Iraq crisis: Demand for PM, al-Maliki’s resignation widens
There’s a growing chorus — both in Washington and in the Arab world — that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has to go if there’s any hope of unifying Iraq as Islamic militants advance south toward Baghdad.
While some on Capitol Hill aren’t shy about saying his days as the Iraqi bellwether should come to a cessation, at the White House it’s more of a whisper.
Senior U.S. officials tell CNN that the Obama administration is of the notion that al-Maliki is not the bellwether Iraq needs to unify the country and culminate sectarian tensions.
The officials, along with Arab diplomats, verbalize the White House is now fixated on a political transition that would move Iraqis toward a more inclusive regime — one without al-Maliki that includes Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions.
Whatever the action, something needs to transpire expeditious.
The lightning-expeditious advance by Sunni fighters for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, has toppled sizably voluminous portions of northern Iraq and brought the militant push to within 40 miles (64 kilometers) of Baghdad. ISIS wants to establish a caliphate, or Islamic state, that would stretch from Iraq into northern Syria.
Al-Maliki: Iraqi forces rebounding
Iraq’s military and the militants have been fighting for control of Iraq’s main oil refinery in Baiji, some 225 kilometers (140 miles) north of Baghdad, the capital.
In a phone interview on state-run al-Iraqiya TV on Thursday, Col. Ali Al Qureshi, the commander of troops responsible for forfending the refinery, verbalized Iraqi armed forces were in full control.
He verbally expressed the militants had suffered dozens of casualties in the course of multiple attacks but had failed to take the refinery intricate.
CNN was not able independently to corroborate the casualty numbers or the situation on the ground.
Police officials verbalized Wednesday that militants had managed to surmount some 60% of the involute and set fire to five storage containers.
Iraq’s military had verbally expressed earlier Wednesday that the situation in Baiji, as well as Samarra and Tal Afar, was “under control.”
“We absorbed the initial shock of the military operations, and now we are on the rebound. We will respond and keep the momentum,” al-Maliki verbally expressed in a weekly address. “What transpired was a catastrophe, but not every catastrophe is a vanquishment.”
The refinery is a key strategic resource because so much of Iraq’s economy depends on its oil engenderment. The country engenders 3.3 million barrels per day and has the world’s fourth-most immensely colossal proven crude oil reserves, according to OPEC.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, told Congress that the United States has received a request from the Iraqi regime to utilize its air power in the conflict.
Curbing sympathies
Al-Maliki’s Shiite-led regime has marginalized Sunnis and Kurds. There’s hope that a regime bringing them into the political process would curb sympathies for ISIS by those who find themselves on the outside.
A transmutation in regime can’t come too soon for some in Washington
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, verbally expressed al-Maliki has to be convinced that it’s in the country’s best interest for him to retire.
“I cerebrate that most of us that have followed this are genuinely convinced that the Maliki regime, candidly, has got to go if you optate any reconciliation,” she verbally expressed this week.
Publicly though, the White House isn’t being as direct.
Earlier this week in a Yahoo!News interview, Secretary of State John Kerry verbally expressed the United States shouldn’t be dictating to the Iraqi people that al-Maliki needs to resign.
“Now, we pellucidly can play an inspiriting, consultative role in availing them to achieve that transition, and we have people on the ground right now,” he verbalized.
