Iraqi government

How to save Iraq from civil war

by News Sources 12.29.2011

Ayad Allawi, leader of the Iraqiya coalition and former prime minister of Iraq, Osama al-Nujaifi, speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, and finance minister Rafe al-Essawi, write: Iraq today stands on the brink of disaster. President Obama kept his campaign pledge to end the war here, but it has not ended the way anyone in Washington [...]

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Once again the United States supports a strongman in Iraq

by News Sources 12.29.2011

The New York Times reports: The Obama administration is moving ahead with the sale of nearly $11 billion worth of arms and training for the Iraqi military despite concerns that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is seeking to consolidate authority, create a one-party Shiite-dominated state and abandon the American-backed power-sharing government. The military aid, including [...]

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The cost of not talking to Iran

by News Sources 12.27.2011

With the Strait of Hormuz a possible trigger point in a conflict between the U.S. and Iran, Trita Parsi points out that the risk of missteps between the two nations is greatly compounded by the fact that there are currently no channels of diplomatic communication in operation.

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Explosions rock Baghdad amid Iraqi political crisis

by News Sources 12.22.2011

The New York Times reports: A wave of coordinated explosions ripped across Baghdad early on Thursday, killing at least 63 people, wounding more than 180 and jolting a country already unsettled by a deepening political crisis and the absence of American troops. Using car bombs and improvised explosives, insurgents attacked markets, grocery stores, schools and [...]

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Sunni leader in Iraq denies ordering assassinations

by News Sources 12.20.2011

The New York Times reports: The political crisis in Iraq deepened on Tuesday, as the Sunni vice president angrily rebutted charges that he had ordered his security guards to assassinate government officials, saying that Shiite-backed security forces had induced the guards into false confessions. In a nationally televised news conference, the vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, [...]

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Renewed threat of sectarian conflict as Iraq’s Sunni vice president faces arrest

by News Sources 12.19.2011

As Al Jazeera reported yesterday and the New York Times reports today, Iraqis have given scant attention to the departure of the last American troops as the country heads into a deepening political crisis. Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government was thrown into crisis on Monday night as authorities issued an arrest warrant for the Sunni vice president, [...]

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Political crisis in Iraq as U.S. withdraws

by News Sources 12.18.2011

Al Jazeera reports: The last US troops withdrew from Iraq this morning, but the story has barely merited a mention on Iraqi television; local media are instead focused on a deepening political crisis, which includes – among other issues – an arrest warrant for the vice-president. The latest development came on Saturday night, when Nouri [...]

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At Abu Ghraib, ambivalence on America’s departure

by News Sources 11.04.2011

The New York Times reports: On a recent day off, Hussam Saad stood at a roadside vegetable stand across the highway from the prison where he says he works. “I can still remember guarding the prison at night, and hearing the voices and the shouting while people were being tortured,” said Mr. Saad, recalling the [...]

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Rebels claim Gaddafi was tied to plot against Iraq

by News Sources 10.29.2011

The New York Times reports: When Tripoli, the Libyan capital, fell, rebel fighters found secret intelligence documents linking Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to a plot by former members of Saddam Hussein’s military and Baath Party to overthrow the Iraqi government, according to an Iraqi official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The details of the [...]

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Iraq’s government, not Obama, called time on the U.S. troop presence

by News Sources 10.21.2011

Tony Karon writes: President Barack Obama’s announcement on Friday that all 40,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq will leave the country by New Year’s Eve will, inevitably, draw howls of derision from GOP presidential hopefuls — this is, after all, early election season. But the decision to leave Iraq by that date was not actually [...]

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Torture and terrorism

by Paul Woodward 10.23.2010

One of the strange aspects relating to conspiracy theories concerning 9/11 is that they unwittingly obscure something even worse: that the US government foments terrorism not by design but by neglect; that its policies have had a direct and instrumental role in creating terrorists not simply by providing individuals and groups with an ideological pretext [...]

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Iraq prime minister lashes out at rival

by Paul Woodward 05.01.2010

The Los Angeles Times reports: Iraq’s prime minister dismissed his rival’s call for international help to resolve the country’s postelection political crisis as the dispute threatens to inflame rifts and undermine American plans for withdrawal. In a televised speech Friday, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, whose political bloc finished a close second behind former premier Iyad [...]

