AMMAN, Jordan, April 23 (UPI) -- It took four months for the Iraqis to finally choose their new top leaders, but it will take a lot more time to rehabilitate their country.
After weeks of wrangling on who should form the first permanent elected government after the U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein's regime three years ago, politicians Saturday chose Jawad Maliki from the Shiite Dawa Party as Iraq's prime minister.
The powerful Shiite United Alliance Party, the largest bloc in the 275-seat National Assembly that includes 13 parties and groups, nominated Maliki after the Sunni forces gave him a reluctant nod and former Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari was finally persuaded to bow out.
The Parliament also renamed Kurdish President Jalal Talabani to serve for the next four years and Sunni Arab Mahmoud Mashhadani as Parliament speaker.
Having reached an agreement on the figures to lead is a start and may be regarded as an achievement, but the tough challenges that lie ahead, particularly for the new prime minister, will be the most difficult to overcome if the country is to conquer its deep crisis.
Maliki's first difficult task, which his predecessor and party comrade Jaafari failed to accomplish, is to form a cohesive national coalition government within one month.
The new prime minister appeared confident Saturday night in Baghdad when he promised the Iraqi people he intends to form a strong Cabinet team to include representatives from all the country's social and political forces and to "eliminate injustice" against any sect or ethnic group.
Maliki, who also envisioned his new government to confront terrorism and administrative corruption, went further and vowed to work towards "revoking all sectarian notions."
Analysts say revoking these notions is easier said than done in a country torn by sectarian violence, largely thanks to the institutionalization of a sectarian system, the U.S.-British military occupation and the absence of a reliable national security structure.
The new constitution, endorsed in a national referendum last year, allocated the presidential post to a Kurd - the first time an Arab country's president is a non-Arab - the prime ministry to a Shiite and the parliament speakership to a Sunni Arab.
For the first time, the Shiites, who make up about 60 percent of Iraq's population, have suddenly found themselves in power after having been marginalized and often repressed for the good part of the 20th Century by a minority Sunni rule.
Arab analysts say the concept of allocating leadership positions according to sect was initially intended to produce a system of collective power-sharing and participation in a country where Kurds make up about 20 percent, Sunni Arabs 15 percent and a small minority of Christians and Turkomen.
But this distribution, they say, has backfired, whereby the Iraqis have virtually poured their loyalties into their sectarian and ethnic identities, making the armed militias a magnet, especially for the unemployed youth.
In an effort to avert an all-out civil war, Maliki promised his government will build a well-trained security force and called for the militias to merge with such a force in line with the law. "Arms should be in the hands of the government," he said.
Analysts say his task in finding the right interior and defense ministers will be the most urgent and arduous if he wants to make good on his promise to merge the militias with a national armed forces - something that could limit the executions, kidnappings and raging crime sweeping the country.
The outgoing interior ministry, controlled by the powerful and Iran-backed Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, is widely accused of having unleashed, or at least condoned, the death squads responsible for the assassination of hundreds of Sunni academics, former military officers and tribal and religious leaders in recent months.
Maliki, 55, has been described as "tough yet pragmatic," but he is also seen as a hard-line Shiite politician with deep bitterness towards former Baathists - something that Sunni Arab leaders say he will need to overcome if he wants to succeed in forming a national coalition government and eliminate the "notion of sectarianism."
The prime minister-designate, who called for the execution of Sunni insurgents who killed Iraqis, was a member of the De-Baathification Commission to purge members of Saddam's ruling party from the military and government. This angered the Sunni Arabs who felt they were being pushed out of the political process.
As a member of the U.S.-brokered National Council, he also represented the Shiite alliance during months of negotiations over the formulation of the new permanent constitution.
Maliki was born in a small town outside the Shiite holy city of Karbala and as a young man joined the underground Dawa Party that opposed Saddam's rule.
He fled to neighboring Iran in 1980 shortly after he was sentenced to death for his membership in the party, but moved to Syria after the Dawa Party broke up between a pro-Iranian faction and a second one that refused to join the Iranian army during the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war.
While living in exile in Damascus, Maliki headed his party branch that directed activists inside Iraq and returned to his country with the downfall of Saddam's regime in April 2003.
Maliki has one month, as he searches for Cabinet ministers, to show whether he is a sectarian politician or the pragmatist who seeks to eliminate sectarianism and unite the country.
After that, analysts say, he needs to lead a government that will address the immediate grievances of the people that the past two provisional governments have not only failed to do, but allowed conditions to deteriorate, making the rehabilitation process more grueling.
He is in the unenviable position of forming a government that is capable of administering Iraq's complicated affairs, bringing back the basic services - taken away from the people with the U.S.-led invasion - and restoring security and safety.
Analysts say the new government needs the support of all the Iraqi forces, as well as Arab and international assistance, just to kick off and gain public trust that could gradually wane the insurgency, although that might require an end to the foreign occupation.
Uprooting the overall chaos and violence, however, will need time and maybe a miracle.
