Word: jaafari
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Since last week, Jalal Talabani - both the president of Iraq and a key Kurdish nationalist leader - has been maneuvering to force the Shi'ite bloc that won the most seats in December's parliamentary election to withdraw its nomination of incumbent Ibrahim al-Jaafari as prime minister. The main Kurdish grievance with Jaafari appears to be his resistance to their attempts to incorporate the northern oil city of Kirkuk into their de facto autonomous mini-state; the last straw was a recent visit by Jaafari to Ankara to discuss Iraqi affairs with Turkey, which has made clear that it regards...
...force the Shi'ites' hand by calling the legislature into session this coming Sunday - which would have begun a 60-day countdown to decide on the next prime minister and his cabinet - was also blocked. In this case it was the Shi'ite politician most likely to replace Jaafari as the nominee, Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, who put Shi'ite unity above his own partisan interests. On Tuesday, Jaafari refused to entertain any notion of stepping aside from his candidacy, declaring that "no one can make bargains with me by enlarging personal disagreements...
...Jaafari, widely disliked outside of his immediate support base, won the nomination of the Shi'ite alliance by only one vote, thanks to the intervention of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr, who threw his 32 votes (among the 128 seats held by the Shi'ite alliance) behind the incumbent. Jaafari's rival in that contest was none other than Abdel Mahdi, a candidate preferred by the U.S. and a top official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, with which Sadr has been engaged in a long-running battle for Shi'ite political supremacy...
...situation is complicated by the fact that all of Jaafari's detractors are motivated by different agendas - and some of them at odds with one another. The Sunnis dismiss Jaafari as too sectarian and unwilling to make concessions to accommodate their interests; most recently he was fiercely denounced for his government's failure to protect Sunnis from a wave of a violent retribution for the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine two weeks ago. The U.S., for its part, has found Jaafari to be insufficiently responsive to Washington's concerns and demands, and his historic ties with Iran haven...
...moderated his image by embracing elections and joining the political process. But in the two months since Iraq's general election, he has shown he will be a disruptive figure in the heart of any new government. He scuttled a plan that would have replaced Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari--who is widely distrusted by Sunnis--with the more acceptable Adil Abdul Mahdi, and his refusal to deal with secular politicians like former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has confounded U.S. attempts to nudge the Shi'ites to form a national unity government. "We did our best to bring [al-Sadr...