Al Maliki's Successor Faces Old Problems
Updated: 6:29pm UK, Friday 15 August 2014
By Andrew Wilson, Sky News Presenter, in Irbil, Iraq
The disaster in the Sinjar mountains turns out to be less of a public relations nightmare for Western leaders than first feared.
A few thousand destitute Yazidi people don't carry anything like the clout of tens of thousands.
The UNHCR operators on the ground had figured this out days ago. Their job is numbers and they know that in a brutal world, the problem isn't Sinjar anymore, it's the displacement of those that were there and are now here looking for long-term shelter from the Kurdish Regional Government and maybe even homes in Europe and America.
So what about the spread of this Islamic caliphate across Northern Iraq and Syria?
Well, as far as its leaders-in-waiting are concerned, it's going pretty well.
It's ominous dark shade on the Middle Eastern map is now one colour from Aleppo to Diyala on Iraq's eastern border.
And, to date, that progress has been largely unchallenged.
Reports of executions and crucifixions have played a part; even the Taliban back in 2001 could not generate the kind of terror that precedes Islamic State (IS) fighters wherever they go.
But IS are picking their enemies strategically as well.
Few tears were shed in Washington when the extremists turned on President Assad, and as for Baghdad, it took so long for the West to declare mission accomplished and pull out that going back in now would be unthinkably embarrassing.
Better to find another old friend to blame, this time the stubbornly sectarian Nouri al Maliki.
It is all his fault that disgruntled Sunnis allowed the IS to swoop down in their armed pickups and help themselves to all the American weapons lying abandoned in the sand.
If only he had built a more unified Iraq with loyal officers and disciplined troops, says the West, failing to mention 2003 when a cadre of professional Iraqi generals stood ready to deploy their well-trained forces for the post-Saddam rebuild only to be shunned by the American occupiers who knew better.
So now the successor is embraced. Haider al Abadi seems a decent man, more of a consensus builder than a bully.
He is still a Shia, of course, same party as Mr Maliki, in fact, and you wouldn't want his job for all the gold in Saddam's palace.
He will need three phones; for Washington, Tehran and Brussels, and they will all be on his case to fix - in no particular order - the Islamic Caliphate; Sunni minority rights; an army that's just given all its weapons to the other side; Shia aspirations for a greater Iraq joined by holy sites to Iran and, of course, tens of thousands of displaced Yazidis.
It's difficult, if not suicidal, to be a consensus politician in the Middle East.
Think Sadat, Rabin, or even Mahmoud Abbas sitting quietly in Ramallah with "Israeli traitor" daubed on the walls near his house.
Sadly, in this part of the world, where the borders were drawn by foreigners a long time ago, the time-honoured formula, still espoused by Assad, Sisi, the Royal families of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is more simple: build a power base and crush your enemies.
Nouri al Maliki was on the way, but didn't make it.
And this time, no more boots on the ground.
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