 Good morning. Welcome. I'm Rusty Barber, director of Iraq programs here at the US Institute of Peace. In the three years that I have been associated with the Iraq program, half of which was spent in Iraq, it's hard to remember a time or a period that was more fraught with importance and significance for Iraq. Certainly, I dare say not since the last elections, 2005, in terms of what the election process and now the government formation process that Iraq is embarked upon in terms of what its impact will be for Iraq going forward, for the region, in fact, for the world. Now, of course, I think it's fair to say that as they do so, they do so in a context that is markedly improved in many respects in terms of security, in terms of the functionality of, to some extent, of government institutions. And certainly, of course, you have the US military and occupation forces withdrawing. Iraqis now own their own political context, their own political environment, their own governance. And yet the path ahead is very fraught itself with questions, potential conflicts, actual conflicts. And once the rough and tumble of this government formation process is over, what type of government will Iraqis get? Will Sunnis find that their embrace of the election, of electoral politics is justified by the government that they get, the degree to which it is inclusive of their participation? Will the system of spoils known as mahasasa persist that is, to some extent, institutionalized some of the ethno-sectarian differences in the country? And certainly, as late as just yesterday with the announcement of a partial recount of election votes in Baghdad, there are major uncertainties in this formation. Questions about stability, questions about whether democracy can survive in Iraq, what role are the neighbors playing, and on and on. So many, many complex questions. Unfortunately, we have an excellent panel here to address all of these questions. And many more than I know that you all will pose. It's a very well-informed group here today. So what I'm going to do is to first introduce each of our panel guests and then ask them to give a brief presentation and considering we have so much to get through and we want to get to your questions, we'll move right on to the Q&A. So first of all, I want to thank our co-hosts, the Institute for the Study of War, represented here by Marissa Cochran Sullivan. Of course, I plead guilty to a certain affinity for the optics of the Institute for the Study of War and US Institute of Peace, hosting an event of this nature. Anyway, we're delighted to have Marissa with us. Marissa is currently the research manager at the Institute for the Study of War, where she supervises research on both Iraq and Afghanistan. And prior to that, she served as the command historian for multinational force Iraq. And she has just returned, literally, from Baghdad and from Nineveh and point south, as far south as Basra. So we're going to be looking to her for an overview of the situation and a sort of fresh from the fray perspective. We also have my former colleague and good friend, Randall Heem, who is currently the executive director of the Iraq Foundation here in Washington DC. Prior to that, she was a fellow here at the Institute. And then before that, she was the representative of the Iraqi government here in Washington from 2003 to 2004. She also brings with her the experience of having been a candidate in this election on the Arqiyah list. Welcome, Rand. We very much look forward to your perspectives on the situation in Iraq. We have also with us Yost Hilterman of the International Crisis Group, who's a very well-respected expert on Iraqi affairs. And I have benefited much from reading your essays and your treatises on Iraqi politics. He is currently the deputy Middle East and North Africa program director at ICG. And with a special focus on political and constitution developments in Iraq, the Kurdish question and political trends in the region. We'll be asking him to talk a little bit about also not about just about Kurdish Arab affairs and relations and the impact of elections on those, but also the role that the neighbors are playing in Iraq's political process now. And finally, we have my current colleague, Jeremiah Pam. Jeremy served as the US Treasury attaché in Iraq from 2006 to 2007. And he is currently a visiting scholar here at the Institute with the Center of Sustainable Economies. Thank you. Welcome, Jeremy. And with that, I will turn the podium over to our first speaker and co-host, Marissa. Thank you so much, Rusty. And thanks again for all of you for coming out this morning. As Rusty mentioned, I did just return from Iraq, where we spent in a matter of about 10 days time going from Mosul down to Basra. And we got a good perspective. We were primarily looking at the security situation, although we did spend time looking at the politics as well, because that's unavoidable at this time and something that I'm keenly interested in. So before I go through some of my key takeaways, I think it's just worth talking a little bit about the four main blocks that you're seeing with government formation. The fact that no coalition won a majority of seats, therefore, alliances are going to be important to determine who will get to the 163 majority needed in the council representatives. Quickly, the four main blocks are Iroquia, which won 89 seats plus two compensatory seats, 91. And I should mention that this is based upon the uncertified election results. Now, as was mentioned, or as was announced yesterday, there is going to be a manual recount of votes in Baghdad. And I think this is going to be particularly important for not just stability, because again, this does throw open some of the results from Baghdad, but also to the numbers, because Baghdad was quite close and it's an important province that had the most number of seats. So I think this is going to delay the certification of the results, which we were expecting to happen towards the end of this month. And I'm not sure now what the manual recount is going to mean for that. As I mentioned, Iroquia came in first with the uncertified results with 91 seats. It is led by Ayad Alawi, who is a secular Shia, although the list is predominantly Sunni. One of the things that I noticed is that this list is perhaps one of the most susceptible to fracturing, although in my engagements, we were messaged that as of right now, it's still, it is showing solidarity. I mean, that was something that I was watching for. And that other parties are looking to do, to looking to fracture Iroquia, different components of it. But thus far, they do seem to be showing solidarity. The second main block is state of law, which is led by the current prime minister, Maria Maliki. Maliki is by far the dominant force on the list. He won by far the most number of votes on his list. And the party, though it's comprised primarily of Shia parties, many of them do have ties directly to Maliki. So he is by far the dominant force on the list. He does seem to be pushing right now for an alliance with the Iraqi National Alliance, which is another predominantly Shia alliance, as well as the Kurds. Although he has run into some difficulty with this because there is concern over Maliki, over Maliki's actions in recent years, and over what would happen if he were to retain his post as prime minister. So he has run into some difficulty, but you are still seeing efforts to, on the part of state of law, to form an alliance with the INA and the Kurds. Again, it remains to be seen whether you're gonna, whether he'll offer some concessions in exchange for that alliance. The third main block, which I mentioned, is the Iraqi National Alliance. They won a total of 70 seats with the uncertified results. There are two main components, and this is interesting because, whereas before, Iski had been the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which is led by Amar al-Hakim, had been the predominant force within what was then the United Iraqi Alliance beforehand. What you've seen as a result of the elections is that the Sadrists have actually emerged as the more dominant block within the alliance. They won 38 seats in comparison to Iski and Baader's, 18 seats total. So this has changed the dynamics within the INA. It has somewhat changed their approach to election formation. The Sadrists have been adamantly resistant to Maliki as prime minister, which is something that they've retained as a, so to speak, red line, although we'll have to see what happens as government formation continues. And the open-list system really exposed some weaknesses with Iski and Baader, and it actually did, and that combined with the Sadrists' sophisticated approach to how they ran in elections on election day was a result of what you saw with the imbalance now in favor of the Sadrists. And finally, the Kurds. Well, the Kurds didn't run on a united list. You actually saw the KDP and the PUK run on the Kurdistan alliance, whereas other smaller groups such as Garam, which is the splinter party from the PUK, as well as the Kurdistan Islamic Union and Kurdistan Islamic groups, and smaller parties run separately. What you've had since the election is the coming together of all these groups under a unified stance, and this happened within the last two weeks or so. So you can expect that with the approach to government formation that the Kurds will take a unified stance as