International Crisis Group

Wave of bombings further tests Iraq’s stability | AP via Washington Post

By Adam Schreck

Lt. Col. Saad Maan Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, insisted that the border move is solely a technical matter and is unrelated to the prevailing tensions in the country. He did not elaborate, but he said the crossing should reopen within 48 hours.

Iraq temporarily shut the same crossing in January, weeks after anti-government demonstrations erupted along the desert highway heading to the checkpoint.

The International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization, recently warned that the standoff between Sunnis and the central government has begun a dangerous slide toward confrontation.

FULL ARTICLE (AP)

Photo: DVIDSHUB/Flickr

CrisisWatch N°116 | 01 April 2013

In the Central African Republic, a peace deal signed two months ago in Libreville collapsed as the Seleka rebel alliance, having repeatedly violated the ceasefire, seized the capital Bangui on 24 March. President Francois Bozizé fled to Cameroon. Seleka leader Michel Djotodia declared himself president and suspended the constitution and National Assembly. The African Union condemned Seleka’s “unconstitutional change” of government, suspending CAR’s membership and imposing sanctions against Seleka’s leaders. Despite its rapid seizure of power, the Seleka coalition appears fragile and prone to fragmentation, prompting fears that factions may take up arms again. Crisis Group identifies a conflict risk for Central African Republic.

Tensions continued to escalate on the Korean peninsula. The UN Security Council’s 7 March resolution condemning North Korea’s February nuclear test prompted Pyongyang to threaten pre-emptive nuclear strikes against “invaders”. North Korea announced that it would no longer be bound by the 1953 Korean War armistice, and cut off communications hotlines with South Korea and the UN Command in Seoul. The North Korean army ordered all its rocket and long-range artillery units to be combat-ready and targeting U.S. bases and territory, and the government declared North Korea to be in a “state of war” with South Korea. In a show of force the U.S. flew B-52 and B-2 bombers over South Korea and deployed F-22 stealth fighters to the South as part of an ongoing military exercise. On 31 March, a rare Central Committee meeting in Pyongyang declared nuclear weapons are non-negotiable and North Korea’s nuclear status should be written into law.

In a new outbreak of intercommunal violence in Myanmar in the central town of Meiktila on 20-22 March, more than 40 people were killed and over 12,000 displaced, and hundreds of mainly Muslim-owned buildings destroyed, in attacks by Buddhist mobs. President Thein Sein imposed a state of emergency in the area and deployed the military to restore calm. Amid speculation that the attacks were pre-planned by extremists, there was widespread concern as the violence spread to towns and villages in other parts of the country in the following days, although there were no reported casualties from these other incidents.

The political uncertainty and paralysis gripping Lebanon worsened with the abrupt resignation of Prime Minister Najib Mikati on 22 March following a standoff with Hizbollah. Political instability further fed ongoing sectarian tensions and clashes, mainly in the southern town of Saida and the northern city of Tripoli, where a dozen people were killed in clashes between Sunni and Alawite militants 22-24 March. Regular cross-border shelling by Syria continued, and the Syrian regime for the first time launched air strikes inside Lebanon.

Within Syria the first credible reports emerged of chemical weapons use in the ongoing conflict. The government and rebels accused each other of firing a rocket loaded with chemical agents near Aleppo on 19 March, and the opposition reported two people killed in an alleged chemical missile attack on Adra, near Damascus.

Iraq’s political crisis again deepened in March. Widespread demonstrations in Sunni areas of the country have met an increasingly hardline security response, with security forces killing two Sunni protesters in Mosul on 8 March. Finance Minister Rafie al-Issawi resigned his post, as did Agriculture Minister Ezz al-Din al-Dawla, in solidarity with the protesters. Meanwhile Iraq’s parliament relied exclusively on votes from the Shia’s political blocs to pass the 2013 budget law, illustrating Baghdad’s increasingly sectarian politics.

As the stalemate between Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi and the opposition continued, violent clashes between opponents and supporters of the ruling Muslim Brotherhood broke out outside the Islamists’ headquarters in Cairo on 22 March. Subsequent days also saw violent protests. President Morsi warned that he would take “necessary measures” to “protect the nation”, and the prosecutor general ordered the arrest of several activists. The violence took place as political demonstrations and riots in Egypt are increasingly giving way to socio-economic protest in the face of fuel shortages, inflation and price increases.

