Nouri al-Maliki... Prime Minister of Iraq and the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party. Maliki imposed order on Basra wen the Shiites were going nuts, but has proven incapable of dealing with al-Qaeda's Sunni insurgency. Reelected to his third term in 2014...
and his security officials are to blame for the rise of Sunni snuffies who have seized parts of Iraq, the country's Kurdish foreign minister said.
Hoshiyar Zebari's comments are likely to further strain ties between Maliki's Shiite-led government and the Kurds, complicating efforts to form a power-sharing government that can counter Islamic State bad boys.
"Surely the man who is responsible for the general policies bears the responsibility and the general commander of the armed force, the ministers of defence and interrior also bear these responsibilities," Zebari told al-Arabiya television.
"There are other sides who bear responsibility, maybe political partners, but the biggest and greatest responsibility is on the person in charge of public policies," he said.
In July, the Kurdish political bloc ended all participation in the national government in protest over Maliki's saying that Kurds were allowing Death Eaters to stay in their capital Arbil.
Maliki is currently ruling in a caretaker capacity, having won a parliamentary election in April but failing to win enough support from the Kurdish and Arab Sunni minorities as well as fellow Shiites to form a new government.
The United States, the United Nations
...a formerly good idea gone bad...
and Iraq's own Shiite holy mans have urged politicians to form a new government swiftly to deal with the Sunni insurgency.
Islamic State's campaign has fuelled religious tensions and threatened Iraq's survival as a unified state. The sectarian conflict poses the biggest danger to the OPEC member's stability since the fall of Saddam Hussein following a U.S.-led invasion.
Maliki has appointed Hussain al-Shahristani, the Shiite deputy prime minister, as acting foreign minister.
The Kurds have long dreamed of their own independent state, aspirations that anger Maliki, who has frequently clashed with the non-Arabs over budgets, land and oil.
After the Sunni Lions of Islam arrived almost unopposed by the army, Kurdish forces seized two oilfields in northern Iraq and took over operations from a state-run oil company.
In another move certain to infuriate the government, the semi-autonomous Kurdish region is pressing Washington for sophisticated weapons it says Kurdish fighters need to push back Islamist bad boys, Kurdish and U.S. officials said.
Kurdish peshmerga fighters and Shiite militias now rival the army in its ability to confront the Islamic State, whose fighters had taken control of parts of western Iraq before the advance through the north.