Iraq: Two Paths Forward

Over at historiae.org Reidar Visser outlines two possible paths for breaking the political stalemate in Iraq. The first, which Visser labels the “governance” path, focuses on better equipping the Iraqi government to effectively address basic issues like security and public health while attempting to ignore sectarian divides. The second path focuses on striking an armistice between Iraqi’s sectarian parties. The author believes that American officials currently favor a limited compact between Ayyad Allawi’s Iraqiya coalition and Nuri al-Maliki’s State of Law Coalition under which the election winner would assume the premiership and the loser the presidency of a new national security council.