This op-ed first appeared in The New York Times on June 16, 2014. Click here to view the full article.
This article was originally posted on Charles Duelfer’s blog.
A possible path ahead is to take advantage of the post-election negotiations and configure a leadership that accommodates Sunni interests. This would by necessity mean someone other than Maliki becoming prime minister.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a Sunni militant group controlling territory spanning the border between the two country’s northern regions, made a rapid advance toward Baghdad this week, seizing control of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, and Tikrit, and attacking the refinery town of Baiji. Forces from Iraqi Kurdistan have since moved to secure Kirkuk as the Iraqi central government’s military has fled in disarray. Robert Ford, former U.S.
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika casts his ballot on April 17.
In the current two months between mid-April and early June, five Arab countries—Algeria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and even war-torn Syria—are holding key elections, with little sign that any is moving in the direction of meaningful democratic transition.
With Iraq’s elections scheduled for April 30, the United States should be acutely aware of its reduced but remaining influence in the country. Even in 2006 and 2010, when more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers were present in Iraq, it was largely Iran that had the final say on the premierships, if not the exact shape of the cabinets that were formed after the elections.
Two years after the U.S. withdrawal and four years into Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s second term, Iraq is on the brink of breaking apart. The upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for April 30, and the political process of government formation that will follow, present an opportunity to push for a return to more inclusive politics in Iraq. Unless Maliki is replaced or drastically changes his policies, these might be the last elections in a nominally united Iraq.
Libya’s road to democracy is shaky at best. Security is deteriorating, with targeted killings, criminal attacks, and bombings on the rise and clashes between rival armed groups—some apparently with government legitimacy and others not—growing more frequent. While these negative trends put tremendous pressure on the transition, Libya’s political process, albeit fickle, manages to keep moving. The efforts at institution building in Libya present a nuanced landscape: for every step forward in one aspect, there are steps backward in others.
The Middle East Dialogue is a regional Track II forum that meets twice a year and brings together current and former officials and senior experts from the Middle East, the United States, Russia, China, and the EU to discuss emerging political & security trends in the region. What follows is a report from the latest meeting of the Dialogue in Erbil, Iraq, on March 30-31, 2014, led by MEI’s Director of Track II Dialogues Randa Slim and VP for Policy and Research Paul Salem.
The Middle East Dialogue is a Track II forum focusing on emerging political and security trends in the region that meets twice a year, bringing together current and former officials and senior experts from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, the United States, Russia, China, and the EU. Members of the delegation, led by The Middle East Institute’s president, Wendy Chamberlin, met March 31 with Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Erbil—the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan—was once a chaotic and dusty backwater. Today, it is well on its way to becoming an attractive and orderly commercial and government center. A decade ago there were virtually no trees, as they had all been cut down for firewood to heat Kurdish hearths during the 1990s wars among Kurds and between Kurds and Saddam Hussein’s army. A magnificent wooded park now graces the mile or so from the high-rise hotel district to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s parliament and offices.
The fall of the Qaddafi regime and the loss of the state monopoly on violence gave way to a duopoly of power in Libya whereby rudimentary “national” forces—under the control of the National Transitional Council (NTC) from March 2011 to August 2012—were established in competition with the non-state “Revolutionary Brigades,” which had borne the brunt of the military struggle against Qaddafi’s forces. Since then, the Revolutionary Brigades have increasingly sought to assert themselves in the political arena.
Libyan popular and political support for engaging the international community offers the United States and Western partners an opportunity to help stabilize a North African energy producer and encourage orderly political change. Conversely, a failure to act could have costly, long-term regional and international security consequences. Domestic political limitations to direct U.S. government engagement, along with other issues that compete for attention and resources, are constraints on a more active policy. Moreover, Libyans themselves would not tolerate a dominating U.S. role.
In 2011, many observers predicted that relations between Libya and Egypt would become closer after both countries underwent similar revolutions followed by attempts at democratic transition. But three years later, the realization of this prediction appears unlikely. Political realities and ideological differences have led to a relationship that is contentious at best.
