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  1. #1
    Council Member Dayuhan's Avatar
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    Default Iraq catch-all: after Operation Iraqi Freedom ended

    I'm not in a position to say how accurate it is, but its existence is a matter of concern:

    http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/13/wo...t/iraq-maliki/

    Iraq's leader becoming a new 'dictator,' deputy warns

    Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is amassing dictatorial power as U.S. troops leave the country, risking a new civil war and the breakup of the nation, his deputy warned Tuesday.

    Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq told CNN that he was "shocked" to hear U.S. President Barack Obama greet al-Maliki at the White House on Monday as "the elected leader of a sovereign, self-reliant and democratic Iraq." He said Washington is leaving Iraq "with a dictator" who has ignored a power-sharing agreement, kept control of the country's security forces and rounded up hundreds of people in recent weeks.

    "America left Iraq with almost no infrastructure. The political process is going in a very wrong direction, going toward a dictatorship," he said. "People are not going to accept that, and most likely they are going to ask for the division of the country. And this is going to be a disaster. Dividing the country isn't going to be smooth, because dividing the country is going to be a war before that and a war after that."...
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    H.L. Mencken

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    Council Member MikeF's Avatar
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    Default

    The Sunnis that I talk to actually think Maliki is rather weak and will fall quite quickly once we're gone.

    I imagine that there will be a contest to fill the political and security vacuum. I just hope that it is peaceful.

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    We achieved our two primary objectives which were dismantling Iraq's non-existent WMD program and removing Saddam. A few idealists late the game added on establishing a democracy and transforming their society in order to transform the Middle East. We transformed the ME, but not in the way it was envisioned by Paul Wolfawitz. What will unfold will unfold, and our staying won't change it, it will only delay it. I have my doubts on whether the Iraqis will truly determine their future, at least not alone, there will be considerable influence from Iran, Saudi, the U.S. and others.

    I agree that dividing the country will be disaster, because all competing parties will want to control the oil profits, without it they won't have a viable economy anytime soon.

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    ISW, 11 Dec 11: Maliki Arrests Potential Opposition
    ...The Maliki government’s campaign to intimidate, dismiss, and arrest former members of Iraq’s Ba’ath party has been an ongoing and concerted effort. However, the removal of the U.S. military from Iraq compounds the dangers and repercussions to stability due to this anti-Ba’athist campaign. Given the timing and intensity of the anti- Ba’athist campaign, the withdrawal of U.S. troops coupled with Iraq’s entrance into its first post-occupation electoral season with provincial elections scheduled for early 2013, is the likely pretext motivating Maliki to capitalize on further consolidating power and promoting party loyalty as the principal features in Iraq’s security apparatus.

    With questionable legal justifications, dubious explanations, and politicization and opportunism underlying the arrests, Maliki’s behavior is conforming to the practices defined by the authoritarian political culture that has long characterized Iraq. “Frankly, I am very scared and expect to be arrested at any moment,” said Haji Abu Ahmed, a former Ba’ath member in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. “The current practices are the same as the practices of Saddam,’ Ahmed said. “There seems to be no difference between the two systems. Saddam was chasing Da’awa, and now Da’awa is chasing Ba’athists.” In the final analysis, Maliki’s campaign has been counterproductive to both Iraqi democracy and stability....
    CRS, 10 Nov 11: Iraq: Politics, Governance, and Human Rights
    ...In recent months, with a complete U.S. withdrawal from Iraq approaching at the end of 2011, the relations among major factions have frayed. Sunni Arabs, facing a wave of arrests by government forces in October 2011, fear that Maliki and his Shiite allies will monopolize power. The Kurds are wary that Maliki will not honor pledges to resolve Kurd-Arab territorial and financial disputes. Sunni Arabs and the Kurds dispute territory and governance in parts of northern Iraq, particularly Nineveh Province. Some Iraqi communities, including Christians in northern Iraq, are not at odds with the government but have territorial and political disputes with and fear violence from both Sunni Arabs and Kurds. These splits have created conditions under which the insurgency that hampered U.S. policy during 2004-2008 continues to conduct occasional high casualty attacks, and in which Shiite militias have conducted attacks on U.S. forces still in Iraq...

