PREMONITIONS d’un conflit FRATRICIDE (French Edition)

G ravrand , H. G reenfeld , L. G riaule , M. G ulliver , P. G undelach , P. H ammond , P. H andelman , D. H eald , S. H erlehy , T. H obsbawm , E. H ocart , A. H offman , B. H ountondji , P. H owell , R. H umblot , P. I drissa , K. I nnes , G. I rvine , J.

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J affrelot , C. J ansen , J. J ervis , T. J unod , H. K edourie , E. K ennedy , J. K opytoff , I. K ourouma , A. L abouret , H. L allemand , S. L andsberg , P. Dissertation, Davis, University of California. L aunay , R. L eenhardt , M. L eriche , A. L eroy , A. L eslie , J. L ewis , R. L eynaud , E.

L owie , R. L ucas , S. L undberg , C. L uomala , K. M ariko , K. M auss , M. M ayer , P. M bembe , A. McK ay , W. McN aughton , P. McV icar , Rev. M eillassoux , C. M elland , F. M itchell , C. M kangi , K. M onenembo , T. M onteil , L. M onteil , C. M oreau , R.

M udimbe , V. M urphy , W. M woroha , E. M yamba , F. N diaye , R. N diaye , S. N ewbury , D. N iane , D. N icolaisen , J. N yamba , A. P ageard , R. P alau -M arti , M. P arkin , D. Insurgents sought to create a climate of fear by planting bombs in water bottles and blowing up a house, but the Iraqi security forces stood up to the test.

I could hear celebratory gunfire in the background. We had not expected Iraqiya—a coalition headed by the secular Shia Ayad Allawi and leaders of the Sunni community, and running on a non-sectarian platform—to do so well. I accompanied General O and Hill to a meeting with Maliki the next day. Maliki, a Shia, had been prime minister since Americans and Iraqis alike initially viewed him as weak, but his reputation grew after he ordered military operations against Shia militias.

Since then, Iraqi politicians had become increasingly fearful of his authoritarian tendencies. He had insisted on running separately in the election—as State of Law rather than joining a united Shia coalition as had happened in —in large part because the Shia parties would not agree on him to lead the list. Nobody wanted a second Maliki premiership. When Hill asked Maliki that day about his retirement plans, it was immediately apparent that he was not contemplating stepping down.

Maliki was becoming scary. Even though there was no evidence of fraud to justify a recount, the Iraqi electoral commission and the international community agreed to one, fearful of a repeat of the election fiasco in in Afghanistan, which had tarnished the credibility of elections there.

Otherwise, he would be blamed for losing Iraq for the Shia, who make up some two-thirds of the population. In parliamentary systems, the winning bloc is, by definition, the one that wins the most seats in the election and thus gets to have the first go at trying to form a government.

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This was certainly the intent of those who had drafted the Iraqi Constitution in General O urged that we should protect the process. He said the United States should not pick winners. It never worked out well. General O and I did not think that the Iraqiya candidate, Allawi, would be able to put a government together with himself as prime minister. But we thought he had the right as the winner of the election to have first go—and that this could lead to a political compromise among the leaders, with either Allawi and Maliki agreeing to share power between them or a third person chosen to be prime minister.

But after one meeting with Hill, General O strode down the embassy corridor looking visibly upset. They were rid of one dictator, Hussein, and did not want to create another. As the embassy did not want to do anything to help the Iraqis form a new government, General O instructed me to try to broker a meeting between Iraqiya and State of Law. They were the two largest blocs, and we saw an agreement between them as the most stable solution—and the one that would also best serve U.

But there was little trust between the two. State of Law continued to insist on Maliki as prime minister, and Iraqiya on Allawi. I met up with Sami al-Askari, a Shia politician close to Maliki who believed that an agreement between State of Law and Iraqiya was the best way forward. But he also told me that everyone except the Americans realized that the formation of the government was perceived as a battle between Iran and the United States for influence in Iraq. The Iranians were active, while the U. The Iranians, al-Askari said, intended to drag out government formation until after August 31, when all U.

