Sunnis Rejoin Iraq Government

July 20th, 2008 By: Michael Merritt | Tags:
Leave a comment | Trackback

Amid all the parsing of the recent comments of Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is the news that the Sunni bloc of parties has rejoined the government.

Accordance Front leaders said they rejoined the government partly because they viewed Maliki’s decision to crack down on Shiite militias in Basra in March as a sign that he was not sectarian. The government also recently passed an amnesty law that has led to the release of thousands of Sunni detainees, one of the bloc’s core demands.

The Sunni bloc will head five departments under an agreement with the Maliki government and take a deputy prime minister position.

I think this is great news for Iraqi political reconciliation, but might only go on as long as sectarian violence is kept down on all fronts.  If they see Maliki as being favoritist, it may divide the blocs again.  It may not matter for much longer, as Maliki has said he wouldn’t like to serve another term.

Still, to get back to reconciliation is no mean feat.  To maintain it will be yet another.  I certainly wouldn’t want to be in his position.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • SphereIt
  • NewsVine
  • TailRank
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
No comments yet.

PoliGazette Comments Policy

PoliGazette encourages comments from all viewpoints, especially those that disagree. Comments submitted must, however, adhere to the following standards. Comments that violate these standards may be edited or deleted without notice at the sole discretion of the editors. Commenters who repeatedly or egregiously violate these standards or who attempt to argue publicly with editors regarding the comments policy may be banned from commenting further.

(1) Comments should address the substantive content of the post. Comments that repeatedly or blatantly misrepresent the content of the post or of others' comments are not welcome. Comments that respond to something other than which the contributor or commenter may have said are irrelevant and should not be posted.

(2) Comments should avoid vulgarity as well as racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual bigotry.

(3) Comments should not personally attack the character, personal integrity, or professional reputation of any PoliGazette contributor or of other commenters.

(4) Comments should reflect the contributions of the commenters themselves and should not include extensive cut-and-paste reproductions of others' words except insofar as necessary to supplement the commenter's own arguments. Link spam, trackback spam, and propaganda spam will be instantly deleted.

(5) Public figures are considered open to all substantive criticism of their policies and statements. Comments that present objectively false factual information about public figures (i.e. "Obama is a Muslim") or that attack public figures by attacking their families are not welcome. Comments that merely repeat slogans for or against a candidate without engaging in substantive comment are not welcome.

Questions or challenges to these policies or their application should be directed to the editors by email only.


Warning: is_writable() [function.is-writable]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(error_log) is not within the allowed path(s): (/home/p6525pol:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/tmp) in /home/p6525pol/public_html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 500