Where is Allawi?
The short answer is London. Most of his Iraqiyya coalition has returned to the parliament, and some of its members are lobbying hard to be included in Maliki’s cabinet. But (secularist, Shia) Allawi has abandoned the field. This leaves the Iraqi secularists, who joined with Sunni Islamists in backing Iraqiyya, without a champion.
The Americans, having lost ground to Tehran in the government formation process, should be starting to invest now in strengthening Iraq’s secularists. Magnificent as his performance was this time around, it can’t be that Allawi is the only bet for three years from now. All of us who talk with Iraqis (and the pollsters) know that there is a deep well of Iraqi nationalist, non-sectarian, secularist sentiment in the country. Now is the time to nurture it.
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Al Qaeda’s nuclear ambitions
This is scary. Rolf Mowatt-Larssen has a more extended treatment of Ayman al Zawahiri’s justification of the use of weapons of mass destruction against Americans at aq-religious-justification.pdf (application/pdf Object). Of course the question is whether they will ever get the means, but it would be a mistake to ignore intentions.
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It really is current, but still history
I agreed some time in September to do a piece for Current History on the government formation process in Iraq. Completed a couple of weeks ago, it is now of course out of date, but some may still be interested. The process has been prolonged, rough and tumble, but still largely nonviolent and mostly rule-bound. Let’s hope Maliki keeps it that way.
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Which libretto is Maliki singing from?
Last we heard in the eight-month saga of forming a government, the Iraqi Parliament had chosen a Speaker and re-elected President Jalal Talabani, who in turn gave Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki 30 days in which to form a new government.
This deal left Iyad Allawi, the secular Shia leader of a largely Sunni coalition, with the dregs: chairmanship of a “national council for higher strategic policies,” “un-de-Ba’athification” of three of his leading Sunni lights and still unspecified ministries for Iraqiyya followers. Now it is unclear whether Allawi will get even that much, according to Marina Ottaway and Danial Kaysi of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. There is little in writing, and Maliki seems inclined to forget what was promised and continue his effort to centralize power. Meanwhile, Allawi has reportedly winged off to London, presumably to be lured back only if Maliki sings him an enchanting melody. That isn’t likely.
Bottom line: the Americans and Iranians have both ended up supporting Maliki, to the detriment of Sunnis and secularists. This is not likely to reduce Iraqi paranoia, which holds that everything that has happened since 2003 is a plot by Washington and Tehran, working together.
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The road to Kabul runs through Kashmir
Ahmed Rashid’s proposition runs counter to Indian and Pakistani insistence on handling Kashmir separately, but it nevertheless makes a lot of sense: only by getting India and Pakistan working together in Afghanistan will the problem be soluble, and they will only work together there if they are also working together to resolve Kashmir. Otherwise, what we’ve got are Pakistan/India proxy wars in Afghanistan, Baluchistan and Kashmir. We can expect little help from Islamabad so long as it remains obsessed with countering the threat from India.
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And Petraeus channels Petraeus
The General’s transition plan to phase out NATO combat operations by 2014 bears a distinct resemblance to the Iraq phase-out now being completed.
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