they negotiate with other parties. So that's kind of where things stand right now, and the key player is as we discuss government formation today. Just wanted to run through that. In terms of what I saw on the ground, all parties are talking to one another. That's not to say that all parties are interested in allowing with one another, but they're all talking. My sense was that the serious negotiations have not yet begun, that you won't see serious negotiations or announcements until after the votes are certified. That was the sense I came away with. But there's been a flurry of meetings on all sides, and there's also been a flurry of visits to regional capitals, which is not surprising but worrisome, I think, because regional actors have taken a keen interest in what's going on, and they are seeking to shape the outcome of the government formation process. And you did initially see some attempts to broker an alliance between state of law, the INA and the Kurds, and this picked up immediately after the vote. It fizzled a bit. You're now seeing it again emerging as a common theme in statements and meetings. I'm skeptical right now because there's a lot of issues that still need to be resolved if this alliance is gonna come to pass. I mean, much is gonna hinge on the allocation of key positions, particularly the prime minister, and it's gonna depend on whether or not Maliki is continuing to push that he remain prime minister. As I said, a number of parties are not open to this possibility. And it's not just the prime minister, but the allocation of other key ministries and key positions. For example, the president, the speaker of the council representatives, and key ministries, such as Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Oil, Ministry of Electricity. So there's a number of key positions that are gonna need to be allocated, and this is going to cause churn. And at the same time, you've also seen statements affirming the need to include Irakia. And they did win the most seats in the vote. And so to cut them out in such an alliance, like an ISKI-SHIA alliance, I think would have detrimental effects for stability on the ground. Because, and I do think that the government that formed should be reflective of the will of the voters. That does include participation from Irakia. They did win support of many Irakia voters. So I think the most important takeaway from all of this is that this is only the beginning of the government formation process. I think this is going to take weeks and months to unfold. I think, and it's not just about the allocation of positions, but it's actually a discussion to determine key aspects of the Iraqi state issues, such as the powers of the prime minister, the powers of the parliament, the role of the central government versus the provinces. Even constitutional issues need to be interpreted during this time. So I don't think that it's just gonna be about trading seats. And I actually don't think that it should be about that. I don't think the process should be rushed so that it just becomes something of, I'll give you support if you give me the seat. I think it is in the interest of Iraq to have a debate on these issues. And one that is not rushed, and so you just get back room deals cut, but leaves unresolved some key issues of the nature of the Iraqi state. It is, this is an unprecedented time. This is the first transfer of power under the current constitution. So I do think it's an important step forward in Iraq's democracy. So those are some of my key points. In terms of stability on the whole, security is quite good. I know that you had seen in the papers some recent attacks, particularly in late March, but putting those in perspective, the last three months have had the lowest number of civilian casualties since 2003. So I think there's no question that security is on the whole tremendously improved. And that's with the Iraqi security forces at the helm. The Iraqi security forces have had complete, I've been in the lead since January of 2009 and the US forces have been stationed outside of the city since June. So Iraqi security forces are in the lead and you have not seen degradation in security. So I think that that's important, but this is still a very fragile time. You still do have enemy groups that are operating. You still do have efforts to intimidate, but whether it's political or otherwise during this time. So this is going to require continued aggressive action by the Iraqis with the support of the US. And you've seen that, I guess, two days ago with the raid up in Tikrit that resulted in the death of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the head of al-Qaida in Iraq, and Omar al-Baghdadi, another AQI leader. My last point is I think it's worth decoupling the discussion of the troop withdrawal down to 50K by one September from government formation, because we are on a glide path that's very clear from my trip that there's no reason why we won't get to 50K by one September. So I don't think it's useful to combine the two discussions and try to rush government formation so that it does not throw off the 50K withdrawal. We're gonna get there. I think that you should decouple these two discussions because they are separate discussions, and I think that we need to have patience with regard to government formation because it's important that it's done right. So with that, I'll conclude. Thank you, Marissa. That was an excellent primer to the discussion and I think it tees up Rendah Rahim very well. Rendah, if you could drill down for us down to what it looks like on the ground during the election, and if you could speak from the podium if I could prevail on you, because unfortunately there are friends at the back of the room behind the cameras who are having a little trouble. No. That's okay. You just need to be able to capture you. Yes, so thank you very much for having me. Always pleased to be at USIP. Feel very at home here. Although I ran on Iraqi a list, I am going to try and be to be as objective and impartial as possible in my presentation. I'm going to try and make it analytical and not biased. But I'm going to start with a few facts and figures which probably many of you know. As you may be aware out of the 325 new parliamentarians that were voted in, only 62 were in the previous parliament. 213 previous parliamentarians were actually ousted and only 62 made it back. So we have a lot of fresh blood in the parliament. Some very major figures who were well known names in the previous administration, previous parliament lost their seats. Let me just mention a few that people at USIP may know, Hachim Al-Hassani who was at one point speaker of parliament, Mufaq Al-Rubai who was for a long period of time actually Iraq's national security advisor, Mithal Al-Aloosi who gained a lot of repute in Iraq as a Sunni politician who told the truth to part many very prominent people lost their seats. There were 82, there are 82 women in the new parliament which is exactly 25% although it's also worth mentioning that 21 of these women actually got their seats not through the quota system but because they managed to get sufficient votes to get in on their own merit. 71 new members of parliament are under the age of 40. The minimum age for parliamentarians is 30 years. 71 new members are between the ages of 30 and 40. 25 of these youngsters are women. We saw a consolidation of the political currents or political parties. In the 2005 elections, 11 political groups got seats in parliament of which I believe only two were Kurdish and nine were Arab. In the 2010 elections, nine groups got seats in parliament, four of which were Kurdish and only five were Arab groups so there is a lot of consolidation and less fragmentation. 90% of voters voted for candidates, not for lists. In the provincial elections, 73% voted for candidates and these elections it was even higher although I should point out that many of those voted for the head of the list. So that sort of tempers it a little bit. And what was very interesting as Marissa noted was the rise of the Sudreys as a power, a new power, probably the new king makers. I, as far as my numbers go, I know that they've won 40 seats in parliament whereas the Kurdish block, the Kurdish alliance that is Puk plus KDP won 43 seats and the Sudreys then become the largest single Arab block in parliament. All of this is very interesting. Now the view during the elections was, during the campaign, was that these are watershed elections for Iraq and nobody was under any misapprehension about the importance of these elections. It was fought bitterly. It was, I was not a candidate in the 2005 elections but I was quite involved in the election campaign in another capacity and I can say that these elections in 2010 were much more vicious, much more contentious, much more adversarial than the 2005 campaign. Partly because everybody saw them as formative, decisive, they're going to define Iraq's future in ways that Marissa pointed out. We have issues that affect Iraq's future that are going to be decided by the new parliament and the new government in a way that wasn't yet apparent in 2005. In addition, I think they were very adversarial and very vicious because the political parties felt particularly within the Arab groups but I don't have as much of a sense of what it was like in the Kurdish region but in the Arab part of Iraq there was a sense that you were either in or