Iraq Political Showdown
For all you dedicated readers of American Contractor dotcom (ACDC) you thought that last years constitution government meetings were long and drawn out which it was, I don’t believe you have seen long and drawn out on what is going to occur in the next several weeks with the Iraqi government if not longer.
There are several issues that are currently at Iraqi government level and to get accomplished this requires debating and voting on several bills and participation from the Iraqi parliament. The one bill that is going to cause the biggest political showdown is the bill of federalism, you know the dividing Iraq into federal territories.
If you have been following along with current events in Baghdad you would know they had a scheduled meeting on 16 Sept with various political parties and was postponed. The reason supposedly was so no one would leak each others arguments to the news media.
This federalism bill has sparked a wide rage of interest and controversy from different political parties and also opponents to the bill. Some political groups see it as an opportunity to unite territories under the umbrella of Federalism, others think of it as a way to divide Iraq into small sectarian states and then there are others are concerned about the timing.
In order for the pro-federalism to win this, the leaders representing the Kurdistan Alliance and the United Iraqi Alliance need to alleviate the understandable fears of the conflicting camps and lastly, to also alleviate the growing suspicion in Washington that the southern region in Iraq being promoted by the SCIRI political group in favor of federalism does not develop into an extension of Iran.
Iranian influence in southern Iraq is overwhelming according to frequent news reports and it is growing everyday. The Iraqi PM recently traveled to visit with the Iranian President and signed three memos of agreements for energy, economy, and other areas.
Certain sources in Iraq already believe that Iraq is already divided up indirectly based on sectarian hatred and death squad’s execution campaigns from the different areas of Iraq. If the hard core groups don’t accept federalism they can blame themselves if Iraq turns into a partitioned state.
ACDC sources say that possibly the federalism will pass after a grueling ordeal however, they would not implement the plan until a later date. It goes back to the timing of the event.
This bill will most likely hinder the Iraq PM Maliki National Reconciliation Project.