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The Iranians had indeed not been idle. They were pressuring Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to drop his support for Allawi and agree to another Maliki term.

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For years, the Baathist regime in Syria had allowed jihadi foreign fighters to use their country as a launching pad for horrific attacks in Iraq. In August , coordinated attacks targeted the foreign ministry and the finance ministry in Baghdad, killing around a hundred Iraqis. Maliki had blamed Assad himself for the murders. The Iranians also were putting huge pressure on the Supreme Council, a Shia party headed by Amar Hakim, to agree a second Maliki premiership.

And Iran was seeking to persuade the Sadrists, a Shia party led by Muqtada al-Sadr, through intermediaries from Lebanese Hezbollah, that Maliki would ensure there was no U. Maliki would be able to achieve this because all the neighboring Sunni countries hated him. Their relationship went back decades. I went to see Rafi, the deputy prime minister.

He described how previous U. Qasim Suleimani is very active putting together the Shia coalition. The Shia coalition sent him a letter requesting that he withdraw his candidature for prime minister; Iraqiya made it clear that they would offer him the speakership of the parliament or the presidency, but not the premiership, and the Kurds explained that they really did not want to see him as prime minister for another four years. General O and Hill met Maliki and told him frankly that he had little support from other groups, so it would be very hard for him to remain as prime minister.

Maliki continued to insist that only he could do the job, only he could save Iraq. General O went back to Washington in mid-July for more meetings. If they could not reach an agreement within two weeks on how to form the government, they should both step aside and let others have a shot at it. However, when Biden phoned up the two leaders that week, he did not stick to the agreed line. Instead, he told Maliki that the United States would support him remaining as prime minister, and he told Allawi that he should accept Maliki as PM.

In the Arabic media, there was confusion as to why the United States and Iran should both choose Maliki as prime minister, and this fuelled conspiracy theories about a secret deal between those two countries. When I met Rafi, he was incredulous: This is our country. We have to live here. And we care passionately about building a future for our children. Biden visited Iraq at the end of August By then, Hill had been replaced as ambassador by Jim Jeffrey.

In internal meetings, one U. He would give us a follow-on Status of Forces Agreement to keep a small contingent of U. Furthermore, the official claimed that Maliki had promised him that he would not seek a third term. But Biden had been persuaded by the arguments that there was no one but Maliki who could be prime minister and that he would sign a new security agreement with the United States. The Obama administration wanted to see an Iraqi government in place before the U. Biden believed the quickest way to form a government was to keep Maliki as prime minister, and to cajole other Iraqis into accepting this.

They were scared that he would accuse them of being terrorists or bring charges of corruption against them, and would arrest them. Maliki had accused Rafi of being the leader of a terrorist group, for instance—allegations that were totally unfounded. General O described how Maliki had changed so much over the past six months. He had become more sectarian and authoritarian. Iraqis had reason to fear him. I tried to explain the struggle between secularists and Islamists, and how many Iraqis wanted to move beyond sectarianism.

But Biden could not fathom this. For him, Iraq was simply about Sunnis, Shia and Kurds. I tried another tack: The peaceful transfer of power is key—it has never happened in the Arab World. Biden did not agree. He responded that there were often elections in the United States that did not bring about any change.

He was clearly irritated by me. They all grow up hating each other. The conversation ended, as we had to head over to the meeting with Iraqiya members. Some were in suits, others were wearing their finest traditional robes. The full tapestry of Iraqi society was sitting facing us—distinguishable only by their dress, clearly showing us the sort of Iraq they wanted to live in. Biden started off smiling: My grandfather was Irish and hated the British. The Iraqis were grinning, expecting there was going to be a good spat between Brits and Americans. How could I stop Biden making a totally inappropriate comment about them all being Sunnis and hating Shia?

