BAGHDAD — The disastrous loss of a large swath of the north to Islamic militants is threatening to cost Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki his job as even longtime Shiite backers turn against him and seek an alternative.
During a meeting of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish party leaders this week, an up-and-coming Shiite politician, Ammar al-Hakim, angrily told al-Maliki that his “obsession with power” and botched policies were to blame for this week’s debacle. He stormed out of the session, according to a politician who attended and shared the exchange with The Associated Press in return for anonymity.
During his eight years in office, al-Maliki has touted himself as the only leader capable of safeguarding the Shiite domination, won after the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein — a Sunni — and the defeat of Sunni militants.
Those claims have begun to sound increasingly hollow since December, when fighters of a breakaway faction of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, captured the city of Fallujah in the mainly Sunni province of Anbar, as well as parts of its capital Ramadi. That put the militants just 30 miles west of Baghdad.
But it is the loss this week of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown, along with vast territory in northern Iraq, that could bring the end of his tenure.
Without mentioning al-Maliki by name, President Barack Obama criticized the Iraqi leader in an address Friday.
“We’re not going to allow ourselves to be dragged back into a situation in which, while we’re there we’re keeping a lid on things, and after enormous sacrifices by us, after we’re not there, people start acting in ways that are not conducive to the long-term stability and prosperity of the country,” Obama said.
Earlier this week, al-Maliki called for popular mobilization in the face of advances by the Islamic militants.
A close Shiite ally with vast experience in running militias, Hadi al-Amiri, has set up the “Hussein Brigade” — named after one of Shiism’s most beloved saints — to fight the militants. Calls by senior Shiite clerics for Iraqis to take up arms to fight the Islamic State militants could only bolster al-Maliki’s standing.
