Let me be the dour voice of doubt here.
Ali Ababa - Are you Nibras Kazimi, the author of that blog entry? If so, I'd like to point out some holes in the argument as I see them.
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Al Qaeda tried to trigger a Sunni-Shiite war in Iraq for the last four years, but anyone using the term "civil war" to describe the situation in Iraq is grossly misinformed in my book — I'm looking at you, Senator Obama.
During 2006, Iraq witnessed the appetizer course of what a civil war would look like, and Al Qaeda's Sunni shock troops lost their appetite; the Shiites would win easy in case of an escalation. In lieu of death squads and beheadings, Sunni-Shiite tensions now run through the legal channels of parliament and how ministerial posts are allocated. Politics have been reintroduced into Iraqi life, and it's only natural that an issue as thorny and still unresolved as sectarianism would be expressed through political machinations.
There are still death squads, bombings, and beheadings going on in Iraq. The pace may have been reduced, but so have the available number of victims --- unspoken in this piece are the 2-2.5 million Iraqis (8-10% of the prewar population) that have fled the country and the 2 million more have moved into safer, more homogeneous neighborhoods or isolated camps. Anywhere from 100,000 - 300,000 Iraqis have died violently in the past 4 years, most at the hands of their fellow Iraqis. Over half of Iraqis have had family or friends killed, over a quarter have had family kidnapped. Unemployment is anywhere between 30-60%, the government is riven by violent factions often beholden to foreign powers, the most peaceful and prosperous part of the country forbids the flying of the national flag and no longer speaks the language, crime and disorder are rampant, the government nowhere has a monopoly on force, etc. etc. I think if you asked most other people in the region if they wanted to switch problem sets with Iraq, you wouldn't get many takers.
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The main Sunni bloc withdrew from the government — so what? The worst threat they can administer is a noisy parliamentary opposition since the recourse to armed conflict is no longer an option. No Sunni politician can ask his constituency to carry arms against the new Iraq since this was all they've been trying over the last four years and it ended with defeat.
The main Sunni bloc represents few Sunnis. Now the tribes and the insurgency --- quite a different story, and they seem hesitant to lay their arms down. What they may now want are paychecks from the government --- but this is hardly the same thing.
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The radical Shiites also have been broken: Muqtada al-Sadr can't control his own Mahdi army, the members of whom are now being rejected as hooligans when just last year even moderate Shiites looked upon them as the necessary counterforce to Al Qaeda's menace.
But as the fear of civil war faded, so has the usefulness of Mr. Sadr's thugs. Iran has taken over parts of the Mahdi army and uses them as spoilers of America's plan for Iraq, but this approach has had little traction in instigating far-reaching chaos and these Iranian networks are being easily rolled-back by America and the Iraqi government, with the subtle encouragement of Mr. Sadr himself.
I'd like to see evidence beyond the anecdotal that the Sadrists are being systematically rejected in Shi'i neighborhoods and towns across Iraq. And what exactly is the difference between "radical" and "moderate" Shi'i parties? Is it because SCIRI/ISCI has some clerics who speak English and hide their IRGC ties better?
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The Islamists, both Sunni and Shiite, have disgraced themselves in running the country and providing basic services. The Sunni Islamist Speaker of the parliament, Mahmoud Mashhadani, put it best when he said, during a recent TV interview, that their governing performance has "failed miserably" and that the Iraqi voter will punish Islamist parties in the next elections.
Really. What parties, exactly, are going to challenge the Sadrists, al-Dawa, and SCIRI/ISCI? What secular technocrats? Where are these good-government parties, and more importantly where are their militias?
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Indeed, Iraq has gone very far in resolving the crisis that are pandemic to the Middle East, or at least it can be argued that Iraqis have turned a corner away from the worst case scenarios: they have rejected the multi-headed evils of dictatorship, jihadism, and civil war. Not only that, but armed with a legitimate parliament and a spanking new constitution, they are on the right path towards democracy, modernism, and national unity — something that can't be said for other powder kegs in the region such as Syria and Saudi Arabia.
Where is this legitimate parliament he speaks of, or the "spanking new" constitution? Is that the constitution which the "legitimate parliament" cannot even begin to agree on how to amend?
As for the regional "powder kegs" --- did Mr. Kazimi feel safer in Damascus or in Baghdad? Some 2.5 million Iraqis seem for some reason to prefer the powder keg dictatorships of Syria, Jordan, Egypt, etc. to the democratic, modernist, unified Iraq.
