Eating out with Iraq's Prime Minister

My fixer was just tucking into his main course of lamb kebabs at a posh restaurant in central Baghdad when a commotion outside caught his attention.
Curiosity aroused, he went to the front door in time to see scores of black, four-wheel drives and pick-up trucks packed with guards pull up in the car-park and on the street.
The vehicles displayed Government badges, prompting my fixer to conclude that some minor Iraqi politician was coming in for dinner.
To his surprise, the suited figure of none other than Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, emerged, accompanied by two young girls, and walked inside.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” said my fixer. “It is the first time I have seen a member of the Government outside the Green Zone.”
Smiling calmly as fellow diners froze mid-mouthful to stare, Mr Maliki strolled over to a table with his young companions – thought to be daughters or grandchildren – while an entourage of burly bodyguards kept a watchful eye.
Within moments, there was a scraping of chairs as people, food forgotten,  scrambled over to try to take a picture with their mustachioed leader.
One of the guards, however, intervened, saying: “Please give him some privacy”, adding that the Prime Minister would pose for photographs after he had eaten.
The pop-star welcome was a far cry from the emotions Mr Maliki’s name used to provoke barely a year ago, when sectarian violence was still high.
People would mock him as weak and ineffective, calling for a tougher man at the top, with some even lamenting the end of Saddam Hussein’s rule.
But a series of crackdowns on Shia militias in the south and al-Qaeda-sponsored fighters in central and northern Iraq has earned Mr Maliki a lot of new fans.
“You eliminated the terrorists. We like what you did,” said one such admirer at the Saysban restaurant.
After he finished eating, the Prime Minister allowed about 10 people to pose next to him one at a time for a photograph. One old woman who was among the chosen few shook his hand, saying: “I prayed to God to help and support you.”
Not everyone was impressed with Mr Maliki’s dinnertime spectacle.
“Why did he not go to eat at a restaurant in Amariya?” scoffed one scathing diner, referring to a notoriously dangerous part of Baghdad. “It is safe here. He is just putting on a show to do well at the next elections.”
Iraqis are due to vote in provincial elections later this year, while the next general election is scheduled to take place in 2009.

[Picture: Nouri al-Maliki talking to the press outside Downing St, after talks with  British PM, Gordon Brown. By Chris Harris for The Times]