Vice President, I am not the only Brit in the room. Biden lost his train of thought and moved on. He said that one of his predecessors, Al Gore, had technically won more votes in the presidential election, but for the good of America had stepped back rather than keep the country in limbo while fighting over the disputed vote-count. Allawi pretended not to understand that Biden was suggesting he give up his claim to have first go at trying to form the government, letting Maliki remain as prime minister.

After we left, I was sure the Iraqis would be wondering why on earth Biden had mentioned his Irish grandfather and Al Gore. If only President Obama had paid attention to Iraq. He, more than anyone, would understand the complexity of identities, I thought—and that people can change. But his only interest in Iraq, it appeared, was in ending the war. I met up with Rafi Issawi. Iran had succeeded in pressuring Muqtada al-Sadr to accept a second Maliki term as prime minister and hence ensured that there would be no follow-on security agreement for a post U.

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The United States had helped to hammer out a power-sharing agreement of sorts in Erbil, but it had never been implemented. Maliki had detained thousands of Sunnis without trial, pushed leading Sunnis, including Rafi, out of the political process by accusing them of terrorism and reneged on payments and pledges to the Iraqi tribes who had bravely fought Al Qaeda in Iraq. Year-long Sunni protests demanding an end to discrimination were met by violence, with dozens of unarmed protesters killed by Iraqi security forces.

Maliki had completely subverted the judiciary to his will, so that Sunnis felt unable to achieve justice. The Islamic State, Rafi explained to me, was able to take advantage of this situation, publicly claiming to be the defenders of the Sunnis against the Iranian-backed Maliki government. The downward spiral, Rafi told me not surprisingly, had begun in —when Iraqiya was not given the first chance to try to form the government.

High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq, from which this article is adapted. The criticisms, which come as Mrs Clinton announces her presidential bid, are contained in a book that Ms Sky, an Oxford-educated Middle East expert, is to publish next month about the seven years she spent in Iraq. High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq, it paints an unflattering picture of the Obama administration as it tried to extricate itself from the country as hastily as possible.

While the demand for a speedy drawdown from Iraq was driven primarily by Mr Obama himself, Mrs Clinton is accused of appointing an incompetent US ambassador to Baghdad, Chris Hill, who had little experience of the region and held its people in contempt.

Ms Sky, who is now an academic at Yale University, first went to work in Iraq in after a spell as a development expert for the British Council in the Palestinian territories. In fact, he had not wanted the job, but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had persuaded him to take it; she admitted as much to General Odierno, he told me, when he met her in early in Washington to discuss the dysfunction at the embassy. Worse was to come when Mr Biden visited Baghdad. He repeated the simplistic observation at a meeting with the Iraqiya bloc, a religiously mixed, secular movement, only to be embarrassed when one of the Iraqi politicians told him that he had a British passport.

Recent gains against the group in Tikrit have been undermined by Isil counter-attacks in the western province of Anbar. Max Boot The Wall Street journal. Lawrence, Freya Stark, Wilfred Thesiger and more. The deepening American involvement in the Middle East over the past decade has inspired its own crop of ardent experts. Still others—perhaps the largest share—have been temporary recruits, helping the U. The new generation of American Arabists, busy in the field trying to help win two wars, has not yet produced the outpouring of writing that characterized their British predecessors, but they are starting to catch up.

There could have been few more unlikely candidates to advise U. British-born and Oxford-educated, Ms. She had come to assist the American war effort in Iraq by chance in after having spent a decade as a humanitarian worker in the Middle East. Employed by the British Council, a cultural organization sponsored by the Foreign Office, she received an email asking for volunteers to help the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Single and something, she raised her hand and wound up in Kirkuk, where she became political adviser to Col. William Mayville, commander of the U. Upon first meeting Col. Mayville, she threatened to haul him to The Hague if he did anything that violated the Geneva Convention: She spent nine months in Jerusalem advising the U. Raymond Odierno, who had been Col. There was no more unlikely duo than the hulking, 6-foot-5 former football player with the shaved head and his petite English adviser. To add to the incongruity, Ms.