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Post-election massacre in Iraq

by Paul Woodward 04.04.2010

The Washington Post reports: Gunmen pretending to be Iraqi security forces and U.S. soldiers killed at least 24 people here, shooting some and slitting others’ throats as they moved from house to house, officials and residents said Saturday. The victims of the hour-long incident included women and children, but most were members of the Awakening, [...]

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Sadrists hold key to Iraq’s political future

by Paul Woodward 03.29.2010

As if to mock America’s role in the future of Iraq, the single point of continuity since the fall of Saddam has been the rising power of Moqtada al Sadr. Even after his movement seemed to have been bludgeoned into submission and he took refuge in Iran, this period of dormancy during which the rough-mannered [...]

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Riz Khan – Iraq: Reopening sectarian wounds?

by Paul Woodward 02.03.2010

Al Jazeera English’s Riz Khan: Now, of course, in 2005 when the Sunni community generally boycotted the elections taking place then, there was violence on the street. And I wonder, because there’s, you know, if there’s a sense of being sidelined and excluded and being left out of any kind of voice in Iraqi politics? [...]

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British man held for fraud in Iraq bomb detectors

by Paul Woodward 01.24.2010

British man held for fraud in Iraq bomb detectors ByRiyadh Mohammed and Rod Nordland, New York Times, January 24, 2010 The director of a British company that supplies bomb detectors to Iraq has been arrested on fraud charges, and the export of the devices has been banned, British government officials confirmed Saturday. Iraqi officials reacted [...]

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Biden says U.S. will appeal Blackwater case dismissal

by Paul Woodward 01.24.2010

Biden says U.S. will appeal Blackwater case dismissal By Anthony Shadid, New York Times, January 24, 2010 Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. promised Iraqi leaders on Saturday that the United States would appeal the dismissal of manslaughter charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security contractors involved in a deadly shooting here that has inflamed anti-American [...]

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Iraq sentences Sunni leader to death

by Paul Woodward 11.20.2009

Iraq sentences Sunni leader to death By John Leland, New York Times, November 20, 2009 A leader of a Sunni Awakening Council was sentenced to death for kidnapping and murder on Thursday, setting off charges that the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government was trying to weaken the Sunni movement, which is credited with much of the reduction [...]

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After six years, ‘we’re worthless’

by Paul Woodward 10.08.2009

After six years, ‘we’re worthless’ By Ernesto Londoño, Washington Post, October 8, 2009 Weeks after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, as parts of the capital were still smoldering, American soldiers and diplomats turned to men like Hassan Shama and Omar Rahman Rahmani in their quest to plant the seeds of [...]

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U.S. anxious over Shiite-Sunni relations in Ira

by Paul Woodward 08.24.2009

U.S. anxious over Shiite-Sunni relations in Iraq By Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times, August 24, 2009 Military officials are anxiously watching the brittle partnership between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq as U.S. analysts warn that renewed waves of violence have put the country at a crucial crossroads. Sunni militants are widely thought responsible [...]

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Iraq bombs are a warning to Maliki

by Paul Woodward 08.21.2009

Iraq bombs are a warning to Maliki By Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, August 20, 2009 No one has taken responsibility for the horrendous bombs that shattered the foreign and finance ministries in Baghdad and took more than a hundred lives yesterday but the finger must point to Sunni Arab radicals. The foreign ministry is run [...]

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Iraq attacks raise fears of renewed ethnic tensions

by Paul Woodward 08.11.2009

Iraq attacks raise fears of renewed ethnic tensions By Liz Sly, Los Angeles Times, August 11, 2009 A string of bombings in northern Iraq and Baghdad that has killed at least 112 people in the last several days, including 60 on Monday, has raised fears that insurgent groups are embarking on a sustained attempt to [...]

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High turnout in Iraqi Kurds’ elections

by Paul Woodward 07.26.2009

High turnout in Iraqi Kurds’ elections By Sam Dagher, New York Times, July 26, 2009 Voters in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdistan region cast their ballots on Saturday in local presidential and parliamentary elections as a hunger for political reform clashed with a desire to maintain stability. Turnout was high — 78.5 percent according to the Electoral [...]

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Deadly clash underscores rift over interpretation of U.S.-Iraq deal

by Paul Woodward 07.25.2009

Deadly clash underscores rift over interpretation of U.S.-Iraq deal By Ernesto Londono, Washington Post, July 25, 2009 When insurgents attacked an American convoy with AK-47 rounds and a couple of grenades on a dusty highway in a Baghdad suburb this week, U.S. soldiers returned fire, chased the suspects through narrow alleyways and raided houses. Tuesday’s [...]

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