Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has his back against the wall. Last month, 15 members of the Fadhila party left the Shiite Alliance - al-Maliki's most important power base. Later, all six ministers of the movement led by the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr left the government. Now al-Maliki has been forced to dismiss Defence Minister Abdul Kader al-Obeidi - a Sunni. Otherwise, the Iraqi Accord Front, which with 44 seats is the strongest party in parliament, threatened to withdraw its seven ministers as well as Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zubai. This would have meant the final break-up of the government. 'Al-Maliki will remain in office for another few months at most,' politicians were speculating at the Arab Summit in Riyadh in late March, where Iraq was represented by two Kurdish politicians - President Jalal Talabani and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. In fact, the Shiite prime minister is increasingly struggling to juggle US strategy, the power interests of rival Shiite parties, the influence of Iran, the Kurdish strive for independence and the constant criticism from dissatisfied Sunnis.
Officially, the Sadr movement has justified its resignation from the government with al-Maliki's refusal to provide a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq. But there is another reason why the Sadr followers are distancing themselves from the prime minister. In February and after hesitating for a long time, al- Maliki finally succumbed to pressure from Washington. Since then, US troops and the British military can more or less do as they wish in raids and attacks on the Sadr movement's militia. The US and Iraqi Sunnis have accused the Mahdi Army of murdering thousands of Sunnis solely on the basis of their religious beliefs.
At the same time, a new front is opening in Basra. In the southern Iraqi oil city, a serious power struggle has broken out between the various Shiite parties, in which the alliances are not entirely clear. The only thing that is certain is that the Fadhila party, which supplies the governor of the city and is steering an independent course in Baghdad as well as Basra, is coming increasingly under pressure.
Al-Maliki was selected as prime minister after the parliamentary elections in December 2005 because he seemed to be a centrist. Unlike other members of the Shiite majority, he does not have a particularly close relationship with Tehran. His Dawa party also has fewer armed men than the Sadr movement or the third largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
Yet, by now hardly anyone believes that the present government will last much longer. On the one hand, because more than 500 civilians have been murdered or blown up in Baghdad over the past two months despite the new security plan. On the other hand, because the US Democrats are exerting pressure on President George W Bush over the Iraq dilemma, which might finally mean that al-Maliki will have to leave.