dead. In other words, there was no life, no political life after the elections. If you didn't win, you didn't win big, you've lost big. Now the elections, and I think I'm justified in saying so, was really fought principally between Maliki's state of law and Ayad Allah is Iraq here. And the reason I say this is that in the south because state of law had won fairly decisively in the provincial elections, they control the provincial councils. With all the advantages of incumbency that that offers in the southern provinces, the state of law was not very worried about Iski in the south, it was more worried about the Sudris. The Sudris exhibited a phenomenal degree of organization and that explains their big win. So state of law really felt that the Sudris were its main challenge in the south and not Iski and it did go after the Sudris. A lot of Sudris during the election campaign and the lead up to the elections were arrested, were harassed and so on and so forth. And they of course complained very loudly about this. But the major battle was in many ways in Baghdad. Baghdad was the undecided city. This is where the campaign was at its fiercest and this is where Maliki and state of law had to fight Ayad Allah the hardest. And I think this is why we're having the recount in Baghdad rather than anywhere else. And of course, Baghdad also commands the largest number of seats. It has 70 seats, two of which are for minorities, but 68 come through the normal voting process. So Baghdad was the swing factor if you want in these elections. The Iraqi was hit very hard by a number of factors. The major one I would say, first of all, the general harassment of Iraqi members both in the south and in Baghdad, particularly in the south, the tools of power, the organs of power kept the Sudris down, kept Iraq down in the south. But the major tool that was used against Iraq was devatification. And the commission on, whatever it's called, justice and accountability, thank you. It's such a mouthful, I can never think of it. I find it very hard to think of it calmly. That's sort of this way. Just as a sort of, between sort of parenthesis, and I know there's media, but this is not for the record, I do think that the whole operation of that commission was completely politicized. But whatever that may be, that was the major tool that was used against the Iraqi. Now, the devatification process was, I don't think instigated by Maliki. It was instigated by others. However, it happened to serve Maliki's purpose infinitely well. And it did damage Iraqi considerably, both in Baghdad and in the south. I want to move on to the post-election period. Just one more point. In the process of the elections, as you know, the elections were held on March 7th. The preliminary final results were declared by the IHEC on March 26th. Now, this sounds like a long period of time, but in fact, in the 2005 elections, the elections were held on December 15th. The results were announced on January 22nd. So three weeks or somewhat less is not a very long period of time. But the accusations of tampering and election fraud began even during the campaign, even before the elections were taking place because of the way that the voting centers were deployed and so on and so forth. But certainly immediately after the elections, there was a great deal of talk about tampering with the results, tampering with the ballots and so on. I want to move very quickly to the post-election period to pick up really where Marissa has sort of left off. I think the recount in Baghdad then so asked me provocatively why should an election recount in Baghdad be that momentous or bad? The reason it is is that because Maliki has from the start, as soon as Maliki realized that he may not be, his state of law may not be, may not gain the highest number of votes of seats in parliament, he began to assail the results of the elections. And he began to talk about a recount and he began to cast doubt about the entire election process and in fact asked for a recount throughout the country. So, and has already, by the way yesterday, or in fact the day before, Maliki announced that a recount will definitely give a state of law four additional seats in Baghdad which will be taken away from the Iraqi. He made that statement at a press conference. So he's already predicted the result of the recount. What Maliki wants to do is to, given the deadlock in the negotiations and the coalition building and the resistance that has been shown by the other parties to a second term for him as prime minister, he wants to present the country with the concept of an inevitable fate. In other words, you don't like me but you're going to have to lump me. If I get 93 seats in parliament by every consideration, by every interpretation of the constitution which had been in question, by every interpretation I should be allowed to form the government. So it's a sort of inescapable fate that he wants to present the country with. We are in a current stalemate in terms of negotiations. Marissa said we have to form a coalition that gets 163 votes in parliament, 50% plus 0.5 as it happens. We have a situation of wheels within wheels and a really impossible attempt to reconcile foes, quell ambitions, a vote polarizing policies and personalities, seek common denominators, ensure a degree of mutual trust, all of which is a Sisyphean task as far as I can see. It's a huge, or I should say cullian because hopefully we will get there in the end. So it is a very difficult task. The real knot is that you have to form this super coalition to ensure votes. Maliki has been pushing for forming a coalition before discussing who is going to become prime minister, who is going to become president, who is going to become speaker of parliament. The response to him has been no, we will not do so. We are going to first discuss who's going to become prime minister, who's going to become president, who's going to become speaker of parliament, and we're going to discuss the distribution of important portfolios in the government before we decide whether to go into coalition with you or not. This has been the sort of vicious circle. Everybody recognizes that Maliki is trying to cling to power and they have been driving hard bargains, which Maliki, including that Maliki should not renew as prime minister. Maliki has so far not accepted to relinquish that post and he has even told his, the report as early as yesterday, that he has told his Dawa party that none of them should present himself as an alternative from the Dawa. Now, let's break it down a little bit more and if I have a little time. Let's look at the possible alliances. The obvious one, not the obvious one, but the one that is being worked on and the one which I venture to submit is blessed and encouraged by Iran, for example, is an alliance between the state of law and the Iraqi National Alliance. But that is becoming a case of the, almost the case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The problem is that the iski, the iski within INA does not trust Maliki. They've seen him marginalize them, they've seen him beat them in provincial councils and in these elections and they're generally distrustful of him. Plus, there is a traditional rivalry between Dawa and iski. But the real problem are the Sudris and Muqtada Sudr specifically. Muqtada Sudr has been adamantly opposed to a Maliki premiership. And more recently, in fact, on Sunday, he has said that he will not even accept any alternative from the Dawa party, from Maliki's party. He is not going to accept it. The Sudris are bitterly bruised by Maliki. Not only did he attack them in Basra in 2008, he also attacked them in Sudra city. He has also been rounding them up and imprisoning them. He made a promise to Muqtada Sudr to release many of them and has failed on his promise. The Sudris and iski both also see Maliki as somebody who came into power as a compromise candidate from within the earlier Shia alliance, the much larger Shia alliance, that they in a sense handed him the premiership as a compromise candidate. And he very quickly excluded them, very quickly concentrated power in his hands and in the hands of a few Dawa party members and that they've been shut out. So Muqtada Sudr is very opposed, strongly opposed. And Maliki yesterday announced that his discussions with the INA were sterile. So we have an impasse. That doesn't mean that there won't be a breakthrough, but right now we really are in an impasse. The, an alliance between state of law and INA anyway needs a major Sunni player. You cannot marginalize the Sunnis. They've all been saying we can't do without Arakia. But what they really mean is that we can't do without elements from the Arakia. In other words, they don't have to take Arakia as a package with Allawi and so on and so forth. What they would like to do, especially state of law, what state of law would like to do, is unpack the Arakia and as Marissa suggested, break it up and take away elements. Include, you know, these could be Najafis, could be Salih al-Mutlag, Tareq al-Hajmi, and so on and so forth. So far, I would agree with Marissa that Arakia has helped together. And I think partly because they realize that their strength is in holding together and that if they then make separate deals with Maliki, he is going to impose his will upon them rather than the other way around and that they may find themselves back to the situation in early 2008 