Juan Cole: Could Wikileaks Leave Iraq Without a Government?

[Juan Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, maintains the blog Informed Comment. His most recent book, just out in paperback, is Engaging the Muslim World.]

The wikileaks document dump from the Iraq War may well derail the formation of a government by implicating caretaker prime minister Nuri al-Maliki in running death squads. We are in our seventh month since the March 7 elections, but no new prime minister has been named because no party or coalition has the 163 seats needed for a majority in Parliament.

In recent weeks caretaker prime minister Nuri al-Maliki has finally put together some 138 seats, needing only 25 to form a government.

But the Wikileak allegations about the government running Shiite death squads during al-Maliki’s term as prime minister may have derailed that process.

Al-Maliki’s rival, the largely secular Iraqiya List of Iyad Allawi, has slammed him in the aftermath of the leaks and has demanded an investigation of him. He says he is suspicious of the timing of the leaks. (Likely he means that it is odd that this information surfaced just as he closed in on nailing down a second term as prime minister, a development not welcome to Washington because it was fostered by Iran.) But it is silly to allege that Julian Assange is secretly working for the US government.