Word: shying
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Maliki, 56, is an unlikely unifier. In his previous job as spokesman for al-Jaafari's Islamic Dawa Party, he was known as a Shi'ite partisan. But he gained the trust of some Sunni politicians during last year's tortured negotiations over Iraq's constitution, when he was one of several politicians who helped cobble together a temporary compromise with Sunni and Kurdish groups...
...feuding parties, al-Maliki comes to the job with considerable liabilities. For one, he lacks a public profile. Most Iraqis had not heard of him when he was named a candidate for al-Jaafari's job. More damaging is the fact that his party is allied with powerful Shi'ite groups that control the very militias he says he wants to crush. Criticizing U.S. troops will help him gain some street cred--if Iraqis believe he is serious. In the 10 weeks since the Haditha incident was made public, he showed little interest in the alleged massacre--until his outburst...
...real measure of defeating the insurgency is a reduction in their attacks and numbers - not ancillary questions like how many Iraqi units are fit to fight without U.S. assistance. A functioning Parliament could provide a release valve for rising sectarian tensions, but the fact is both disaffected Sunnis and Shi'ites are still using the threat of violence to gain political leverage. It is wrong to assume that each new step toward democracy, however laudable, will persuade jihadists to lay down their arms; those who disdain Western-style democracy aren't likely to be persuaded by its implementation...
...Unsurprisingly, the announcement of temporary ministers for the security roles did not go down well with many Sunnis. The parliamentary faction of Sunni leader Saleh Mutlak walked out of the legislature in protest. Mutlak had told TIME earlier in the week that Maliki and other Shi'ite leaders were using the guise of "temporary ministers" as a way of creating a fait accompli. "After some weeks or months, they will say, look, the Interior Ministry is being run by a Shi'ite anyway, so let's make that permanent," he warned...
...worth remembering that Maliki is himself a compromise candidate - a relative unknown figure with negligible street credibility, he was picked because his party boss, former Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, had become unacceptable to Sunni and Kurdish parties. Inside political circles, Maliki had been known as a strident Shi'ite hardliner. Since his nomination, he has struck a more conciliatory pose, talking up unity and inching away from the anti-Sunni positions he had previously defended. His reinvention has been aided by U.S. officials keen to present him as Iraq's best hope. Khalilzad has described him an a "patriot...