Word: maliki
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Think of him as a chameleon. Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's Prime Minister, owes his survival to an ability to adapt his political persona to the prevailing circumstances. During his 24-year exile from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, he dropped his given name and went by "Jawad," to avoid detection by the dictator's spies. Returning to Baghdad in 2003, Maliki seemed no different from the legion of Shi'ite partisans who took up posts in the U.S.-installed interim government. He brought vigor and venom to his job on the committee responsible for purging the government of Saddam...
Until then, most Iraqis had never heard of him, and didn't know what to expect from this phlegmatic figure in ill-fitting suits. Maliki didn't help matters by constantly shifting his position on key issues. One moment he supported the radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr; the next, he was ordering Iraqi forces to smash Sadr's militia. One minute he was being described by President Bush as "my man"; the next, he was fulminating against U.S. interference in Iraqi politics. "It's like every six months there's a new Maliki," says a Western official...
...three years into his premiership, the real Nouri al-Maliki may finally be revealing himself. Emboldened by his popular campaign against the Shi'ite militias, and by the U.S. military's success in turning the Sunni insurgency against al-Qaeda, Maliki has begun to project a persona instantly familiar to Iraqis, and to Arabs in general: the strongman. He has ordered the arrest of a number of prominent Sunnis, pushed aside rivals and undermined allies. In speeches, his language has grown increasingly belligerent, accusing those who disagree with his policies of working against Iraq. (See pictures of life returning...
...rivals, just as Saddam did. Vice President Adel Abdel-Mahdi, a prominent Shi'ite, has openly criticized the centralization of power in the Prime Minister's office. "We don't want another dictator in Baghdad," says Maysoon al-Damluji, a secular Member of Parliament. "It worries us all that [Maliki] is beginning to behave like a tyrant...
...Maliki, 58, hardly looks the part. With his permanent five-o'clock shadow and slack posture, he seems no more tyrannical than a demotivated schoolteacher, an impression underscored by his toneless speaking style. But there's no denying that his stature has increased. "I didn't know he had it in him," says Ridha Jawad Taki, a Shi'ite parliamentarian who has known Maliki since the 1980s, when both lived in Syria. "He has become self-assured, and very decisive." Those qualities were burnished in November, when Maliki overcame considerable opposition within Iraq's parliament to sign an agreement with...