Interior Ministry Purge
Nuri al-Maliki moves to consolidate power as the U.S. begins heading for the exits:
Up to 35 officials in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior ranking as high as general have been arrested over the past three days with some of them accused of quietly working to reconstitute Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, according to senior security officials in Baghdad.
The arrests, confirmed by officials from the Ministries of the Interior and National Security as well as the prime minister’s office, included four generals. The officials also said that the arrests had come at the hand of an elite counterterrorism force that reports directly to the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
Maybe I’m just cynical, but this “elite counterterrorism force” sounds to me like a security organization whose primary purpose has more to do with bolstering Maliki vis-à-vis internal enemies than with counterterrorism as such. Not that I blame him, all kinds of other factions have their own armed wings and no loyalty to Maliki or the Iraqi state, so to stay in office he’ll need friends with guns of his own.
26 Responses to “Interior Ministry Purge”
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December 18th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…
December 18th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Every death squad will be called an antiterrorism force, and every dead body will have belonged to a terrorist.
December 18th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Baathists: the new Trotskyites.
December 18th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I wouldn’t be so quick to condemn this action. The Interior Ministry is widely known to be pretty awful – plagued by Shia death squads, rampant corruption, etc. The fact that the purge was done by Maliki rather than under the auspices of a more bi-partisan governmental institution doesn’t bode well, but at least he arrested both Sunnis and Shia.
December 18th, 2008 at 10:33 am
Every death squad will be called an antiterrorism force, and every dead body will have belonged to a terrorist.
Hmm, where have I heard that before?
December 18th, 2008 at 11:23 am
The problem with using a military unit with loyalty to the Prime Minister to keep a lawfully elected PM in power is that it is just as useful for keeping an unlawfully elected PM in power.
December 18th, 2008 at 11:32 am
What’s striking is not that al-Maliki is removing some people from office because he doubts their loyalty, it’s that what he sees as the way to do this is not to fire them, but to arrest them. Apparently firing them but leaving them at liberty is something he regards as too dangerous. Shades of Hussein, indeed.
December 18th, 2008 at 11:44 am
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December 18th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…
Oh you are so ironic and wise!
This news is totally at the expense of the anti-war people.
(of course conservatives can’t crow about a win if you care what Max Boot thinks, which I don’t).
But if my only care was the troops and getting them home, I would want things to quiet down. Of course if we pull out and Iraq collapses into a failed state they’ll still blame it on Bush, but still…
Someone who had spent a lot of time in Iraq said they feared the majority Shia had not forgiven the Sunni for the years and years of abuse by the Sunni minority and the Old Boss.
This could be the Sunnis are gearing up for the fight once the Americans leave (with the backing of their Sunni allies in other countries) or as Matt said, Maliki is consolidating power before the big day (it was impressive how earlier he went after Sadr, who is now a walking dead man unless he permanently moves to Iran.) Most likely both. Iran is no doubt prodding its Shia allliens in Iraq.
I doubt it’s people starting stuff so the Americans won’t leave, but that could be the case.
My bet is that the Shia will wipe the floor with the Sunnis once US troops leave, but maybe if it gets to bad Obama will delay the pullout.
This is huge news. I just hope Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia are smart and don’t get pulled in.
If the Saddam hadn’t been toppled and Uday and Qusay had taken over for the Old Boss, this sort of thing would have happened and most likely would have been much worse.
December 18th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
It’s been clear for some time now that we were helping to set up Maliki as a standard-issue Third World strongman. So this latest action is simply more confirmation of that.
That said, I disagree with Peter K., above. The more successful Maliki’s consolidation of power is, the more likely we’ll be able to leave without incident.
But if the net effect of the Iraq war was to:
a) Replace a bloodthirsty tyrant with a somewhat less bloodthirsty nondemocratic strongman;
b) Replace Iran’s major regional adversary with an Iranian ally/dependent; and
c) kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, exile millions, wound untold thousands more, and destroy Iraq’s infrastructure and economy;
It’s hard to call that a Good Thing, y’know?
December 18th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Quite rightly too.
December 18th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
This news is totally at the expense of the anti-war people.
And good news for John McCain!
No, seriously, 70% of the public, including the President Elect, wanted to leave Iraq when it was on the brink of a civil war and ethnic cleansing was endemic, but “people starting stuff” might cause us to stay. Right.
Whatever. It’s not as though the American public is paying attention to you people anymore. We’re leaving, and you can whine about that all you want.
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