Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s office is responsible for the removal of high level Iraqi security forces and police for being too efficient in the engagement of the Mahdi army.

A department of the Iraqi prime minister’s office is playing a leading role in the arrest and removal of senior Iraqi army and national police officers, some of whom had apparently worked too aggressively to combat violent Shiite militias, according to U.S. military officials in Baghdad.

Since March 1, at least 16 army and national police commanders have been fired, detained or pressured to resign; at least nine of them are Sunnis, according to U.S. military documents shown to The Washington Post …

“Their only crimes or offenses were they were successful” against the Mahdi Army, a powerful Shiite militia, said Brig. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard, commanding general of the Iraq Assistance Group, which works with Iraqi security forces. “I’m tired of seeing good Iraqi officers having to look over their shoulders when they’re trying to do the right thing.”

This is part of a larger whole in which what has been called a ’shadow cabinet’ has been operating based on a sectarian agenda.

Iraq’s prime minister has created an entity within his government that U.S. and Iraqi military officials say is being used as a smokescreen to hide an extreme Shiite agenda that is worsening the country’s sectarian divide.

The Office of the Commander in Chief has the power to overrule other government ministries, according to U.S. military and intelligence sources.

Those sources say the 24-member office is abusing its power, increasingly overriding decisions made by the Iraqi Ministries of Defense and Interior and potentially undermining the entire U.S. effort in Iraq.

Predictions and reporting of the splintering of the Shi’ite militias and leadership are exaggerated.  Sadr has not stood down on the rhetoric, calling Bush a “leader of evil.”  The U.S. and the Sadrist militias have also been recently engaged in combat action.  Sadr, in absentia, is still able to field large numbers of people to chant slogans against the U.S.  But perhaps even more powerful than Sadr is Sistani, and his power has been wielded against U.S. interests in Iraq.

Ali Sistani established his nationalist credentials early on. As the invading American forces neared Najaf on March 25, 2003, he issued a religious decree requiring all Muslims to resist the invading “infidel� troops. Once the Anglo-American forces occupied Iraq, he adamantly refused to meet American or British officials or their emissaries and continues to do so to this day.

In January 2004, when Washington favored appointing a hand-picked body of Iraqis, guided by American experts, to draft the Iraqi constitution along secular, democratic, and capitalist lines, Sistani decided to act. He called on the faithful to demonstrate for an elected Parliament, which would then be charged with drafting the constitution. And he succeeded.

Sistani then issued a religious decree calling on the faithful to participate in the vote to create a representative assembly committed to achieving the exit of foreign troops through peaceful means. The Bush White House, however, exploited Sistani’s move as part of its own “democracy promotion� campaign in Iraq, with Iraqi fingers dipped in inedible purple ink becoming its much flaunted “democracy symbol.�

When Allawi began dithering about holding the vote for an interim parliament by January 2005, as stipulated by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1546, Sistani warned that he would call for popular non-cooperation with the occupying powers if it was not held on time. In the elections that followed, the United Iraqi Alliance, the brain-child of Sistani, emerged as the majority group, and thus the leading designer of the new constitution. Respecting Sistani’s views, the Iraqi constitution stipulated that Sharia (“Islamic law�) was to be the principal source of Iraqi legislation and that no law would be passed that violated the undisputed tenets of Islam.

In the December 2005 parliamentary general election under the new constitution, the UIA became the largest group, a mere 10 seats short of a majority. Though Ibrahim Jaafari of Al Daawa won the contest for UIA leadership by one vote, he was rejected as prime minister by the Kurdish parties, who held the parliament’s swing votes, as well as by Washington and London. A crisis paralyzed the government. Once again, Sistani’s intercession defused a crisis. He persuaded Jaafari to step down.

Jaafari’s successor, Maliki, is as reverential toward Sistani as other Shiite leaders. For instance, in December 2006, when American officials reportedly urged Maliki to postpone Saddam Hussein’s execution until after the religious holiday of Eid Al Adha (“the Festival of Sacrifice�), Maliki turned to Sistani. The Grand Ayatollah favored an immediate execution. And so it came to pass.

Sistani’s next blow fell on the Bush administration earlier this month. He made public his disapproval of Washington-backed legislation allowing thousands of former Baath Party members to resume their public service positions. This undermined one of the White House’s pet projects in Iraq — an attempt to entice into the political mainstream part of the alienated Sunni minority that is at the heart of the Iraqi insurgency.

In sum, while refraining from participating in everyday politics, Sistani intervenes on the issues of paramount importance to the Iraqi people, as he sees them. Western journalists, who routinely describe him as belonging to the “quietist school� of Shiite Islam (at odds with the “interventionist school�), are therefore off the mark. Given Sistani’s uncompromising opposition to the presence of foreign troops in Iraq, his staunch nationalism, and the unmatched reverence that he evokes, particularly among the majority Shiites, he poses a greater long-term threat to Washington’s interests in Iraq than Muqtada al-Sadr; and, far from belonging to opposite schools of Shiite Islam, Sadr and Sistani, both staunch nationalists, complement each other, much to the puzzled frustration of the Bush White House.

Dinesh D’Souza makes a case that the supposed Iraq-Iran Shia alliance is a myth, but given the flow of weapons from Iran into Iraq, the training of insurgents taking place in Iran, and the protection of Moqtada al Sadr and the Sadrist leadership in Iran, this is a hard sell.  D’Souza doesn’t quite make the case.  The balance of the Middle East fears a potential alliance, and thus the Saudis have let the world know their opinion of Maliki by snubbing his overtures.

The Sunnis perceive (correctly) that Maliki’s government is an arm of Sistani and Sadr, and the Sunni ministers have threatened withdrawal from Maliki’s cabinet.  As I have pointed out before, the supposed healing powers of democracy do not exist, and in the case of Maliki’s government, democracy had been used as a catalyst for a sectarian agenda rather than for therapeutic purposes.  As long as the U.S. is slavishly devoted to a democratic experiment in Iraq, we are relegated to the Multi-National Forces spokesmen talking about how the U.S. supports the democratic right to protest.  There is still time to turn the train in Iraq, but the train must not have Maliki as a passenger.  The train’s destination must be stability, reconciliation and security, rather than surreptitious sectarianism in the name of democracy.

Maliki’s government is dead, and the real question is how clever the military and political thinkers are and how quickly they will figure it out.