and other coalition troops in 2003, persists with some 7,500 American troops still stationed in Iraq( and about 2,500 additional U. S. troops currently occupying the northeastern part of neighboring Syria since 2015). Through wars, occupying armies generally bring with them their political value systems and laws and, failing that, their strategic and economic control. On the heels of WWII, the United States forced its political value system on Germany and Japan – a system which very much resembled the U. S. federal system, as reflected in: federalism, a primarily two-party system established in both Germany and Japan à la American model, and secularism, which separates politics from religion.
In the case of Iraq, however, it was sectarianism which was implanted by the Americans in Iraq – after it had been prohibited under the Baath regime which was largely secular – and sectarianism and ethnic regionalism were intentionally encouraged for the purpose of facilitating long-term control over the country by way of“ divide and conquer”. Thus, in preparation for the war on Iraq in 2003, the Americans allied themselves primarily with Iraqi Shiite groups that had been exiled and based in Iran- such as the Badr Brigade led by Nuri al-Maliki; the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq( SCIRI) led at the time by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim; and also with Kurdish ethnic groups in Northern Iraq who had been backed by the United States ever since the 1960s- namely the Kurdistan Democratic Party( KDP) led at the time by Mulla Mustapha Barzani; and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan( PUK) led by Jalal Talbani.
Thus, the constitution which was formulated and adopted on October 15, 2005, under the tight occupation authority of U. S.“ civilian” administrator over Iraq, Paul Bremer, replaced the Constitution of 1925, which was still in effect under Saddam Hussein until 2003. The federal system set by the 2005 Constitution – combined with sectarianism and regionalism-cum-pronounced separatist tendencies in the three Kurdish“ autonomous” provinces in the North- which have had, since the early 1990s- their own separate military forces from the command and control of Baghdad – made Iraq, in effect, a confederal system with expanded decentralization. This type of expanded decentralization was not tolerated by
SPOTLIGHT
It was sectarianism which was implanted by the Americans in Iraq – after it had been prohibited under the Baath regime which was largely secular – and sectarianism and ethnic regionalism were intentionally encouraged for the purpose of facilitating long-term control over the country by way of“ divide and conquer”. the United States itself starting in 1861, when the Federal government in Washington waged a bloody and destructive four-year war on the Southern eleven Confederate states, 1861-1865, to bring them under the submission of Washington. And it ultimately did through the outright defeat and submission of the rebellious southern Confederate States.
Parliamentary Elections post 2003
Since the American occupation of Iraq in April 2003, three parliamentary elections have been held. The first was in December 2005, shortly after the adoption of the constitution on October 15 of that year. The second took place five years later, in January 2010. And the third was scheduled, according to the constitution, five years hence, in 2015. Yet the swift invasion in the summer of 2014 by the terror group ISIS( with clear foreign support by the same countries that have set the series of multi-layered wars on the Arabs since 1990) of large areas of northern and western Iraq – including the province of Mosul and the city of Mosul, the third largest city in the country, in addition to two other provinces, Salaheddin and Al-Anbar – put the country on the brink of total collapse, particularly as the well-armed and foreign-supplied terror group reached the northern periphery of the capital Baghdad.
However, with the fall of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki from power, as a consequence of his failure to foresee or yet to repel the invasion of ISIS and its swift control of Mosul( 4-10 June 2014), a new parliamentary coalition was formed whereby President Fouad Ma`sum appointed Haidar al-Abadi( pro-American) to form a new government on August 11, 2014, which he subsequently did and undertook to coordinate the military plans between the army and the newly-formed Al- Hashd Al-Sha`bi militias, or the Popular Mobilization Forces, who are predominantly Shiite, to regain control of the areas invaded by ISIS. That bloody counter-military offensive lasted for three years until the summer of 2017, during which the Iraqi government liberated first Salaheddin, then Al-Anbar, and in the summer of 2017 all of the city of Mosul and most of the Mosul Province, with a border section of the province( in the area of Ba`shiqa some 60 kilometers inside Iraq) still
40 • Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist • Vol 6 • Issue 8 • August 2018, Noida