Word: iraqi
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...voters go to the polls on Sunday for Iraq's third parliamentary election, the fragile stability of a country still recovering from a vicious civil war hangs in the balance. Iraq's leaders have so far been unable to resolve central issues regarding the shape of the Iraqi state - oil sharing, the boundaries of disputed territories, and the balance of power between the central government and the regions. The surge of U.S. troops and the deployment of U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces bought time for another shot at political reconciliation. But the window for national compromise is closing fast, with...
...there is a new spirit of national unity. All the political coalitions contesting Sunday's election have at least some semblance of sectarian diversity. Even the most homogeneous of the big blocs pretend to be more diverse than they really are. For example, the Shi'ite Islamist bloc, the Iraqi National Alliance, which critics suspect would like to spin off oil-rich Shi'ite southern Iraq into an autonomous region, includes one Sunni party from Anbar province. When asked, many average Iraqis say sectarian violence was something forced on them by outsiders, a bad dream from which they...
...That change may also be caused by shifts in the sectarian fault lines. Instead of Shi'ite-vs.-Sunni conflict, tensions now are mounting inside ethnic and sectarian groups. The duopolistic ruling parties of Iraqi Kurdistan find themselves under threat from a breakaway movement - Goran, or "change" - more interested in cleaning up politics in the Kurdistan Regional Government than in accelerating Kurdish autonomy from the rest of Iraq. And there's been plenty of bad blood between al-Maliki and the fundamentalist Shi'ite parties of the Iraqi National Alliance ever since the Prime Minister sent the army...
...Thus, democracy Iraqi-style - a little fraud, sectarianism, extralegal government intimidation and the underlying fear of violence. Iraq has by now had more practice at choosing its own leaders in relatively open elections than perhaps any other Middle Eastern country besides Israel and Lebanon. But while the Bush Administration had hoped this would create a democratic ripple effect throughout the region, the results of Iraq's elections have been less than edifying. The politicians who came to power after the country's first parliamentary elections four years ago have been unable to resolve such core issues as sharing oil revenue...
...Still, the U.S. is betting heavily that through the democratic process, Iraq's contending factions will achieve a consensus that will prevent a relapse into civil war. Under the Status of Forces Agreement concluded between the Bush Administration and the Iraqi government, all U.S. combat forces will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of July, and the remaining support troops and training personnel will leave by the end of 2011. The Obama White House, which needs extra soldiers for its expansion of the war in Afghanistan, is committed to that timetable and optimistic about the country that they will...