Towards a global perspective . . .

I received an email to day, asking for an update on Can Iraq Form a New Government, my previous post about the Iraq election.  I had done a significant investigation at the time, and that post had a lot of detail and analysis of the ongoing process.   At the time I wrote the piece, I got interested responses from regional (i.e. Kurdish and Turkish) news outlets and even Iyad Allawi’s Office.  Since then, I haven’t revisited the subject because the dynamic hasn’t really changed.  The sources of my information have had less detailed discussion on the issue than they did when I wrote previously.   It is as if the situation is frozen.  Nothing has changed so there is nothing to say.

I do think the recent US interventions have unfortunately, and most likely inadvertently, tightened the deadlock.   Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, we haven’t been paying a lot of attention to Iraq.   When we do hear something, we hear about a prolonged and possibly rather disorderly process reflecting an incompetent or maybe recalcitrant embodiment of Democracy.   There are, in fact, some interesting and reasonably democratic forces at play, along with some that are less so.  In any case, the type of democracy they have is somewhat complicated, especially at the current stage they.   The situation is sometimes represented as a competition between two guys, Iyad Allawi and his people, and Nouri Al Maliki and his people.  We see Mr. Allawi insisting that he won, while Mr. Al Maliki is being a very bad sport, using all of the resources he can muster as the incumbent to change the outcome, so far without success.  And, at some level, this is all too true.

But there are some significant, and quite reasonable players driving events behind the scenes.   Read the rest of this entry »