Odierno relentlessly in a way that no one else would have dared—and he returned the favor. It is part of Gen. Sky could provide to avoid the groupthink that so often characterizes military command. He made her his indispensable aide, and she stayed by his side not only during his tour as the deputy commander in Iraq in but also when he was the top commander, from to Along the way, she helped the U.

In his second term, he pursued the sectarian agenda that drove many Sunnis into the arms of Islamic State. Sky ended up disenchanted with the administration she had once supported: If only Obama had paid attention to Iraq. But his only interest in Iraq was in ending the war. Odierno—who warned the administration of Mr. As we stared across the salt lake and watched the sun disappear behind the rocky crags of Israel, I recounted a trip I had taken to Jordan 20 years earlier to conduct field research on Palestinian refugees, as part of a Middle East peace effort designed to ensure that within a decade nobody in the region considered himself a refugee.

No one had an inkling back then that the numbers of refugees in the region would increase exponentially, with millions of Iraqis and Syrians displaced from their homes by international intervention and civil war. Nor had I imagined at the time that I would find myself in Iraq after the invasion of , initially as a British representative of the Coalition Provisional Authority—the international transitional government that ran the country for about a year after the fall of Saddam Hussein—and then as the political advisor to U.

Army General Raymond Odierno when he commanded U. A number of the Iraqis I had gotten to know over the last decade had relocated to Jordan. I had gone there to see them and better understand events in the region—and the conditions that had led to the rise of the Islamic State. It was a reunion of sorts; some of us had gone white-water rafting down the Little Zaab river in northern Iraq a few years ago. Azzam was an experienced rafter, but even the danger of the rapids had not pressured the group to trust his leadership and work together.

There was a lot of shouting and we all got soaked, but somehow we had survived the trip. This, to me, represented Iraq writ large. Therefore, so the twisted reasoning goes, the United States must have deliberately created the group in order to make Sunnis and Shiites fight each other, thereby allowing the U.

S to continue dominating the region. Local media had reported on alleged U. One of my dining companions asked me where I thought the group came from. I responded that Daesh was a symptom of a much larger problem. Regional sectarian conflict was an unintended consequence of the Iraq War and the manner in which the United States had left the country, both of which had empowered Iran and changed the balance of power in the Middle East.

In my view, regional competition—of which Iran versus Saudi Arabia is the main but not only dimension—exacerbated existing fault lines. Iran was funding and training Shiite militias, as well as advising regimes in Baghdad and Damascus. Gulf financing had flowed to Sunni fighters, including the ones that ultimately became Daesh. Azzam offered another perspective.

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Daesh, he said, were Muslims, and fundamentalist Salafi Islam was to blame for their existence. The problem, he said, was the literal interpretation of the Quran, which, for example, spelled out harsh criminal punishments reflective of seventh-century practices. Other religions had moved forward and reformed because adherents were willing to interpret texts for their own time.

A heated argument broke out as others at the table defended Islam and accused Azzam of being brainwashed by the West. All of these explanations contained some truth: There was no one simple reason, but rather a complex set of factors, that had enabled the group to take control of so much of Iraq. Another explanation came from Sheikh Abdullah al-Yawar, the paramount sheikh of the Shammar tribe, which has around 5 million members in Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Last summer, in the wake of the Daesh takeover of Mosul, his mother and brother managed to escape just hours before their palatial room house near Rabiah—northwest of Mosul on the Syrian border—was blown up, his photos and carpets destroyed, his horses scattered to the wilds.

It was a house that I knew well and had visited many times. From onward, Abdullah had decided that he and his family would cooperate with international coalition forces to secure their area, rather than fight against them. Daesh did not suddenly take control of Mosul last summer, Abdullah told me over dinner with his family at his house in Amman.