when they were in government with Maliki and he quickly shot them out and kicked them out. So, but state of law would like to break Arakia and pull the Sunni, the heavyweight Sunnis from Arakia into the fold. What about an alliance between INA, that is Iski and Sadri and Allawi? That's a possibility. They've been talking constructively for weeks and weeks and weeks, certainly since the elections were held. And there have been a few breakthroughs. Ammar al-Hakeem, I believe there may be here, there are lots of issues at play here. There's Iran, Iran does not like Allawi. And so Iski and possibly Muqtada Sadri may find it hard to go with Allawi if Iran is so opposed to him. The other issue, of course, is the question of debathification, which is a slur, a sort of a big, you know, whatever it's called, a cross mark that has been put on Allawi's list. That he will come back, if he were to come back, he would bring the bathies and alliance with him would be an alliance with the bathies. There's a psychological block there. Ammar al-Hakeem and Muqtada Sadri have both made very interesting noises about including, not only including al-Iraqiyyah, but also going into an alliance with al-Iraqiyyah. Ammar al-Hakeem has repeatedly said we can't ignore al-Iraqiyyah. Muqtada Sadri said, if we can't have a breakthrough with Maliki, we will go with al-Iraqiyyah. They will be our natural ally. Maliki finds himself in a position where really nobody wants him particularly. Everybody is opposed to him. And this has been at the crux of the problem. And of course, there is the possibility, who knows, in politics everything's possible, of an alliance between state of law and al-Iraqiyyah, Maliki and Al-Iraqiyyah. And the Kurds, of course, will always be part of any such alliance. That, I find the least likely. Partly because, of course, they're both competing to be prime minister. But even more important is the perception by al-Iraqiyyah and the Sunni members in al-Iraqiyyah particularly, that even though the abatification accusations were not necessarily triggered by Maliki, it was fully embraced by Maliki. And that Maliki is continuing it. And that the state of law and the machinery of government that he controls is continuing to hound these Sunnis with accusations of being Bathis and so on. So there is a very strong psychological resistance of the Sunnis on Ayat-e-Allawi's list to sort of consummate a marriage with Maliki. Of course, the other thing for Allawi himself, if you recall, he withdrew from government in 2008, pulled out some of his ministers who were agreed to leave. And in fact, there has been a total absence of communication between Allawi, the Dawa party, and Maliki since 2008. Nothing of any substance has gone on. So in a few minutes, if I may, I'll talk about what will happen, what Rusty asked me the other day, whether I was optimistic or pessimistic. I said, I was cautiously pessimistic. So, and it's because so much can go wrong. And, but, you know, some things can go right. There is a chance that things will go right, but a lot can go wrong. The cards, and Ammar al-Hakeem particularly, is key as a whole, but Ammar especially, have been trying to act as mediators and conciliators. And they have called, both Ms. Aoud and Ammar al-Hakeem have called for roundtable talks, a roundaway tour, for major groups, plus the Kurds, would meet. And, or including the Kurds, they would be the fourth. And to reconcile differences. Everybody agreed except Maliki. He does not want to agree. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran certainly has already hosted at the same time groups of Iraqis. Iran was the first place that they went to just before the election results were announced and just after. But they've also been making business to Saudi Arabia, Turkey may step in. With offers of mediation also, the problem is that these three important neighbors don't necessarily agree, will not necessarily agree, on what to recommend or how to mediate. Each one will have their own agenda, each one will want to push for something. Failing an outcome that, the notion is that there should be a compromise candidate. Ammar al-Hakeem has said it is probable that neither Maliki nor Eid al-Lawi will become prime minister and that we need to find a compromise candidate. At some point, if there are questions about this, I can run through the names and we will demolish the chances of each one of them. I have yet to hear of a really plausible compromise candidate but they are going to have to come up with somebody. So, you know, America has to happen because if they don't come up with a compromise candidate who is acceptable to everyone or almost everyone and if they do not form a government that really is truly, not only inclusive, but it also is based on true power sharing and true sharing of the decision making process at least on the big issues. Then I fear that there will be white discontent and that the group that is most likely to be discontented are the Sunnis and that there is really a prospect of increase in violence and that there is an increase in violence, you see how this is going on, you know, a chain reaction, that we may have a state of emergency called. If this is before the formation of a government, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Maliki were to call a state of emergency in this interim period. The other fear that I have, a strong fear, is that there is a strong risk of increasing power becoming concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. And we have seen this happen over the last two and a half years, two years, certainly since 2008. With a lot of exclusion, a lot of, you know, one-party rule, a small group rule and so on. With an arbitrary and a selective application of law and with continuing compromising of state institutions. I think state institutions are already compromised and my fear is that they will be further compromised rather than rebuilt or built. Many political groups recognize this danger and they don't recognize it because, like me, they are a Democrat and they're interested in freedom and human rights and rule of law and so on. But because they're interested in their own welfare, they want to defend themselves against being marginalized, against being thrown out of the political system. This is why I said they all feel these elections are important, it's win or die. And so the political groups that are currently negotiating, being aware of this risk, are actually not only saying to Maliki, no, you can't be prime minister, but they're saying that whoever is prime minister, we are going to have to circumscribe the powers of the prime minister. We are going to have to define his authorities much more closely. We are going to have to have a system of true power sharing, true decision making, balanced authorities because without that, we are going to sink back into the situation that evolved with the Dawa party after 2008. This may well produce less efficient government, but I think that is an acceptable price to pay in the short term in the interest of moving away, pulling away or minimizing the danger of moving further into authoritarianism, images of single party rule and so on, which are frightening a lot of people today in Iraq. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Rend, for those insights. There were so many issues that you just touched upon and I know we're gonna wanna come back to you in the Q&A. The reemergence of the Sadri's, the de-pathification, the impact of de-pathification both pre, before the election and lead up to it and still ongoing, the role of the neighbors and their interests and we've seen all these, the shuttling of political parties out to Tehan and to Riyadh and so forth. And I think that's a good point to turn to you, Yost, for your impressions about how this is, the implications for Kurdish-Arab relations, for some of the things that you've written so much about in terms of reconciliation, in terms of the neighbors and their role here. And if you could do so from the podium that the camera folks would, I know, appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Rusty. Thanks for having me and good morning, everyone. The International Crisis Group put out a report about the Iraqi elections before the elections just to analyze the factors that went into the elections and I think you may still find that useful. It's online, but I brought some hard copies with me to understand what has come out of it. It's very important to understand the antecedents. But I will not talk about that now and look more at the results. And I just want to sort of address some of the figures that have come out and that Ran didn't mention to compliment her excellent talk and for a politician that was truly impartial. I'm very impressed. So far. No, she didn't. Also, I also wanted to compare the 2005 and 2010 elections a little bit, especially on two issues. One is the participation rate. And if we look, because the Accountability and Justice, the so-called Accountability and Justice Commission was mentioned and the debatification campaign and disqualification of several hundred candidates before the elections and still ongoing, the question was that this either trigger a boycott among those targeted, especially the Sunnis, the Sunni Arabs in Iraq, or did it in fact encourage them to go to the polls? And that is, well, clearly did not trigger a boycott and it may well, though we