Word: baathist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Despite the considerable risks attached to the transition process he's leading - including direct threats on his life - Allawi remains unruffled. That may be because he is widely viewed both in Iraq and abroad as a pragmatic "strongman" type ruler, rather than a Jeffersonian democrat. Himself a former Baathist intelligence operative, he insisted for much of his three decades in exile that the only way to change Iraq was by lopping off the head of the regime but maintaining much of its administrative bureaucracy and security personnel. To that end, he worked - for some time as a CIA asset...
...Sunni Insurgents The Players: Initially dismissed as the work of Baathist "bitter-enders" and a handful of foreign jihadists, the insurgency centered in the Sunni Triangle north of Baghdad has raged on for more than a year, and last week's death toll throughout the region suggests it is far from over. U.S. officials have come to recognize that the insurgency is in fact a diverse movement - some of its elements being foreign fighters such as the Jordanian Qaeda-linked militant Musab al-Zarqawi, others being former officers of the old army or ordinary Sunni Iraqis guided by nationalist...
...Challenge: Establish independence from the U.S. in the eyes of ordinary Iraqis and the region; isolate the Sunni insurgents by giving as many former Baathist types as possible a stake in the new Iraq, and send them after the foreign jihadists; draw the skeptical Shi'ites closer by going all-out to organize elections and make sure that Moqtada Sadr's group is participating; keep the Kurds on board; develop a common understanding between Iran, Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. over the terms of a new Iraqi political arrangement. A tall order, to be sure, but the alternatives...
...organization, the Iraqi National Accord, is funded by the CIA.) "He's a CIA man, like [Ahmed] Chalabi," said Raed Abu Hassan, a Baghdad University political science post-grad. "In this country, CIA connections are political poison." It doesn't help that the Shiite Allawi is also a former Baathist, and a returning exile. Many Iraqis are scornful of politicians who left the country during the Saddam...
...standoff at Fallujah, U.S. officers recognized that the insurgents, led by former Baathist officers, appeared to have significant popular support in the town. Instead of trying to destroy them, U.S. commanders cut a deal with local Iraqi leaders to put many of the same insurgents in charge of security under the rubric of a new Iraqi security force working in cooperation with the Marines. A number of reports now suggest that a similar deal is about to be struck with the Sadrists. The U.S. would withdraw from the shrine cities, Moqtada Sadr's militia would be turned into a political...