For years, there had been so much corruption in local government that Daesh had been able to buy influence and supporters. Daesh had then been able to exploit this situation to take control, presenting itself as a better alternative to corrupt local government.

But I had a more basic question: Then, after , some became al-Qaeda, and now they were Daesh.

They felt excluded and marginalized. Daesh gave them a sense of empowerment and let them present themselves as the defenders of the Sunnis against Shiites, Iran, and the United States. I asked Abdullah what had happened to them. He responded that they had been all talk. Some had grown the beards mandated by fundamentalists and joined Daesh. Others had done nothing. Abdullah and his wife provided me quotation after quotation from the Quran to prove that Daesh violated the tenets of Islam.

Personally, I told them, I judge people by how they behave. I told them I thought I faced a greater risk of death from overeating. Iran is now in Tikrit. This is not the way to destroy Daesh. It will cause a worse reaction in the future. A few days later, Sheikh Ghassan al-Assi of the Obeidi tribe, which has around , members in Iraq, both Sunni and Shiite, took me to a restaurant in Amman that he said was owned by Christians from Baghdad.

When the waiter came to take our order, Ghassan said, with an acerbic wit that I was by now long familiar with: I had first met Ghassan in , when he had been highly critical of coalition forces in Iraq. Even so, we had remained friends. He had fled to Amman last summer in the wake of the Daesh blitzkrieg. According to Ghassan, the group had blown up the grave of his father, the paramount sheikh of the Obeidis, and had destroyed the houses of his uncles because they collaborated with Maliki. He had hoped that his house would be left alone, since he had not worked with the United States or the Iraqi government.

But the week prior to my visit, Daesh had turned up with C4 explosives and blown the home up. He did not know why. He took out his iPhone. It is a state of militias. I was surprised; I had never expected a boy born and bred in Hawija—a rough provincial town—to turn out looking like this. Even in Hawija, it seemed, there were people who just wanted to lead normal lives, to wear the latest fashion. It was Dubai, not Daesh, that represented the sort of society they wanted to live in. Sheikh Ghassan laughed at my astonishment. On my last day in Jordan, Jaber al-Jaberi, another tribal leader who had served Iraq as a member of parliament and had once been a candidate for minister of defense, drove me to Jerash, an ancient city outside Amman.

Jaber, too, had been forced to leave his home in Anbar amid the Daesh advance. Jaber himself had given up politics and was now spending his days trying to get food and assistance to tribesmen living in terrible conditions in makeshift accommodation in the desert. The Sunnis, he said, had no real leaders, and the Shiite militias were more powerful than the Iraqi security forces. The state of Iraq has indeed failed. It no longer has the legitimacy or the power to extend control over its whole territory, and the power vacuum is being filled by a multitude of non-state actors, increasingly extreme and sectarian, who will likely continue to fight each other for years to come, supported by regional powers.

Whether a new kind of order will finally emerge, with more local legitimacy, remains to be seen. And for now those who are displaced are left wondering how long it will be until they are able to return home—and to what. The past would survive in archives, in exhibits in the British Museum, on the walls of art galleries in Amman, in poems recited around the world. We were in the land where humans had first experimented with settled agriculture, where the Babylonian king Hammurabi gave some of the first written laws, where Jews had written the Talmud.

Jaber, I saw, had tears in his eyes. Not these terrible terrorists, not these militias, not these awful politicians. A new generation will come one day that can build on this. The hope is the youth who just want to live their lives. And How to Get It Back. From to , she was the political adviser to Ray Odierno then the commanding general of U.

Republicans and Democrats each share some of the blame for the situation in Iraq — the former for the way in which the United States entered the country and the latter for the way in which it left. It was only between and that the United States had a coherent strategy in Iraq, matched with the right leadership and the necessary resources. At that time, some senior officials argued that the United States should uphold the constitutionally mandated right of the winning bloc, Iraqiya, headed by Ayad Allawi, to have the first go at trying to form a government.