Nepal’s main parties ended months of political deadlock on 14 March. They agreed to hold elections to a new Constituent Assembly by 21 June under an interim election government, led by Supreme Court chief justice Khil Raj Regmi. The interim government will comprise retired bureaucrats, and be guided by a political committee of the four largest parties. If elections are not held in June, the government will be extended until 15 December.

Prospects for peace between Turkey’s government and Kurdish insurgents are improving after five months of negotiations between the national intelligence agency and the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan. The 21 March call by Öcalan for an eventual ceasefire and withdrawal to outside Turkish borders – and PKK’s military leader Murat Karayılan’s subsequent acceptance of the idea – are particularly positive signs.

FULL CRISISWATCH

Photo: hdptcar/Flickr

US ‘shock and audit’ over Iraq expenses | Al Jazeera

By Charles McDermid

Honest, aggressive and meticulous, “Learning From Iraq” is an important historical document, perhaps the most essential Washington-sanctioned databank for evaluating the US legacy in Iraq.

Still, it hardly explains the wreckage of today’s Iraq, the impoverished, jobless, powder-keg of a nation that the US left behind, or how nine years of botched reconstruction efforts helped thrust the country into an uncertain future.

Maria Fantappie, Baghdad-based Iraq analyst for the International Crisis Group, describes a “heavy heritage of fear” that exists for an entire young generation of Iraqis for whom political instability and recurrent crisis “continuously fuel suspicion”.

“The most affected are the youth, those born during the sanctions of the 1990s and grew up in the decade since the 2003 invasion. Problems were exacerbated during that time,” Fantappie told Al Jazeera.

“Most Iraqis developed ways of coping with the additional challenges that the invasion brought: reduced mobility, increased security checks, even the worsening services.

“What they are longing for now is a state they can trust.”

FULL ARTICLE (Al Jazeera)

Photo: The U.S. Army/Flickr

The new normal in Baghdad | Le Monde diplomatique

by Peter Harling

After violence that shattered hundreds of thousands of lives and left nearly everyone with a tragic story to tell, life in Iraq has settled into a strange normality — with no discernible direction or clear future. “How do you make sense of the last ten years?” said a novelist, who is trying to do just that. “The problem is not the starting point, but where to end. To write the history of the Algerian civil war, you had to wait till it was over. Here, we are still in the middle of a sequence of events whose outcome we cannot see.” The structure of his novel, in which each chapter relates to a different year, means he remains hostage to a political system that continues to keep the country in suspense.

A decade after the US invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, Iraq remains in crisis, although you wouldn’t know it from visiting Baghdad. The suicide attacks, car bombs and other explosive devices used, and abused, by the resistance and sectarian militias are much rarer than they were a few years ago, leading the world’s media to lose much of its interest in Iraq.

Traffic is easing its way through the maze of roadblocks and concrete barriers that had made it a nightmare. Many Iraqis who fled the violence in 2006 and took refuge in Kurdistan, or abroad, have returned. Those who stood accused of “collaborating” with the US are fitting back into society. The high cost of living doesn’t stop the new recipients of oil money from frantic consumerism. Indeed there’s more of a bustle in the shopping streets than in the corridors of power, where politicians on all sides react to the latest political tussle with remarkable nonchalance.

Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s detractors have been growing as he has accumulated powers. His trial of strength with the Kurdish leadership in the northeast of the country, over oil revenue and disputed territories, did help him rally support among the Arab population, both Shia and Sunni, establishing him as the defender of their interests and, more generally, of the country’s integrity. But then he overreached himself by using the “terrorism” argument to push aside politicians such as Rafi al-Issawi, his Sunni deputy, in a political system where senior government posts are allocated on ethno-sectarian lines. This led to huge popular protests against Al-Maliki, which forced Sunni politicians whom he had co-opted to distance themselves from him.

