety One years after the Treaty of Versailles, 65 years after the end of World War II and 20 years after its second reunification,  Germany will make the final reparation payment imposed by the victorious and vengeful Allied powers for its alleged guilt in causing the First World War.  The reparations were controversial as soon as they imposed.  John Maynard Keynes resigned his post in the British treasury to protest the scale of the demands.  They were repeatedly reduced in the 1920s and finally Germany under Hitler repudiated them.  The payment tomorrow is actually for the debt the Weimar Republic incurred to pay the original reparations.  However, they bring another of the poisonous legacies of the treaties that concluded the Great War to a close. The problems caused by the creation of another Yugoslavia in the Land of the Two Rivers by imposing a foreign ruler against the wishes of the local population will bother us for many years to come.

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After the conclusion of the second elections since Saddam Hussein’s removal from power, Iraq has reached the crossroads.  Still unclear is whether Iraq will manage its first peaceful transfer of power without the backing of American guns.  The elections marked the resurrection of former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi who holds on to a narrow lead over incumbent Nouri Kamal al-Maliki.  See link.  Swept from power in the last elections after being branded an American puppet, Allawi made a remarkable return by crafting a coalition of Sunnis, Shiites tired of religious parties and people opposed to Iran.

But all is not well.  Al-Maliki has yet to accept the results and worse is considering post election moves supposedly based on the constitution to modify the outcome.  See link.  Al-Maliki enjoyed the benefits of incumbency and spent many of the last few months trying to weed out potential Sunni rivals by using (or abusing) the de-Baathification process.   It is one thing to weed out avid supporters of Saddam.  But a blanket ban on anybody with any affiliation with the Baath Party, which as in the Communist world was the only game in town, reeks of an attempt to pick on the already disaffected Sunni minority.  It also insults the popular vote plurality that Allawi’s coalition assembled.

Even if al-Maliki was not sulking, an Allawi government would take some time to assemble.  While he edged out al-Maliki’s coalition for a plurality, he is well short of the 163 seats needed to get a majority.  He will have to cut a deal with the Kurds who are uncomfortable with some of his Sunni allies and the coalition partly led by the thuggish and volatile Moqtada al-Sadr (who has a bone to pick with al-Maliki for sending the Iraqi army against his militia a couple of years ago).

In the norms of most parliamentary democracies Allawi as the leader of the largest pre-election alliance would get the first shot at forming a government.  But if he fails to do so al-Maliki could yet return to power.  The result will be a period of uncertainty as the political horse trading begins and al-Maliki’s attempts to pull an Ahmadinejad or a Karzai on the election results is singularly unhelpful.  By picking on the Sunni majority he weakens the strongest rationale for a parliamentary system in a multi-ethnic country – the ability to get all sections of society a voice at the table.  This is something that is sorely absent in the winner take all Presidential system that exists in Afghanistan where the whims of the President and the executive have far fewer checks.

Of course the coming months will also highlight the primary flaw in a parliamentary system- the lack of stability when elections produce such a fractured and muddled mandate.  Coalition politics are not easy for mature democracies.  Iraq’s leaders need to pick up this skill fast and act in a good faith to avoid their nation, which was an artificial construct cobbled together after World War I to begin with, falling apart.

From the American perspective the elections likely ensure the withdrawal of American troops on schedule.  With the anti-American al-Sadr playing king-maker neither an Allawi or al-Maliki government (which normally would both be relatively pro-American) is likely to have the political support to keep American troops around even if they wanted to.  Ready or not Iraq will soon be taking its first steps on its own in its nasty neighborhood.  It is yet another example of how clueless and steeped in fantasy the Chenyites and neo-cons were when they assumed that toppling Saddam would enable the establishment of permanent American bases in Iraq.

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• Just how bad are the Chicago Bulls?  Opposing player with the ball ties his shoes in live play and no Bulls player even tries to take the ball.  See link (includes video).
• Not a shocker.  Vladimir Putin hints that he may run for President and take back his previous office in 2012.  Meanwhile legal institutions and the rule of law in his country atrophy.
• Nicolas Sarkozy shoots off his mouth, ticks off the United Kingdom.
• Former Pakistani dictator’s graft amnesty challenged in court.  It could affect the ability of President Zardari formerly known as Mr. Ten Percent to stay in power.
• Iraq may have finally got a deal to hold its elections.  Previous blogs here and here.  The electoral deal staves off a potential civil war over sharing power and oil revenues.  Here’s hoping it holds.  Maybe we can finally start satisfying some of the other benchmarks George Bush talked about.

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First Honduras and now Iraq, expressing optimism about people coming to their senses can be a perilous exercise.  After an previous optimistic post from me, the deal is now starting to unravel.  Unhappy with their seat allocation the Kurds are threatening a boycott and the Sunnis are expressing their displeasure as well.  It seems that the Kurds have not learned from the Sunni boycott of the previous elections that such a step is ultimately self defeating.  The elections will happen, the Kurds will be locked out of the corridors of power and ticked off groups will resort to the gun.  The mess in Iraq also shows just how hard it is to conduct a multi-ethnic state when there is no trust among the various ethnic groups.

Some good news from the middle east.  Iraq’s parliament finally approved an electoral law that will allow it to administer a national election in January without the boycotts that plagued the last election.  There is an element of kicking the can down the road, particularly with respect to Kirkuk, but it is heartening to see a compromise decided peacefully and not with guns.  Here’s hoping that the other ethnic mish-mash America is involved in continues on this path.

Pakistani journalist Ahmad Rashid has an interesting blog on how the United States forced a recalcitrant Karzai to accept a runoff.   However, as Matt Yglesias notes that the ethnic tinderbox in Afghanistan likely forces the United States to root for a victory by the inept Karzai.  The lack of a Pashtun alternative with support from his own community and who would be acceptable to Afghanistan’s other minorities has left the United States with little room to maneuver and hopefully the runoff will not saddle the United States with a partner of dubious legitimacy.

Yglesias’s article also raises another point that has not always been addressed recently.   Is the Presidential system really suited for an ethically diverse country like Afghanistan?  While a Parliamentary system runs the risk of executive gridlock, it also gives a voice to minority groups from elected representatives instead of warlords and self appointed community leaders.  It is also a reason why even Iraq adopted a parliamentary system.  Such a system would also prevent Afghanistan from being saddled with a leader out of his depth for a fixed term of the next four years.