need a polling survey to find out exactly what happened, but the turnout rate went up in two critical provinces, one on-bar, where turnout was 55% in 2005 and now 61%. And in Nineveh and Mosul, where it went up from 62 to 66%. Overall, in the country, the rate went down from 70 to 62%, so quite a decline. And in fact, this is true for all of the remaining 16 governments, the participation rate was down, but in those two, it went up. However, even if this was triggered by sort of a sympathy vote for people who were targeted by debatification, the outcome compared, comparison between 2005 and 2010, sort of along ethno-sectarian terms is barely different. If you look at the United Iraqi Alliance of 2005, the Shiite Alliance, it had 46.5% of the vote. This time, if you combine the state of law with the Iraqi National Alliance, these are percentages of seats, by the way, you come to 48% plus 9%, so they went up by 2.5%, not a huge difference. If in 2005, you look at Tawafak, Iraqiya and Hewar together, so that is what the Tariq al-Hashimi's party, Yad Al-Awi's party, and Salah Mutlak's party, they had 80 seats, or 29.1%. This, the seats, this time, if you combine Tawafak, which almost disappeared, and Iraqiya, they come to 97 seats, which is 29 plus 8%. So they went up 0.7 percentage points, very little, less than 1%. The Kurds went down. The Kurds had 58 seats, 53 for the coalition, and five Islamist votes in 2005, 21.1%. This time, they went down to 17.5%, with only 57 seats, so in absolute terms, one seat less, but in relative terms, because the total number of parliament seats went up from 275 to 325, quite a decline. And so, what we see essentially is the same results as in 2005, with one key difference, which is that the Shiite list broke up, and this accounts for Al-Awi's victory, or at least so far, provisional victory, because we don't know what will happen with the recount, and anyway, these results are provisional. But had the Shiite list stayed together, then together they would have had 159 seats, which is, by the way, only four seats short of an absolute majority, and would have far outvoted Iraq Pia. So the key difference in these elections is that the Shiite list split. Now the question is, can it get back together? And Arante has already addressed that issue, and I think, yes, they can, but without maliki. Now we come to the very difficult issue of how to get rid of maliki. Oh, how will they get rid of maliki? Let's be clear about that. It'll be a Freudian slip, and it's astounding. Because maliki is going to argue, rightly, that he obtained 620,000 votes himself in Baghdad, which is good for 20 seats in Baghdad. He, by himself, personally obtained 20 seats for state of law, which gives him huge legitimacy and credibility. So he is not going to leave if he can help it. He's going to resist that tenaciously, and with a great deal of justification. His nearest competitors were Yad Alawi, with 407,000 votes, and then, thirdly, very interestingly, Osama Nujayfi, on the Iraqi list, was 274,000 votes. Then Tariq al-Hashimi, the vice president, was 200,000 votes. And then Ibrahim al-Jafri, as the fifth one, getting more than 100,000 votes, with 101,000 votes. Everybody else has less than 100,000 votes. So, but maliki is never far ahead of the field and is going to insist. And this is what's going to create the deadlock that is, or the stalemate that is going to last for some time, I expect. Now, what is the role of the Kurds in this? Rand already mentioned that the Kurds are, first of all, mediating, and second, will be part of any coalition government. I think that's right. The Kurds still king-makers, I would say, well, in 2005, they clearly were the king-makers, and now the Sadrists have superseded them in that role, if in fact there is a single king-maker. But just as it takes X number of votes to get through a healthcare bill in this country, so it will take X number of votes to get a government formed in Iraq, and in the end, with coalitions breaking down to create this larger coalition, individuals may become king-makers, and all will depend in the end on what kind of deal is struck between them. Now, the Kurds come into the game with clear disadvantages. I've already mentioned one, which is that they have fewer seats than they had last time, especially in relative terms. And this is due to the fact, not that they have declining popularity because it seems that they have been, the turnout is relatively larger in Kurdistan than there's not a part of Iraq. And so it's not attributable to that, but the fact that they had fewer seats to contend for in the Kurdish governments. And that is because in the drafting of the electoral law in 2009, they were assigned fewer seats based on trade ministry statistics indicating population growth over the last four years. They resisted the fact that they were being given less fewer seats, but in the end, in order to prevent another veto, the Americans called Barzani and said, listen, you've got to concede and we'll give you something in exchange. And in exchange, Masoud Barzani was given a visit to the White House, which took place in January. So that wasn't a very good deal. And well, to the Kurds, it was symbolic, incredibly important, but in terms of absolute power, this is pretty tough. Barzani came under a load of criticism from just about everybody, including, you know, across the board, KDP, POK, Gurran, everybody for having conceded this point. And now they are stuck with that. The second thing is that the Kurds themselves were divided this time with the new change movement, Gurran, emerging as a serious competitor to the POK in particular, less so to the KDP. And Gurran ended up with eight seats against the Kurdistan coalition, 43, Kurdistan coalition's KDP and POK. And what is interesting is if you look at the individual candidates, I mentioned the five leading candidates. Well, the sixth one is the first Kurd. And he is Latif Mustafa, or Judge Latif Mustafa, who is an independent running on the Gurran list in Soleimaniya. So the first Kurd in this list of top vote-catters is an independent Kurd running on the Gurran opposition list in Soleimaniya. And if you then go further than the list, number nine on that list is Khaled Shwani, who is a POK politician, a member of parliament in the outgoing parliament, and very popular in Kirkuk, where he won his seat. So he came in as the second Kurd. But then if you go down the list, the third Kurd, number nine on the total list of all Iraqi MPs, is Ali Babir, an Islamist in Erbil. And the fourth one is Ozeh Havid, also an Islamist of a different Islamist party. And the KDP comes in only in the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 17th place. So the KDP politicians weren't particularly popular, however, they got the most votes within Kurdistan, but their votes were spread out more. And in the end, the KDP won, sorry, the figure is here somewhere, they won 31 seats versus the POK 12 to make up for the 43 for the Kurdistan coalition. The Gurran made eight, the Kurdistan Islamic Union four, and the Kurdistan Islamic Group two, for a total of 57 seats. Now, while divided, they're also unified in their sort of strategic vision of what Kurdistan should fight for in Baghdad. However, there is a problem, and that goes back to the Gurran question. Gurran is willing to be part of a unified front in Baghdad, as long as they get redress for what they feel is a deep and injurious injustice that occurred last year before the Kurdish regional parliament elections in July, when in the round to which the POK in particular ousted a number of Gurran-affiliated Kurds from civil service positions, they fired them. And Gurran has been clamoring since then for these people to be reinstated, quite rightly, I think. And in fact, Masoud Barzani has already said, yes, this needs to be solved, we understand this is a legitimate problem, we will fix it. But the thing is that Taliban hasn't really made any move yet to address this, as the head of the POK. And so Gurran is still barking, is still saying we're not part of this front in Baghdad. And so potentially, though I think this will be overcome, in the end, potentially the Kurds will go into Baghdad divided. At the moment, they're negotiating among themselves and the common program is not known. It's not agreed anyway. Then the Kurds had another setback in Kirkuk itself, where in 2005, January 2005 provincial elections, they obtained the vast majority of seats, 26 out of 41, with the Arabs getting six seats and the Turkmens nine seats, 15 against 26. And since then, the Kurds have dominated local government in Kirkuk. Now these were not provincial elections, in fact the provincial elections in Kirkuk have been postponed indefinitely. But it is interesting to look at the national elections and to see how the various parties did. And what we see this time is that Iraqi had almost half the votes, but at least half the seats. Six out of 12 seats went to Iraqi, the other six to the Kurdistan coalition. So only two groups won seats, the Iraqi and the Kurdistan coalition. If the Kurds had hoped that through demographic strength they would bring Kirkuk into the Kurdistan region, then certainly they've had to scale back their aspirations because now if a vote such as this is any indication of demographic numbers, and this is a questionable assumption, but they all make it, then they have only 50% and therefore their