That in turn almost inevitably rekindled Shia identity politics, in a society still scarred by sectarian violence, particularly rife between 2006 and 2008. But not everyone in this diverse Shia community is an ally of Al-Maliki, since his personal power increases by reducing the influence of his rivals.

FULL ARTICLE (Le Monde diplomatique)

Photo: James Gordon/Flickr

from 10 Conflicts to Watch in 2013 | Foreign Policy

by Louise Arbour

Iraq

As Syria descends deeper into chaos, knives are being sharpened and battle lines being drawn in Iraq. The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has chosen to side with Iran, Russia, and China in an attempt to avoid the reshaping of the region by Sunni Gulf states, Turkey, and the United States.

Maliki has repeatedly burned his bridges with Iraq’s other religious and ethnic communities, taking measures to expand his control over political institutions and the security forces. His actions violate the Erbil agreement, which was formulated in 2010 to limit the powers of the prime minister and grant fair power sharing to Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish parties.

Maliki now faces resistance not only from the president of the Kurdish region, Masoud Barzani, but also from Sunni and secular opponents — and even from cleric Muqtada Sadr in his own Shiite Islamist camp. The incapacitation of President Jalal Talabani, a key mediator in the dispute between Baghdad and Erbil, adds to political uncertainty in the new year. Pouring fuel on the fire, al Qaeda continues to shatter the relative calm with devastating bombings. Maliki has clearly lost the trust of a good part of the political class, which accuses him of veering toward indefinite, autocratic rule. But efforts to hold a parliamentary no-confidence vote against him have foundered over deep divisions among his opponents.

This effectively leaves Maliki as caretaker prime minister until the next elections in 2014. It is a recipe for violence, and it is certainly possible for a spiraling sectarian-tinged civil war in neighboring Syria to exacerbate tensions in Iraq and usher the country into yet another round of strife in 2013.

FULL ARTICLE (Foreign Policy)

Photo: The U.S. Army/Flickr

For Iraq, Year Ends the Way It Began, With Guns Drawn | The New York Times

By Tim Arango and Duraid Adnan

BAGHDAD — It was just the sort of episode that observers have long worried could provoke a serious conflict: when federal police agents sought to arrest a Kurdish man last month in the city of Tuz Khurmato in the Kurdish north of the country, a gunfight ensued with security men loyal to the Kurdish regional government.

When the bullets stopped flying, a civilian bystander was dead and at least eight others were wounded.

FULL ARTICLE (The New York Times)

Photo: James Gordon/Flickr 

Iraqi Kurdistan Pushes Limits on Oil, Autonomy | Voice of America

By Mark Snowiss

With Kurds asserting themselves throughout the Middle East, Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region has stepped up its profile on the world’s oil scene.

A series of recent petroleum deals signals a direct challenge to Baghdad’s claim of total control over the country’s oil exports and a possible step by the Kurds toward their longstanding aspirations for increased autonomy, or outright independence.

Within the last few months, Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government, or KRG, has begun construction on a major international oil and gas pipeline project with neighboring Turkey that would allow the Kurds direct access to world markets via the Mediterranean.

FULL ARTICLE (Voice of America)

Photo: jan Sefti/Flickr

إسفين كردي بين العراق وتركيا | الشرق الأوسط

By Joost Hiltermann, Crisis Group’s MENA Deputy Program Director

لا عجب أن تستحوذ حالة من الغبطة على أكبر ثلاث مدن في إقليم كردستان العراق، أربيل والسليمانية ودهوك هذه الأيام، لاسيما أن أكراد العراق، الذين يقيمون في المنطقة شبه المستقلة التي تديرها حكومة إقليم كردستان، لديهم ما يكفي من الأسباب للاحتفال

FULL ARTICLE (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Photo: James Gordon/Flickr

A Kurdish Wedge Between Iraq, Turkey | RealClearWorld

By Joost Hiltermann, Crisis Group’s Deputy Program Director for the Middle East and North Africa

The mood in Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Dohuk - the three largest cities in Iraqi Kurdistan - is newly buoyant these days, and with good reason. Iraq’s Kurds, who occupy the semiautonomous region run by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), have much to celebrate.

FULL ARTICLE (RealClearWorld)

Photo: Jan Sefti/Flickr