Word: shied
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...storm clouds gather for Iraq's postelection season of political turmoil, the prospects for stable governance as U.S. combat troops prepare to depart appear increasingly uncertain. Preliminary returns released Thursday from four of Iraq's 18 provinces show the incumbent, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, carrying predominantly Shi'ite areas - despite a strong challenge from supporters of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Former U.S.-installed Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi'ite who, like Maliki, leads a broad nationalist coalition with strong Sunni Arab representation, appears to have prevailed in predominantly Sunni areas north of Baghdad...
...final composition of the government will determine the future direction of the Iraqi state - whether it becomes more centralized in the hands of the Baghdad government, or whether power is devolved to the regions, especially the Shi'ite-dominated south and the Kurdish north. Those pushing centralization include Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shi'ite dominated State of Law coalition, and the ideologically similar, but more Sunni and more secular, Iraqiya coalition, led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Pushing for decentralization are the ruling parties of the Kurdistan Regional Government - the Kurdish enclave of northern Iraq...
...This time around, Maliki also has to look over his shoulder at his former Shi'ite allies, who have formed a coalition without him. The Iraqi National Alliance - led by Ammar al-Hakin, Moqtadah al-Sadr and Ahmed Chalabi among others - is more Islamist, and more friendly with Iran than Maliki's Dawa party...
...election negotiations. But though they joined Maliki's ruling coalition and formed a government together, the Kurdish ruling parties complain that Maliki hasn't delivered on his promises to return disputed areas to Kurdish authority. This time, the Kurds may be tempted into an alliance with the anti-Maliki Shi'ites. (See pictures of Iraq's revival...
...final composition of the government will nominally affect the future direction of the Iraqi state - whether it becomes more centralized in the hands of the Baghdad government, or whether power is devolved to the regions, especially the Shi'ite-dominated south and the Kurdish north. But either direction could destabilize the country. Devolution could spark a civil war between Arabs and Kurds, while further centralization in a country with a history of totalitarianism could put Iraq on a slippery slope to a new kind of dictatorship...