As if Nouri al-Maliki didn't have enough to worry about. Aside from rising violence and his government's laggardly progress on a slew of political and legislative benchmarks set by the U.S., the Iraqi prime minister also seems increasingly consumed by fears of coups and conspiracies. Iraqi media reported this week that Maliki once again accused certain Iraqi politicians of "conspiring" against the government with the help of "foreign intelligence." And Al-Hayat newspaper reported that Iraqi security officials had detained a number of tribal chiefs and former Iraqi Army officers in Dhi Qar province "for their proven links to the intelligence services of an Arab state . . . and for supplying moral, material and logistical support for armed groups that operate in southern Iraq."

Though Maliki hasn't publicly named the alleged coup mastermind, Iraqi media and everyone else assumes he means former prime minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite politician who spent many years in exile in London. The fact that Allawi and his aides have been circling Arab capitals for months--popping up in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and so forth--to drum up regional support has further unnerved Maliki's team.

For his part, Allawi derides the notion that he's plotting a coup. "Due to its own failures, the government has been trying to blame others. It's a joke," Allawi told NEWSWEEK in a recent phone interview, "They've been saying this for a year--what kind of coup would take a year to materialize?"

Still, Allawi makes no secret of the fact that he's trying to form a new parliamentary bloc. He and his colleagues hope to gather enough votes to replace Maliki's administration, which has become increasingly identified with sectarian bloodshed and lack of progress on political reconciliation. "What we want to do is stop the country's continuing slide into a black tunnel of sectarianism, chaos and anarchy," says Allawi. His group is attempting--so far without success--to cement alliances among his own Iraqi National List, the Sunni Islamic party and "Iraqi National Dialogue" front, plus smaller Shiite, Kurdish and Turkomen groups.