The battle for Baghdad.

• Author: Pollack, Kenneth M.
• Position: Essay

The scheming had gone on for hours. The Iraqis were from a half dozen different political groupings, some sectarian, some secular. It was Baghdad, it was February 2009 and it was less than a month after Iraq's provincial elections. For our hosts, the purpose of the dinner was to assure me and a colleague that their coalition had enough people on its side to oust Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki in a vote of no confidence. It was one of many such meals we attended on that trip with Iraqi friends determined to prevent Maliki from spinning his recent electoral victories into absolute power.

That night our hosts were hoping to convince us of the strength of their position, but as the evening dragged on, assurances were forgotten. The scheming turned desperate. A little longer and any remaining vestige of confidence was gone altogether. The Iraqis began to reveal, to each other as much as to us, the problems they faced. This party boss would only join if he were named defense minister, but he brought too few votes to justify it. Another group would only join if still another party were excluded. But they would not give up on their dream of ousting Maliki, and their machinations turned to ways of getting around those obstacles.

Finally, the conversation reached its climax. The Iraqis managed to convince themselves they would have the votes they needed. They had convinced themselves that they had ways--tenuous ways, but ways--to overcome their problems. The somber mood of concern that had hung in the room seemed like it was about to lift. They had successfully built a Rube Goldberg machine that would oust the prime minister. Then, at that moment, one member of the group dispelled the whole fantastic edifice: "But Hakim [leader of the most important Shia party] won't agree to a vote of no confidence," he pointed out glumly. "He says it would look like we were trying to overturn the will of the people. And without ISCI [the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Hakim's party] we don't have the votes."

The dream was over. The desperate confidence evaporated. The circle of conversation splintered as some went to get more coffee or tea or sweets; others simply rose to give physical manifestation to their frustration. They fell to complaining about Sa'id Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's unwillingness to join a vote of no confidence and to warning us that if the United States did not do something about Prime Minister Maliki we would be facing either a new Saddam or a new civil war. And as the evening faded, their warnings wasted away into plaintive questions about the new Obama administration's willingness to oust Maliki since they could not do it themselves.

America is still all that stands between stability and anarchy in Iraq.

A few days earlier we had seen the other side of the coin: a lunch with several of the prime minister's most important confidantes. The tone was understandably different. There was great confidence borne of Maliki's Dawa Party victory in the recent provincial elections. They now had control of many of Iraq's most important provinces and, of far greater importance, momentum. Yet, there was also concern. They knew that their position was hardly unassailable, and they knew all about the dinner meetings going on all over Iraq at which other Iraqi leaders schemed to forge coalitions to prevent them from securing an equal or greater victory in Iraq's national elections scheduled for January 2010. They wanted to convince me and my colleagues that Maliki could not only sweep to power in those polls, but would do so in a perfectly legal, democratic fashion. All of our questions about the prime minister's not-quite-constitutionally stipulated moves-his reliance on regional operations centers outside the official Iraqi military chain of command; the slew of procedures, especially in the oil and electricity sectors, that likewise bypass formal lines of authority; the formation of tribal-support councils beyond the established bureaucratic structure that are used to funnel money to willing sheikhs--were all deflected with pitch-perfect talking points and a Cheshire cat grin.

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Here as well, we had many friends, and they knew us well enough to know that we took no sides in Iraq's political battles. So as the afternoon wore on we heard more about their electoral strategy. It was simple and powerful. During 2009, the prime minister would throw himself into the task of solving Iraq's last remaining security problems and improving the provision of basic services like electricity, clean water, sanitation and medical care to the Iraqi people. He would demonstrate that he was the only man who could do so. Many of the prime minister's foes may try to block whatever he tries to do on these scores, and this would only play to his advantage. Maliki and his allies would make the election about the provision of security and basic services, and the only question would be how big their victory would be.

We saw that the strength of this strategy also came from the weaknesses of the parties opposing Maliki, all of which are nearly hopeless when it comes to fashioning their own electoral message let alone successfully redefining the issues on which the election will turn.

But we also knew that Maliki had several more aces up his sleeve that were less savory than those our friends wanted to discuss.

Iraqi nationalism is on the rise. And it is this force that the prime minister hopes to unleash if providing basic services is not enough to secure reelection. As always, nationalism is a double-edged sword. It has started to heal the rifts between Sunni and Shia. And it has been the most important factor in limiting Iranian influence. The more Iraqis feel confident in themselves, the more they push back on the mostly despised Persian interlopers. But the forces of nationalism are also threatening to Iraq's minorities and the cohesion of the state, no more so than when it comes to the Kurdish problem.

Since late 2008, Maliki has been deploying more of Iraq's nascent military power to the north and goading the army into regular provocations with the Kurdish militia--the pesh merga. The prime minister has a legitimate reason: the Iraqi government's security forces have a right and a need to control all of Iraq's territory. But no one with any sense believes that now is the time to resolve this issue, or that marching army battalions into Kurdistan without an agreement with the Kurds is the right way to do it. Predictably, the Kurds have just as regularly risen to the bait. In August 2008, an Iraqi army operation in the ethnically mixed city of Khanaqin in northeast Iraq nearly...