Word: iraqi
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...called surge of U.S. forces into Iraq was a political strategy, not a military campaign. The idea, as framed by U.S. military commanders in Iraq and policy-makers in Washington, was to have U.S. forces hold down violence in Iraq long enough to allow the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to press ahead with national reconciliation efforts. Those efforts, everyone hoped, would begin to diffuse Iraq's sectarian tensions enough to keep them from flaring up again when U.S. troops inevitably pulled back...
...political side has deteriorated to its worst state of disarray since Maliki took office. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, speaking to reporters Tuesday in the Green Zone, was blunt in his bleak assessment. "Progress on national level issues has been extremely disappointing and frustrating to all concerned - to us, to Iraqis, to the Iraqi leadership itself," said Crocker, who echoed rising voices of discontent in Washington. "Our support is not a blank check...
...Washington seem to be pinning much on political talks in Baghdad, where Maliki has been huddling with key leadership figures from the country's factions in recent days. Last week Maliki, following the refusal of key Sunni leaders to resume participation in the government, called an emergency political summit. Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, one of the last prominent Sunni figures willing to be seen talking to the Shi'ite Maliki, was summoned. So was Kurdish President Jalal Talabani and Shi'ite Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi as well as Massoud Barzani, president of the northern Kurdish region...
Iraq's Kurdish leaders have long been trying to steer a course between their patrons in Washington and their powerful neighbors in Tehran. Though they have America to thank for freeing them from the genocidal grip of Saddam's regime, many Iraqi Kurdish political parties took refuge in Iran during those grim years. This spring, Kurds protested vigorously when American soldiers captured several Iranian agents posing as diplomats in the Kurdish regional capital of Arbil. An Iranian incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan would be a poor way of saying thanks...
...these days Iraq's Kurds aren't feeling the love from anyone. Last week, America's ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said he didn't think that it would be possible to hold a referendum on the status of Kirkuk this year. Iraqi Kurds consider the oil-rich city of Kirkuk - which is currently under control of the central government of Baghdad - to be the "Jerusalem" of Kurdistan, stolen from them by a Ba'athist ethnic-cleansing campaign in the 1980s. The Kurds have made the return of Kirkuk a central precondition to their participation in a federal Iraq...