They maintained that the United States should actively help broker an agreement among Iraqi elites to form the new government and warned of the already apparent autocratic tendencies of Nouri al-Maliki, the incumbent prime minister. Other officials argued that Maliki, despite his narrow electoral defeat, was the only conceivable Shia leader who could hold the position.

He was also, they said, a friend of the United States who would agree to allow the United States to maintain a small contingent of forces in Iraq after , when the existing agreement between the two countries expired. In the end, it was Iran that stepped in and, by pressuring the Sadrists to support Maliki, secured him a second premiership. The price Iran extracted from Maliki was his support for the removal of all U. Since , Maliki has consolidated his power by targeting his political rivals, subverting the judiciary and independent government commissions, reneging on his promises to the Sunni tribal leaders who had helped him fight al Qaeda, and politicizing the security forces that the United States invested so much in training.

He also mishandled the yearlong protests against his government that erupted in Sunni areas at the end of , following the souring of relations between him and Rafi al-Issawi, the highly respected minister of finance. His forces attacked protesters in Hawija, killing Following the death of the Iraqi general leading the operation, Maliki ordered his troops into the cities of Anbar province to close down all protest sites.

But they have been revealed to be strategic disasters, since they provoked a backlash that weakened the state. Sunni tribes, which previously had turned against the forerunner of ISIS, al Qaeda in Iraq, have this time either fled, remained neutral, or backed the militants. In one of his recent speeches, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, called on Sunni Muslims to join his organization to fight the Shia and establish a caliphate, which would remove the borders between Muslim lands that were demarcated by colonial powers.

But it is not the borders that are the root of the problems of these countries. It is the political leadership, which has failed to develop inclusive and robust states. And, ironically, although the ISIS has railed against national divisions, the tensions between its international jihadist agenda and the nationalist agendas of most Sunni groups will inevitably create friction and infighting.

Meanwhile, facing the shock caused by the collapse of the Iraqi army in Mosul, Shia have turned to Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for guidance. In the ongoing turmoil, the Kurds have taken the contested city of Kirkuk and see independence in their sights. Without such a neutral third party, the likelihood of Arab-Kurdish conflict is increasing, with ISIS gaining the opportunity to present itself as the protector of the Sunnis against Iranian-backed Shia but also against what they perceive as Kurdish expansionism.

So what can and should the United States do? It is positive that the United States no longer views the violence in Iraq as separate from the bloodshed in Syria and Lebanon. The region has become one battlefield — and U. It was the Iranian Revolution that set off the modern-day struggle between Iran and the Sunni powers. And it was the war in Iraq that led to sectarianization of regional politics.

Then it was the U. The United States needs to pursue policies that lessen sectarian tensions and support moderates.

The majority of those living in Iraq and Syria yearn to live in peace with just, effective, and transparent governments. The fall of Mosul and events that followed are indications that these tensions have come to a head and that it is time for Maliki to admit his failures and open the way for a more competent Shia leader to start a new approach. Although Maliki did head the winning bloc in the most recent elections, those opposed to him have enough votes to replace him if they can agree on an alternative. In his June 19 statement, U.

Shia, Sunni, Kurds — all Iraqis — must have confidence that they can advance their interests and aspirations through the political process rather than through violence. He correctly recognized that any military options would be effective only if they were in support of an overall political strategy that a new broad-based government agreed to. A new broad-based Iraqi government will need to win back the support of Sunnis against ISIS — and the Obama administration should be prepared to respond positively to requests for assistance to do so.

Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-political Conflict in Iraq. This past December, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the arrest of several bodyguards of Rafi al-Issawi, the minister of finance and one of the most influential and respected Sunni leaders in Iraq. In response, tens of thousands of Sunnis took to the streets of Anbar, Mosul, and other predominantly Sunni cities, demanding the end of what they consider government persecution.

