Word: iraqi
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With stakes this high, Iraqi politicians have fought bitterly for more than a year over a new "hydrocarbon law," drafted last summer by veterans of Iraq's oil industry. The legislation is up for a vote in parliament when the fractious government resumes work after a bloody summer. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has vowed to pass the law after delaying the vote twice this year; he is under intense pressure from President George W. Bush to produce results, as support for his leadership withers at home and in Washington. The vote is scheduled to take place just as Congress...
...Iraqi officials estimate it will cost about $20 billion and take five years to repair and modernize the industry, whose infrastructure had been rotting for decades because of international sanctions and Saddam's mismanagement. Insurgents have been attacking oil pipelines since 2003. A key northern line that leads to the export terminal in Ceyhan, Turkey, has lain idle for months since it was blown up. The industry also faces skills shortages. Years of suicide attacks and kidnappings have drained the country of its oil engineers, who have fled...
...from the beginning, the surge was as much a political strategy as a military campaign. U.S. commanders in Iraq repeatedly stressed that American troops were simply buying time for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government to do two things: buck up Iraqi security forces and take steps toward reconciliation that would, everyone hoped, lessen violence. The surge was designed to carve out a quiet space in which compromise rather than violence would rule. On this front, there is not much good news. Al-Maliki does not appear to need - or even want - to lead any hard negotiations. That...
...Arming the Sunnis against al-Qaeda is fine, but if they tire of their alliance with Washington, they become just another faction armed with U.S. weapons. Shi'ites and Kurds worry that the Sunni tribesmen who are fighting alongside American troops now have little or no loyalty to the Iraqi government and would just as soon turn their guns on Iraqi forces as on al-Qaeda. In addition, strengthening a Sunni stronghold in the middle of the country goes a ways toward cementing the very partitioning of Iraq that the Bush team has long sought to avoid. Which means...
Iran's Revolutionary Guard is notorious in the West as the troublemaking arm of the Islamic Republic, accused of supporting Hizballah and other militant groups, destabilizing the Iraqi government, and nurturing a covert nuclear weapons program. Inside Iran itself, however, the image of the Guards is more that of an economic powerhouse, with more influence and assets than even the Tehran bazaar, the institution whose cash has traditionally helped drive the country's politics...