The Prospect for Political Change in Iraq

Mohammed at Iraq the Model suggests that the tripartite division of Iraqi society and politics into Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish factions -- a formulation that has obsessed Western pundits, academics, and politicians -- is more apparent than real and that the tenuous alliances upon which these blocs are based might soon disintegrate. He notes the continued and increasingly vicious infighting within the Shiite bloc and predicts that its unity will not survive the next round of elections.

He concludes:

In any case I can only see a change coming, the present suggests this, not the past. And perhaps the biggest event that I expect to come after the new front is formed would be calling for holding early general elections towards the end of 2007, and then the political map of Iraq will be different, in a good way I think.

Read him here.

I tend to agree with him that the tripartite division of Iraq is more a product of political and journalistic expedience and of recent history than of centuries-old cultural imperatives and that a major re-alignment is likely as disparate factions within these blocs maneuver for power.