Issawi has accused Maliki of targeting him as part of a systematic campaign against Sunni leaders, which includes the indictment of Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, on terrorism charges. This is not the first time that Maliki has gone after Issawi, either. In , during tense negotiations over the makeup of the government, Maliki accused Issawi of leading a terrorist group — a claim that the U. Not coincidentally, this most recent incident occurred days after President Jalal Talabani, always a dependable moderator in Iraqi politics, was incapacitated by a stroke.

The scale of the ongoing demonstrations reveals the widespread sense of alienation that Sunnis feel in the new Iraq. Prior to , Sunnis rarely identified as members of a religious sect and instead called themselves Iraqi or Arab nationalists. Today, the roles are reversed. In turn, many Sunnis take issue with the new political system, which was largely shaped by Shia and Kurdish parties. Today, the Sunni population is mobilizing against the status quo and making sect-specific demands, such as the release of Sunni detainees, an end to the torture of Sunni suspects, and humane treatment of Sunni women in jails.

Moreover, demonstrators are calling for the overthrow of the regime, using slogans made popular during the Arab Spring. As with other protests in the Arab world, which were initially driven by legitimate local grievances, there is a risk that the current movement will become increasingly sectarian. At political events, some Iraqi Sunni clerics use conciliatory language and emphasize Iraqi fraternity. Since , when Maliki led a harsh crackdown on the Mahdi Army, a Shia militia, the prime minister has tried to present himself as a nationalist leader seeking to unify his country and evenly enforce the rule of law.

Maliki tried to earn legitimacy beyond just the Shia community, in particular seeking the support of Sunni voters. His confrontation with Massoud Barzani, the president of the semi-independent Iraqi Kurdistan region, over security issues along the disputed border was primarily a move to win the support of the Sunni population there, which is resentful of Kurdish encroachment. He blames external interference for the current tensions, exploiting images of divisive symbols such as flags of the Saddam era, the Free Syrian Army, and Kurdistan, as well as photos of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Maliki could cling to power by presenting himself as the defender of the Shia in an increasingly tumultuous environment, turning his fear of a regional sectarian conflict into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Al-Qaeda attacks in Iraq are on the rise, provoked by discontent with Maliki and inspired by the Syrian civil war next door. Meanwhile, other leaders are struggling to remain relevant.

The credibility of Sunni government officials is declining, due to their inability to prevent discrimination against their constituents while participating in a system that brings them personal benefits. In the Shia camp, Sadr is moving to the center, positioning himself as a nationalist leader. If Sadr is able to create an alliance with anti-Maliki Sunnis and Kurds — presenting a credible and unifying alternative government — sectarianism could be curbed. However, Maliki might be provoked by such a challenge and clamp down on his rivals even more aggressively.

Politics in Iraq and the surrounding region are increasingly sectarian. This need not be the case: But, given the sectarian turn of Iraqi politics, Sunni leaders seem likely to run on one list with a platform built around Sunni grievances in the national elections. In addition, more hardline Sunni leaders may emerge if the current politicians prove unable to achieve meaningful gains for their communities. Sunni leaders may also, if they manage to overcome their internal divisions, propose an independent Sunni region, similar to the one enjoyed by the Kurds.

This would mark the end of Iraqi nationalism and put the survival of the state in question. Saudi Arabia, despite its usual counterrevolutionary attitude, is supporting the rebels in Syria in hopes of replacing the Shia-Alawite regime with a Sunni government and undoing the pro-Shia axis that now runs through Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Unfortunately, given mutual distrust, the personalization of disputes, and the upcoming electoral season, such compromises do not seem likely — particularly if Maliki insists on remaining in power indefinitely.