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    Default Things that Unite, Divide

    Dayuhan:

    There are just so many central ironies to Iraq:

    Some believe we entered Iraq on some form of "Crusade," reminiscent of retaking Jerusalem from Islam. Yet our staunch ally in that alleged Crusade was, in fact, Salahaddin's Kurdish descendants.

    Some believe that defeat of the Baathist Party---the eerie secularist, pan arab movement long-ago commandeered by brutal dictatorships---was a core objective. Yet Maliki,while crushing Baathists in Iraq, staunchly supports the adjacent Syrian Baathist dictator allegedly at the urging of its Iranian sponsors.

    As Maliki allegedly moves to dominate and punish the Sunni (and former Baathist) areas of Iraq, the resident Sunni Iraqis pursue refuge in the same Autonomous Region status enshrined in the Iraqi constitution under the belief that it was primarily to protect and reward the Kurds. The indigenous Sunni autonomy movements are heavily opposed by the Sunni and Baathist diaspora, ensconced in surrounding Sunni and Baathist supportive US ally nations, because it undermines their hopes for a future dominant role in a strongly centralized Iraq.

    As Shia political control, allegedly under Iranian influence, grows in the South, the looming threat of adjacent Sunni governments (all our powerful principal allies) necessitates diplomatic missions by Iran and Maliki to, for example, Saudi Arabia, assure them that they pose no threats.

    In the midst of all this confusion, it is, perhaps, worthwhile to keep in mind not just "that which divides," but also "that which unites"---the reason that these folks don;t all just walk away and declare independence.

    Kurdistan, as an autonomous region, is a light and beacon for the larger Kurdish peoples who are routinely subject to pressure and pograms in the adjacent countries, all of whom have well-articulated concerns over a more independent Kurdish nation, and ongoing issues with their indigenous Kurdish populations. Example: Kurds have a close relationship with the Asad government which, if overturned, poses serious repercussions for Kurds, and a Sunni Syria opens completely new Pandora's boxes for both Kurds, Shias, Iranians, etc...

    In addition to the eternally complex political, ethnic, religious balancing acts between and within these countries are the basic geographic, resource and infrastructure dependencies:

    Water does not reach Baghdad and the south until after it passes through the North---much the same with oil and oil infrastructure.

    If Kurds have oil, but without links to Basra, pipelines are the only option, and are always vulnerable.

    Without water, the center and south is a dustbowl of a port, with little hospitable future for its residents, and serious power issues.

    The prospective Sunni autonomous areas (Ninewa, Salah ad Din, Anbar, Diyala) represent a powerful set of geography, resource, and infrastructure assets, but their value is, to a great extent, limited absent their connection to the adjacent areas.

    All told, Iraq is a very complicated puzzle with many profound reasons to understand it as a common and interdependent area (nation, whatever), but with many internal (and eternal) rifts and divisions. Prosperity for the greatest number of people comes from working together, the opposite where they do not.

    How they hammer out, and continue to re-hammer out, conflicts and resolutions, will dictate successes and failures, but most of the posturing, leverage, balancing and re-balancing is something that they---post-conflict parties with substantial unresolved grievances---is what those parties have to resolve in the next few years.

    My guess is that the autonomous region authority is a much more substantial option for a viable future Iraq than many consider (depending on the intergovernmental resolutions needed to implement it) but that it is not a "boogeyman" of breaking up Iraq any more than in many pother nations where certain power is centralized (nationally significant resources, waterways, transportation, defense) while much is broadly distributed to autonomous and semi-autonomous regions.

    Assuming a future Iraq with substantially greater oil flows and revenues as its sole basis, a system of autonomous regions, each demanding its own portion of the revenue pie under its own local control, is not, over time, a bad business model, and assures continued pressure for greater revenue flows to the regions than to a heavily armed central government.

    "Dividing Iraq"---as the inflammatory slogans suggest---is not an all or nothing issue, but an ongoing and essential process of balancing and re-balancing, within a national envelope that is as much defined internally as by its neighbors.

    The Speaker's latest comments (although inflamed by Wolf Blitzer and Company) are really mild stuff under the circumstances where Maliki is, with some urgency, trying to stave off the increasing pressure for Sunni autonomy which was inflamed by his overreaching actions against them through the central government which he currently controls.