quest to bring Kirkuk through a referendum is complicated. Now why did Iraqi have so many votes in Kirkuk? We have yet to see and of course the Kurds are now calling for recounting Kirkuk as well, taking the example of Maliki in Baghdad. And so who knows what may still change. But one key difference is that the Turkmens of Kirkuk decided to vote for essentially, I shouldn't call it Arab lists, but to not vote for separate Turkmen lists as they did in the past. And so we see that Iraqi, two of the vote winners are Turkmen and in fact the top guy is a Turkman and he got the most votes in Kirkuk. And so this unification of the Turkmens and Arabs in Kirkuk for the purpose of this vote, not marginalized, but pushed back the Kurds to an equal number of seats, six against six. And finally, the Kurds have suffered a setback as well in changing policy of the Obama administration, or should say the shift between the Bush administration and the Obama administration on Kirkuk. And really following on the heels of the release of the UN report last April, a year ago, which suggests an alternative solution to Kirkuk and a different process that would almost inevitably lead to a solution that is not the one that the Kurds pursue. And with the Obama administration putting itself behind the UN report and the UN method of resolving this question, the Kurds have lost a sponsor in the White House that was allowing them to proceed with creating facts on the ground in Kirkuk that would lead to Kirkuk falling within the Kurdistan region over time. So the Kurds have realized this, though they're still resisting realizing it in some way, but we'll have to deal with this as they proceed to raise the issue of Kirkuk in the process of forming a new government. Now the Kurds will no longer be the king makers, but will still play an important role because the fact is both sides, be it sort of the Shiite side and the Alawi side need the Kurds first to mediate and probably to be part of their government in order to continue to mediate between them and to create some balance. And of course, their seats are needed as well. And so the Kurds have some bargaining power, but the Kurds themselves are also quite eager to be part of the new government. And even though they prefer Alawi, they will settle for anyone. They really probably don't want Maliki, but then I think it's very unlikely Maliki will be prime minister. So they will push certainly for one of the alternatives that also Rand mentioned that is going to come up in the coming weeks and months. So, but because they also want to be part of this government that sort of diminishes their leverage. And so they will have to play a very careful game of putting their demands on the table. Now in the past, they put Kekuk sort of front and center. We want this government that we are joining to implement Article 140 of the Constitution. And it's all solemnly signed by all the sides. And of course, nothing happened in the last four years. Nobody implemented anything on Kekuk with the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and really the departure of the Kurds sponsor from Iraq. In any case, whatever deadline, even if one is agreed, it will not be implemented because deadlines in Kekuk, the record shows deadlines don't work, processes everything, and it's going to be extremely slow. Now the Kurds realize that too, and so they have a number of other demands that may contribute to their overall drive to eventually bring Kekuk into the Kurdistan region. And they include maybe holding provincial elections in Kekuk, unblocking that process. So in other words, some kind of commitments to that process moving forward. But also relating to the oil question. And the Kurds may seek the agreement of the government of which they will be part to pay the companies that have been exploiting oil in Kurdistan and exporting it for some time last year. And there are some other demands they can make along those lines. So finally, because when Masoud Bahrani visited the White House, he was told at the time that he should not make Kekuk a make or break issue in the forming of a new government. I think that the Kurds will be fairly flexible players in the forming of a new government. They will not hold up the formation of a new government. And that's a good thing. And that brings us back to, well, what is then going to endanger the new government? And that's exactly where I agree with what Iran said. We're going back to the Maliki-Alawi conflict over the vote count and legitimacy over the results and over any future results and the difficulty of forming a government that is between parties that are headed by figures that are not acceptable in Maliki's case by the people he will need to bring in. And in another case by Alawi who is going to have a very difficult time forming a majority government based on at least 163 seats. I know I was supposed to talk about the neighbors. I'm not going to. Good, I was just about to make the same mistake. There's too much of me to ask you to try to cover all of that anchor in one presentation. So thank you very much, Yost. And there's a lot there and I know we're going to come back to in the Q&A. Okay, I think Marissa mentioned an interesting point about, in her view, the necessity to disaggregate the question of US withdrawal from government formation. And I think that's a good segue to Jeremy whom I've asked to give a brief comment on the US role here and US policy options. And I think Ren will also have some interesting things to say on that later as well in terms of the role the US has played or not played or should play in this transitory period. Jeremy? Thank you. Well, glad to be part of this event and it's been a privilege to be associated with USIP for the last two or three years. The task I've been given is to speak most briefly in the interest of leaving the most time for questions and offer just a few observations trying to put this in the perspective of the broader US-Iraq relationship. And I think I'd just like to make three sort of broad brush points on this. First, about progress that's been made in Iraq since 2003. Second, about political transitions and learning from past interpretive mistakes that we've made over the past seven years. And finally, about the value of taking a long view with respect to Iraq. I'll speak most briefly on progress. This is something that I think everyone is aware of and could be measured in many different ways. But I think it's worth nonetheless making explicitly. I think that there has been a significant and steady and sometimes underappreciated amount of progress in Iraq. As I look back on the evolution of how Iraq's governance and political and security situation has progressed since 2003, the overwhelming theme in my view at least, is a steady growth of effective sovereignty. We should remember how low a basis we started with in 2003 where there was literally no formal sovereignty and much less, very low level of sovereignty. Low expectations on the part of the US and indeed on the part of the Iraqis for whether Iraqis would be in charge of making decisions about their country. But we have seen steady progress away from that and towards sovereignty. Obviously, the transfer of sovereignty in 2004, the last elections in 2005 that have already been discussed and the governance rule under the government finally formed in 2006. It has been messy, it has never been exactly what the US or the coalition would have liked to get exactly to happen, but the steady growth of sovereignty has been there. Just to give one concrete example of this as a former treasury person and indeed former legal advisor to Iraq in its debt negotiations, I have a kind of finance perspective on this. And so when I think about Iraq exercising sovereignty, I think about the growing role that Iraqi budgets have played in making decisions that have to do with Iraq. There was a time not so long ago when the vast majority of American attention was focused on us spending the $18 billion Iraq Reconstruction Rehabilitation Fund spending US money based on our best understanding of what Iraq needed. But that moment is now long in the past. Iraqi revenues have recovered. It has been the case since late 2006 at least that Iraqi money is what matters and Iraq makes decisions about how to spend that money and it took us a little bit of effort but gradually the US realized that if we continue to focus just on what we could do with our resources we were going to be less significant but that if we focused our efforts around the idea of helping Iraq execute its money towards its priorities as evidenced by its budgets both at the national and sub-national level that that was a much more effective way for us to work in partnership with Iraq. And I think that that is a sort of microcosm of the broader issue of the gradual assertion of sovereignty over the past, over recent years. My second big point is about the nature of political and governmental transitions and learning from past mistakes. I have a very vivid memory of being in Baghdad in the summer of 2006 which was a bad summer as you may remember. And having someone come in to see me who I had worked with on Iraqi matters for a couple of years, a very senior partner in charge of the Middle East practice of an international accounting firm in Egyptian national who knew the region who knew something in Iraq by this time he'd already been working in Iraq for