Meet Iraq's New Boss — Same as the Old Boss

The announcement on Saturday that all key Iraqi factions have agreed on Jawad al-Maliki as an acceptable Shi'ite replacement for controversial prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari was greeted as a sign of hope for the cause of Iraqi democracy. But whatever their differences in personal style, Jaafari and his designated successor are cut from the same political cloth — and they will face the same political obstacles that fueled Kurdish, Sunni and U.S. objections to Jaafari.

Maliki appears remarkably similar to the man for whom he effectively served as a spokesman for the past year. Like Jaafari, Maliki is a Shi'ite Islamist of the Dawa party who spent some of his exile in Iran (the rest was in Damascus, while Jaafari went to London); like Jaafari he owes his position to the backing of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Both men have been accused of having a sectarian outlook despite their public embrace of national unity; both are Iraqi nationalists who oppose the dismembering of Iraq into semi-autonomous mini states; both would also abide by the wishes of Iraq's leading Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who helped pave the way for this deal.

Where Jaafari had been branded as passive, aloof and high-handed by his critics, Maliki — who has taken a lead in de-Baathification efforts that have alienated many Sunnis — is deemed to be a dogged negotiator who doesn't easily change his position. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad praised him as a tough-minded, independent leader who is saying all the right things. Then again, it is easy to forget that Washington was loquacious in its praise for Jaafari less than a year ago, too.

The tough-mindedness for which Maliki is known will have to be matched with a political flexibility rare among Iraqi leaders if he is to have any chance of improving on Jaafari, however: He lacks a majority in the legislature, and will need to find allies on an issue-by-issue basis to pursue his legislative agenda. Since consensus is no easy feat in in light of the sectarian tensions of all of the major blocs in the legislative assembly, Maliki may simply end up commanding a weaker central government.

And then there are the issues. The Kurdish, Sunni and U.S. objections to Jaafari were based less on style than substance, and it's not clear Maliki will be very different: critics, for instance, saw Jaafari as wedded to a sectarian outlook that precluded offering greater power to the Sunnis in the hope of drawing them in, unwilling to rein in the militias associated with his own sect, and (in the case of the Kurds) hostile to a federalism that would allow the creation of de facto-independent regions. One early test will come over the next month as Maliki cobbles together a cabinet — Jaafari had favored putting members of the Shi'ite alliance in charge of the defense and security portfolios that Washington wants to see controlled by U.S.-friendly secular leaders.

The staffing of the security ministries is closely tied to the challenge of curbing the sectarian militias that Khalilzad has called "the infrastructure of civil war." Maliki's position, like that of Jaafari, is that the militias must be absorbed into the new security forces. That's an option that has critics worried, because if they keep their shape and leadership, then incorporating them simply gives militias official license to operate, in much the same the way that critics have charged that the Interior Ministry commandoes double as a Shi'ite militia.

But Maliki, whose political base includes the two major Shi'ite militias, may be tempted to point to the Kurdish example, where the "peshmerga" forces loyal to the region's two main political parties have been rebranded as units of the new security forces. The Kurdish leaders aren't about to accept the breakup and dispersal of the peshmerga into a wider army on a non-sectarian basis, so Maliki may be able to get away with his position, insisting that what's good for the Kurds is good for everyone else.