Why Iraq’s provincial elections are a big deal
When I spoke with McClatchy’s Nancy Youssef a few weeks back, she couldn’t stress enough how important Iraq’s provincial elections were to the politics and stability of the country. A delay in the elections, she said, "fundamentally changes Iraq, because everybody was electioneering and politicking toward this fall, and suddenly that disappeared." Now, anonymous blogger ...
When I spoke with McClatchy's Nancy Youssef a few weeks back, she couldn't stress enough how important Iraq's provincial elections were to the politics and stability of the country. A delay in the elections, she said, "fundamentally changes Iraq, because everybody was electioneering and politicking toward this fall, and suddenly that disappeared."
When I spoke with McClatchy’s Nancy Youssef a few weeks back, she couldn’t stress enough how important Iraq’s provincial elections were to the politics and stability of the country. A delay in the elections, she said, "fundamentally changes Iraq, because everybody was electioneering and politicking toward this fall, and suddenly that disappeared."
Now, anonymous blogger Dr. iRack ("a Washington, DC-based analyst who works on Iraq issues") weighs in with some specific concerns based on his recent travels in Mesopotamia. "The failure to pass the law, and the significant delay in elections it seems likely to produce, will put huge strains on the fragile calm that has descended across Iraq," he writes.
He lists four main reasons:
- Sunnis in the "Awakening" movement are "pissed" about not getting a seat at the table and access to patronage
- The Mosul area is still a tinderbox and Sunnis feel shut out of the political process. "Sunni Arabs in Mosul have not turned en masse against [al Qaeda in Iraq] because AQI has been careful not to target Sunni civilians and have instead focused most of their attacks on Kurdish security forces," he says.
- Provincial elections in the center and south or Iraq will "put the nail in JAM’s coffin," referring to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia
- Finally, Kirkuk is still up in the air, and communal tensions are rising there in part because of disputes over the new law
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