The chief candidates of the UIA now seem to be Jawad al-Maliki, a long-time Dawa Party activist exiled for decades to Syria, and Ali al-Adib of the Dawa Party's Tehran branch. It is so amusing that the saviors of the Bush administration's political process in Iraq are beholden either to Syria or Iran-- Bush's chief targets for demonization-- for their political survival in the Saddam years.
I guess finding this situation amusing is better than finding it reassuring ...
Posted by armand at April 21, 2006 11:46 AM | TrackBack | Posted to IraqSo let's see - Maliki is a leader in Dawa (a Shiite religious/political party), he fled Iraq in 1980, and then went to Iran and then to Syria. Given that timeline I'm surely not the only one who's very curious to learn about what this guy was up to in the 1980's, and if he had anything to do with the creation of another Shiite religious/political party then - hint: it starts with H.
And part of why I'm curious is that all the major international papers and news services have virtually nothing to say about this guy who'll presumably be running Iraq for the next for years. The few reports that there are are simply policy positions any Dawa leader would have (which isn't to say Americans would like those - but they are to be expected). Does anyone know much about him in any kind of detail?
Posted by: Armand at April 22, 2006 10:29 AM | PERMALINKHaven't seen anything about him in the 1980s, or about what sort of policies he is likely to promote. The news media seems obsessed with gas prices these days.
Posted by: baltar at April 23, 2006 04:22 PM | PERMALINK