Nouri al-Maliki: The old disaster in a new wrapper

 Nouri al-Maliki has never been the solution for Iraq. Not during his eight years in power. Not in the decade that followed his departure. And not during the country’s long collapse since 2003. He has always been part of the problem, never the solution. Today, amid growing talk of his potential return to the premiership, Iraq seems to be deliberately heading back towards the very tragedy it has spent 22 years trying to escape. It is as if two decades of failure, corruption and institutional decay were not enough to convince the political class that ruin cannot be recycled. Al-Maliki’s return is not a routine political development; it is a historical relapse that takes Iraq back to square one — […]