a number of years. And he suggested to me that although in 2006 it looked like the sky was falling, that in fact one of the factors explaining the profound challenges at that time were simply transition problems that there had been an election in 2005. It had taken until April and May of 2006 to form the government doing the same process that we're describing here. And by this time the government had been formed, the minister had been named but you had a situation where the ministers had never worked together. You had ministers who had just been appointed who didn't know their ways around the ministries, who had no habits of collaborative work, what we would call here in Washington, interagency work. You obviously had a high degree of distrust but some of it was the sheer practical challenge of a new government taking office. And I think those of us who have lived here in Washington for the past couple of years maybe have a slightly better appreciation for the inherent challenges of transition. Transitions are difficult and they often result in an immediate loss of efficiency and the appearance of things not going the way they are, the way they should be. But that was not an interpretation. I mentioned this conversation in 2006 because it had never occurred to me from the perspective of Baghdad in 2006 that some of what was going on was not extraordinary, profound failure to govern of Iraq, of the special circumstances of Iraq but just run-of-the-mill political transition problems that every country that tries to engage in a peaceful transfer of power goes through. I think there's a broader point here which is that one of the terms that we was in wide use in 2006 and indeed in 2003 and 2004 and 2005 and even as late as 2007 was the idea that what we were experiencing in Iraq had been nothing less than state collapse, state failure. People talked about, Americans talked about arriving in Baghdad and being shocked to discover that there was no there, there. And I would like to suggest that that was an interpretive mistake by us. That in fact, that wasn't, there were all sorts of things that were profoundly going wrong but it was not fair to describe it as state failure and the best argument against that is the fact that by late 2007, early 2008 when I returned in another capacity by which time the security situation had started to improve the military surge and other factors had produced improvements in security. I think many people were very surprised to see the Iraqi government functioning much better in 2008 than anyone ever imagined in 2006 or the previous years. Iraqi civil servants were meeting and making decisions. Iraqi political leaders were making decisions, not always exactly the decisions that we wanted on exactly our timeframe but decisions that reflected Iraqi priorities about what was most important to resolve at that time. And it wasn't the case that in 2008 the state had suddenly been formed, that it hadn't existed in 2006 and seven and that it had been created as a result of some external intervention. I think a much more plausible scenario is that the state had been there and had in effect been driven underground if you will by the security, the profound insecurity and the uncertainties and the improvement in security had established a condition to use a counterinsurgency term that enabled the state to reemerge. And that is a very chastening observation to make that we could be wrong about something as fundamental and profound as to whether the Iraqi state had failed to exist for a number of years while we were there looking as closely as we could. And to me that suggests that we need to be very careful about seeing, about looking for the right things and not rushing to conclusions. So that brings me to my final point which is about the value of taking the long view with respect to Iraq. I think with the possible exception of 2009, every year since the US has been in Iraq has brought a crisis that has tempted us to think and often, and we've often given into that temptation to think that we the US has to do the expedient thing in order to get the situation under control. We have to spend our money and increase the degree of involvement. We have to sort of take a more active role in making sure that things turn out the way we want them to turn out. But I think we have learned a couple of things about that temptation. First, the expedient things haven't always worked. In some cases they have. I don't wanna suggest, I'm not making a blanket statement here. And I think that the military surges contribution to improving security is clearly exhibit A of something that did have a useful if indirect approach in the sense of establishing a condition as I mentioned. But in many cases the expedient things that we tried to do didn't work. And by contrast, the flip side of that is that non-expedient things, things that didn't seem expedient to us like Iraqi sovereignty, like Iraqis making decisions about what they wanted to spend their money on, on what timeframe. Those things happened anyway, even when we tried to move it in a different direction. And so I think the question for us thinking about the long view is not whether the state of affairs in Iraq now or three months from now when government formation is still going on, or six months from now when levels of violence have increased to some extent because continued political uncertainty and we are tempted to say the wheels have come off it again. We have to reconsider the strategic decisions we've made about what our long-term relationship with Iraq should be. I think the question is not whether it's ideal, but whether there's enough of an intersection between our interests and Iraq's interests and priorities for us to work together on some modus vivendi, if you will, in partnership where we support them, Iraq doing the things that the two countries can agree on. I think that this long view has been particularly difficult, a particularly difficult thing to achieve for much of the U.S. time in Iraq, but I think that with some effort we have, with some effort on the Iraqi side and on the U.S. side, we have achieved something closer to it and I recommend us continuing to keep it in mind. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jeremy. Thank you, Jeremy. I think the reminder of the inherent complexity in transition processes can never be made enough, especially when we're so sort of concentrated on one as complex as this and the point that you make that the political process in Iraq has maturity, even as it's grown increasingly complex is a very good one. I think we're gonna go right now to questions. Please line up, we have two microphones here. We'll take, I think the best way to do this is to take two questions at a time, one from each side, and if you could resist the understandable temptation to ask more than one question at a time, that would be much appreciated. And I think we have, Joyce, we have this room for another half hour, right? Okay, good, so we have plenty of time. Sir. Good morning, my name is... If you could identify yourself too, yeah. My name is Ray Mohammed, I'm a private citizen, but I played a major role in the surge in my meeting with President Bush in 2006. Perhaps was the only person that was able to convey to him the dynamics in Iraq when everybody else failed. But for the sake of the United States Institute of Peace credibility, I think you guys need to allow one of the Al-Maliki from the camp of Al-Maliki to at least be present here, because otherwise it will look like it's an Al-Maliki bashing platform. Not that I care for him, not that I've ever met him nor I care for him, but it obviously looks like this was a platform to bash Al-Maliki. And the slip of the tongue sealed it. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. I want to hold on to that question. I'm sure Ren will want to respond to that. And take a question from this side. Yes. Good morning. Good morning. National Endowment for Democracy. It was excellent actually. I disagree with you. It is excellent presentation. I have two comments, one question. I'll keep them in two minutes. First the comment for Jeremy. What goes in Iran stay in Iraq. And that's for the international policy and the future. And for Ren and Marisa, I have one question. You know, what is the integrity of the US UN after they lost two battles in the last two months? The first battle they lost is justice and accountability. They lost it for Iran. The second battle they lost, the recount, which the outcome if it comes, it's not to stay at, it is right now. And then we are in big trouble because there is no inter-creditability for war. For the Kurdish things, you know, KDP didn't lose, they were targeting grass roots. They understand the election law really well. Similar to the Siderists. They know they can get seed and that's much important more than getting 600,000 for one candidate. And that's where the Siderists win against the ASCII. If you go to the bubble of vote, they almost ASCII has more than the Siderists, but they end with 18 seats, not with 40 seats. So just my comment, thanks. Thank you very much. Okay, first of all, in terms of addressing your point earlier, I will just say in response to the point that you made about this being a Maliki bashing or intended negatively towards Maliki at his expense, I have to say that in putting together the panel, any appearance of that is my fault alone. I