The American public is no doubt fatigued by the recent decades of involvement in the country and the region. But to avoid disaster, the United States urgently needs to review its Iraq policy. Washington needs to show the Iraqi people that its intent is not to divide Iraq and keep it weak — even if that appears to have been a main outcome of the U.

President Barack Obama succeeded in keeping his campaign promise of withdrawing U. In its second term, the Obama administration should stop supporting a status quo that is driving Iraq toward both authoritarianism and fragmentation. Washington should make its aid to Maliki — or any other Iraqi leader — conditional on his behaving within democratic norms. Washington needs to contain Iran, but should make clear that it is not aligned with Sunnis in a regional sectarian war against Shia.

This will require pushing back on Iranian influence in Iraq and simultaneously putting greater pressure on Sunni allies in the region to respect and protect their Shia populations. The United States has invested too much in Iraq to simply ignore these warning signs. Washington should use its diplomatic clout to help prevent further bloodshed. The MOU calls for South Korean firms to help build at least two small-to-medium sized nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia, the South Korean presidential office said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia aims to build 17 gigawatts GW of nuclear power by as well as around 41 GW of solar capacity. The oil exporter currently has no nuclear power. CARE , in charge of overseeing such projects, said in January. Care said in a statement: That agreement called for cooperation in research and development, as well as in construction and training.

Separately, Saudi Electricity signed four energy-related agreements on Tuesday with U. Turkey held a ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of parts of its first nuclear reactor, sparking an angry protest by activists. Protesters blocked a gate leading to the ceremony area, briefly preventing officials from leaving the site. Security forces pushed the activists back with water cannons. Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said the plant was designed to withstand powerful earthquakes, adding: Briton who advised US in Iraq tells how tactics changed after bloody insurgency Emma Sky, who spent four years in Iraq, says US military started reaching out to groups it had been fighting to stem violence.

Everything had just escalated and escalated. Speaking in detail for the first time about this most turbulent of periods, Sky also describes how:. A British liberal who had been against the war in Iraq, she was taken on by the Americans because they respected her judgment and advice, even when it ran directly counter to their own. She said the military realised it could not win with might alone, and had to start reaching out to groups that had been waging violence against it. But I was not sure the strategy would work. The military has a language that is not accidental, it is used to quarantine emotion.

Every day we would hear reports that another 60 or 70 bodies had turned up, heads chopped off or drilled through. It was absolutely horrific. We could tell which groups had been behind the attacks by the way the victims had been killed. There were ceasefires everywhere, local agreements, because more and more Iraqis were coming forward wanting to work with us. The intelligence we were getting improved, and the number of Iraqi casualties started to go down.

When Obama made his first visit to Iraq, a scheduled meeting with the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, had to be abandoned because White House security staff refused to let the president fly from the American base outside Baghdad to the Green Zone because of bad weather. Senior Iraqi politicians had always avoided the US base, called Camp Victory, because it was regarded as the seat of the occupation.

With a diplomatic standoff looming, Sky was sent to the Green Zone to see if Maliki could be persuaded to travel by car to meet Obama at the US headquarters. I had to wake him up. Everyone was excited about him, and Maliki agreed. And if Maliki agreed, then the others would probably come too. On the face of it, Emma Sky was not an obvious candidate to send to Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the war.

She had only been to the US once and was instinctively suspicious of the military, perhaps especially the US military. Yet on Friday, 20 June , two months after the war began, Sky boarded a flight from RAF Brize Norton, the only woman among soldiers, and headed into the 50C heat and post-conflict chaos of Basra, the city in the south where the British were based.

Two weeks earlier she had been working as an international development adviser for the British Council in Manchester; now she found herself in charge of one of the most volatile regions in Iraq. The journey from north-west England to north-east Iraq owed a lot to fortune, her determination, and some barely scriptable coincidences. Learn more at Author Central. Popularity Popularity Featured Price: Low to High Price: High to Low Avg. Available for download now. Premonitions d'un Conflit Fratricide: Available to ship in days.

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