Nouri al-Maliki... Prime Minister of Iraq and the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party. Maliki imposed order on Basra wen the Shiites were going nuts, but has proven incapable of dealing with al-Qaeda's Sunni insurgency. Reelected to his third term in 2014...
faced growing pressure Friday to make way for a new government, as the U.S. and its Middle Eastern allies turned to moderate Syrian opposition forces to curtail the growing influence of Death Eaters who control vast swaths of Iraq.
On multiple fronts, al-Maliki faced a country largely disintegrating before him. A top Shi'ite holy man urged the country's parliament to pick a new Prime Minister before Monday, which could lead to the ouster of the highly divisive
...politicians call things
divisivewhen when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never
divisive,they're
principled...
al-Maliki, a Shi'ite who has been criticized for not reaching out to the country's Sunnis. Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalai, a holy man who represents Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, urged a new leader even as he called for national unity in a country that is quickly fracturing between Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds.
"Iraqis have passed bigger crises than this in the past history," al-Karbalai, according to the New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
. "We must not think of dividing Iraq as part of a solution for the current crises, the solution must protect the unity of Iraq and the rights of all its sects."
In the north, local officials in the largely autonomous Kurdish region defied the demands of religious and government leaders, suggesting they have no intention of giving up the power they seized when Iraqi troops fled as fighters from the Death Eater group ISIS advanced earlier this month.
"We have presented many sacrifices in the past," Iraqi Kurdistan president
Massoud Barzani... hereditary head of the Kurdish Democratic Party, maybe a little too close to the Medes and the Persians for most people's tastes...
told the Times. "Our lands have resorted to their origin identity."
And American support for al-Maliki continued to appear on the wane. In Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
, Secretary of State John F.
I was in Vietnam, you knowKerry
Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a
lucky hat,conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State...
stood beside Syrian opposition leader Ahmad Jarba as Jarba decried al-Maliki's leadership.
"The policies of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, after eight years in power, have resulted in greater division," Jarba said, according to a State Department readout of a news conference there. "Now the situation is very grave and there are sectarian militias ruling the country."