BAGHDAD // In a development that highlights the bickering among Iraq’s leaders, a crucial parliament session to form a new government was delayed on Monday until August 12.
Also on Monday, a key Iraqi general was killed in fighting as solutions to the country’s worst crisis in years appeared increasingly distant.
In the past weeks, Islamist militants have seized large areas of Iraq, alarming the international community and heaping pressure on incumbent prime minister Nouri Al Maliki as he bids for a third term in office.
Citing the inability of political camps to reach “understanding and agreement” on nominations for the top three posts in government, the office of acting speaker Mehdi Al Hafidh said parliament would not meet again until August.
“Things are moving faster than the politicians can make decisions,” a senior Shiite member of parliament said.
More than two months after elections in which Mr Al Maliki’s camp won the most seats, though not a majority, parliament has yet to begin the process of choosing the country’s top three positions, which according to an unofficial deal are split between the Shiite Arab, Sunni Arab and Kurdish communities.
A session last week ended in chaos, with MPs trading heckles and threats before some of them eventually walked out, forcing an adjournment, with the UN’s special envoy warning that further delays risked plunging the country into “Syria-like chaos”.
Despite saying in a 2011 interview he would not seek a third term, Mr Al Maliki vowed last week he would not bow to mounting international and domestic pressure to step aside and allow a broader consensus.
Iraqi forces have largely regrouped after the debacle that saw soldiers abandon their positions and, in some cases, even weapons and uniforms as militants led by the Islamic State militant group conquered Iraq’s second city, Mosul, and advanced to within about 80 kilometres of Baghdad.
But while Iraq has received equipment, intelligence and ground help from the United States, Russia, Iran and even Shiite militias it once shunned, languishing government efforts to push back were dealt a blow by the killing of a senior general.
Major General Najm Abdullah Al Sudani, the commander of the army’s 6th division, “was killed by hostile shelling in Ibrahim bin Ali”, Lieutenant General Qassem Atta said.
Ibrahim bin Ali is in the Abu Ghraib area, just west of Baghdad, near where security forces have been locked in a months-long standoff with militants who have seized control of the city of Fallujah.
Security forces have for more than a week also attempted to wrest back the Sunni stronghold of Tikrit from a loose alliance of Islamic State fighters, other jihadist groups and former Saddam Hussein loyalists, but have so far failed to achieve a breakthrough.
Iraqi forces have been hamstrung by a lack of combat experience and a dearth of intelligence in Sunni areas, due largely to distrust of the Shiite-led authorities among minority Sunni Arabs, analysts say.
“The army and the police are seen as sectarian ... and therefore the Sunni community doesn’t provide support or, crucially, intelligence to the security forces,” said John Drake of the AKE Group security company.
“If you don’t have good intelligence on the ground, your strikes are not precise, they involve collateral damage and casualties ... making everything worse.”
While most observers have argued Baghdad was not about to fall, violence and suicide bombings have continued.
The latest struck a cafe in a predominantly Shiite neighbourhood in western Baghdad Sunday, killing at least four people and wounding 12, officials said.
An Islamic State-linked Twitter account posted on Monday a picture purported to be of the suicide bomber, apparently a Lebanese national, posing in front of the black Islamic flag before his operation, holding a sword and surrounded by assault rifles and rocket launchers.
The authenticity of the image could not immediately be verified.
And while government forces were still looking for a major victory, Islamic State militants appeared to be brimming with confidence.
A few days after declaring the establishment of a “caliphate”, the group’s leader, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, stepped out of the shadows to deliver a Friday sermon in Mosul’s largest mosque.
Analysts have described the sudden public appearance by the self-proclaimed “caliph” – second only to Al Qaeda chief Ayman Al Zawahiri on the US most wanted list — as a daring stunt reinforcing Mr Al Baghdadi’s status as the new strongman in the world of global Islamist militants.
* Agence France-Presse and Reuters