    Hold your breath for the Iraqi people, who many of us identify with, but not for the post-conflict politicians who are still playing the old games instead of getting on with viable new ones.

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    Council Member Dayuhan's Avatar
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    Default The Shi'a Succession

    Didn't see another thread where this fit... moderators, feel free to move it if there is one.

    Foreign Affairs on the maneuvering to succeed Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and the rise of the Iranian Candidate...

    The Struggle to Succeed Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani
    A Letter From Najaf

    Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is rarely seen. The most revered spiritual leader for the world's 170 million Shiite Muslims, he hardly ever speaks in public. Some 90 miles south of Baghdad, in Najaf, the seat of Shiite religious power, people say that in the last few years the 82-year-old Sistani has grown frail and relies increasingly on one of his sons to carry out his duties. "He's a weak old man; soon he might have to go to London for more treatment," a local student of religious politics says. (Like most who were interviewed for this report, the student wished to remain anonymous.)

    As Sistani ages, a struggle to succeed him has begun, putting the spiritual leadership of one of the world's foremost faiths in play. But with neighboring Iran moving to install its preferred candidate in the position, the secular political foundations of Iraq's fledgling democracy are at risk. Consequently, what amounts to a spiritual showdown could pose a challenge to Washington's hope for postwar Iraq to serve as a Western-allied, moderate, secular state in the heart of the Middle East.

    Shia doctrine requires that an incumbent die before jockeying can begin in a succession process that is as opaque as it is informal. But Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the 64-year-old cleric who is widely seen as Tehran's preferred choice, has jumped the gun by sending an advance party to open an office in Najaf....
    http://www.foreignaffairs.com/featur...grand_3-052412
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    H.L. Mencken

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    Council Member pcmfr's Avatar
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    Default 10 years after the fall

    http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...he-war/277362/

    The article nicely lays out the good, bad, and the ugly of long term impact of the US regime change policy.

    "Iraq, today, 10 years on from the war, from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, is not what the Iraqi people hoped for and expected. We hoped for an inclusive democracy, an Iraq that is at peace with itself and at peace with its neighbors," Salih said. "To be blunt, we are far from that."

    "But," he added, "it's important to understand where we started from. ... Literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were sent to mass graves. Ten years on from the demise of Saddam Hussein, we're still discovering mass graves across Iraq. And Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein -- the overwhelming majority of Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein."
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 06-29-2013 at 10:28 PM. Reason: Moved here from an old stand alone thread, it makes sense here!

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    Default Interview On Middle East Week Podcast

    Listen to my interview on Middle East Week Podcast about the deteriorating security situation, economic and political problems, and the future of Iraq.

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    Default ‘This American Life’ 499: Taking Names

    “The truly incredible story of a guy named Kirk Johnson who started a list of hundreds of Iraqis who needed to get out of their country. They were getting death threats, and he was their only hope. Only 26 and living in his aunt’s basement, he had no idea what to do. How Kirk kind of succeeded spectacularly and failed spectacularly at the same time.” LINK
    If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)

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    Default Security Situation Still Dire In Iraq With Insurgents On The Offensive And Security F

    June 2013 was another violent month in Iraq. Since the beginning of the year, attacks and deaths across the country have been steadily increasing. That reached new levels after the security forces used excessive force in a raid upon protesters in Hawija at the end of April. That led to a series of retaliatory attacks by both insurgents and tribes, and the start of a new offensive by the Baathist Naqshibandi, which ran the Hawija demonstrations. At the same time, Al Qaeda in Iraq has been stepping up its operations since December 2012 with a bombing campaign across southern Iraq along with its traditional targets. The government has tried to respond, but the security forces’ counterproductive tactics of mass arrests and raids have not been able to stem the tide, and have probably made the situation worse. That pretty much sums up the new status quo in Iraq with militants picking up their attacks, while the government is incapable of stopping them.

    continued

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    Quote Originally Posted by ganulv View Post
    “The truly incredible story of a guy named Kirk Johnson who started a list of hundreds of Iraqis who needed to get out of their country. They were getting death threats, and he was their only hope. Only 26 and living in his aunt’s basement, he had no idea what to do. How Kirk kind of succeeded spectacularly and failed spectacularly at the same time.” LINK

    That was a great show that people should listen to.

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