Maliki got election assist from Anbar crisis

The “Anbar crisis” was the most prominent issue for Iraqi Shiite voters in the April 30 elections, and was also a key indicator about the sentiment of Sunni voters. This appeared in the electoral discourse of nearly all blocs, especially the bloc of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the State of Law Coalition, which built its electoral campaign on the Anbar crisis.

That the Anbar battles were at the heart of electoral campaigning was not surprising. The continuing Sunni protests of more than a year, their development into bloody clashes with the Iraqi army, Iraqi soldiers being killed at the hands of militants belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and ISIS cutting off the waters of the Euphrates all seemed to be determining factors for the Iraqi elections.