The legacy of George W Bush’s policies in Iraq continue to cast its shadow on Iraqi politics, the Iraqi allies he chose to work with are still in strong positions but now they are increasingly critical of the U.S. Nouri Almaliki, the prime minister, is in a balancing act since he is resisting calls to […]
Reidar Visser’s article titles: Iran’s Role in Post Occupation Iraq, Enemy, Good Neighbor or Overlord? suggests US counter influence measures in Iraq, I suggest a reduction of influence thru new UN mandate for census, elections and boarder supervision in Iraq.
A new policy report prepared by a mix of Iraqi professionals with the support of the Norwegian Institute of Foreign Affairs (NUPI) was published in February 2009 . The report titled More than Shiites and Sunnis recommends institutional reform and explains how this could lead to positive changes and support the independence of Iraq. There […]
It is no secret to some of us Iraqis that passports and ID documents can be issued quickly from inside Iraq by bribery or by favoritism. And it is no secret that those responsible for issuing thousands of passports to non-Iraqis by our embassy in Sweden have returned to their original positions in the embassy […]
The recent UN report regarding the issues of defining Kurdish regions contained the recommendations of the UN representative for Iraq, Staffan di Mistura. The report is now known as the Di Mistura report; its purpose is “to contribute to the development of processes to resolve these complicated and sensitive issues” and relied on the 2005 […]
A friend from Samarra told me about recent events in his town. He said that the police from outside town took over the entire commercial area behind the excuse of protecting the re-building of the bombed shrine. They took over many shops, administrative and residential buildings without compensating the owners who depend on the buildings […]
There was a news article in the media on March 12, 2008 about a memorandum submitted to the United Nations office in Cairo calling for forming a transition government and supervision over the elections in Iraq. The coordinators of the memorandum are three veteran Iraqi politicians, they promised to organize a wide campaign for collecting […]
On Feb 13, 2008 the Iraq parliament passed three crucial legislations: the 2008 budget, provincial representation and general amnesty laws. The Arabic news media also included mention of an agreement to run population census before the end of 2008, curiously none of the major US media had this mention. Since the running of a census […]
In an indirect reference to the fable of Faust, Alan Greenspan says in his new book about the US Republicans and their recent election loss in Congress, they “swapped principle for power” and “ended up with neither” so “They deserved to lose.” Here is a moral angle on four turning points since the invasion of […]
An article titled To The Incoming President: On Iraq by Flynt Leverett appeared on The American Prospect on May 20, 2007. It starts by blasting George W. Bush who recklessly repudiated the Roosevelt bargain (an agreement between Roosevelt and King Saud in 1946 which shaped the US policy in the Middle East for nearly 60 […]