think that Randhada Heem, though she's a member of the Iraqi list, has been an extraordinarily objective commentator for quite some time on these issues and we're delighted to have had her. Well, we can, I understand. Well, okay, well, we will, I don't know, I think I might, we might, what I think we'll do is we'll have a sorry bar afterward and let you address this directly to Rand. If I may. And in terms of the other question, the other question I had a couple of comments to make, I think one was about Iran's role and the second one was about whether the UN's integrity had been compromised in this process by the failure to stop debatification, justice accountability process and on the question of the recount. So on the wrong question, was that directed to, why don't we direct that to actually Yoast? I think the question was. Let me frame that in the context of the question is, what would you say is the role that Iran is playing now, they've actually had some interesting comments from senior Iranian leaders about the importance of including Akia and so there's some moderating comments out of Iran. What's your sense of that, Yoast? Yeah, I'm not an adherent of the view that Iran determines everything that happens in Iraq. I think their influence is limited. It's limited by the fact that the United States still has a lot of influence. It's limited by the fact that Arab states have some influence, the Turkey has some influence and influenced by the fact that there are very few people in Iraq who like Iran or trust Iran or want to make any deal with Iran if they can help it. Of course, they can't really help it and this is the problem because Iraq is very weak and so Iran has inordinate influence for that reason but that influence does have clear limits and I think it is limited both by what Iran wants in Iraq which is a relatively friendly place that holds together and the fact that Iran doesn't have any true friends in Iraq and therefore has to balance between the various actors. It's going to go for a Shiite alliance if it can but very tellingly it was unable to keep the United Iraqi alliance together or to reconstitute it and then run up to the election. It broke apart which led to the problem we have now or problem it's a good problem to have in many ways because it shows the openness of the system but the conflict we now have between Alawi and Maliki. So the Iranian influence I wouldn't overstate it at all. The fact that Iran now has called for an inclusive government which is also the US position and the Saudi position and the position of all the politicians that have spoken out about it is a good sign and it's again showing that Iran cannot simply have its will. Now what is going on behind the scenes? Of course, they're trying to manipulate, no doubt but when are they able to succeed? That's the question. Thank you, Ernest. On the, I think the, I'll entertain the second question that you asked about the role of the UN because I think it actually is a good one and Ren perhaps you could address that. Has the UN played the role that it should have? Has it been played a proactive enough role in your view in this process? I think those are two very good questions given what happened with the justice and accountability and what happened with the recount. I think Burhan Jaburi poses card on questions. What is the appropriate role of the UN? And indeed is there one and is there one for the US in all of this? The UN I'm sure will say that its role is entirely technical and that it does not make policy decisions, it does not make political decisions and does not influence the process in any way. The UN did in some ways support IHEC at times when IHEC was really under the gun and was under a lot of pressure. And the UN and especially Ed Melkert came out at appropriate moments including the announcement the day when the results were announced and it was announced that Iraq had won. This was a critical and rather dangerous moment for IHEC and the fact that Ed Melkert came out and gave a little sort of supportive speech was very supportive of IHEC. But other than that I think the UN has tried to steer a very straight and narrow course. The US situation is somewhat different. The US certainly doesn't want to be seen influencing the political situation. It was accused whether rightly or wrongly I don't know by the Justice and Accountability Commission of trying to influence the appeals panel. And I don't know if the US tried to do that or not. I know they were meeting with everyone but that doesn't mean they were putting pressure. The US finds itself in a very awkward position. And again the US really doesn't know whether it has leverage in Iraq. I think US policy is very nebulous on the subject. US officials that I have met since coming back from Iraq just about 10 days or two weeks ago are sort of waffly on the subject of what US policy is in Iraq. Is there a US policy? Is the relationship of the US to Iraq similar to the relationship of the US to Britain, for example? Or to France? Or is it of a qualitatively different nature? And I think the US officials like to talk about Iraq being normal. Iraq is not normal. I mean we're moving towards normalcy by no stretch of the imagination is Iraq like Britain or like France or not or Canada. But I think the US officials try to evade these issues. And similarly they try to evade issues of do we have leverage, don't we have leverage, do we have a horse in this race or whatever the expression is. So good questions, I don't have answers for them. Well that's a pretty good approximation. I suspect that through the questions we're gonna want to come back to them. The other panelists are gonna have something to say about it. Yes, sir. Hi, I'm Wallace Hayes. I'm an independent consultant. And my question I opened to the whole panel. And my question is, I heard various panelists say that the Kurds did not like Maliki. The Iski did not like Maliki. And the Sadrists did not like Maliki. And my question is, is from a political sense, is he dead man walking and his supporters just haven't realized that yet because he's the person who split the Shia alliance. And further to that, do you see a danger in the recount that he's trying to achieve by other means, non-democratic means, what he couldn't achieve through the election? Thanks. Thank you very much. Okay, yes. Yes, sir. Jaffa Rakhavi, I'm an Iraqi graduate student at Georgetown University. I met your father not too long ago in Baghdad. Oh, you did? I did. I have all the respect and praise for USIP. And I think this event today was great. But I do believe that I'm sure despite her best interests, the analysis that Mrs. Rande Rahim presented is very much tilted against Maliki and pro-Araqiyah. And I'd like to present what I think is a cool academic analysis, presenting a different picture. Well, it's gonna have to be very brief, if you would, and with a question in it. And very briefly, and I will end with a question, very briefly, pre-election. Pre-election, Mrs. Rahim presented debatification as infinitely benefiting Maliki. I argue the exact opposite. Ahmadat Shalabi and father Lillami, both in INA, were behind debatification. And in fact, they undermined Maliki's attempt to reach out to the Sunnis. And thereby weakened him, forced him in a corner, where he had to choose either to be seen as someone who is pro-Baf and therefore loses his support in the southern center, or to lose the West. And that's exactly what happened. That's the first point. In terms of the actual election itself, during the election, I actually think that what we saw is a great shift in support for Maliki's Dao Party. And if you actually add up the votes, in the provincial election, the Sadaists, Iski, Jaafari, Fazila, if you add them, they got more votes by far than Hasbid Dao. So in these elections, Hasbid Dao has actually done much, much better. They're in a much stronger position, despite the claim to the country. And my final point is about the post-election that we see happening. I don't think we should take the comments of politicians too seriously. All this anti-Maliki talk, I think is just a jostling for better positions. And let me quote an interview from Muqtada Sada in Al-Jazeera recently, in which he claimed that Allah has offered him half the cabinet in return for support. He says he rejected, and he said in that interview, Maliki hasn't offered him something like that. It's almost as if he's asking, give me that money and I'll give you the support. My question to Mr. Rahim is on regional influence. We've all heard about the concerns regarding Iran. And in an interview with the BBC, Dr. Yadda Lawi argued that Iran was out there against him, that it wouldn't invite him or his list. Now of course, in the last few days, we've all seen that Iraq has gone to Iran. I'm hoping that Mr. Rahim can explain to us why Iraq chose to do so and what negotiations behind the scenes took place with Tahrir. Thank you. Good. Okay, thank you very much. Some very good questions that I know Renda's gonna want to respond to. But let me first offer the first question to Marissa. Would you like to take, you know, this one that had to be, was a question related about all this talk about the various, the Kurds, certainly the Sunnis and other factions being, and the Saudis included, being anti-Maliki in this process. What's your thought about that? And the recount as well, if that was part of the question. I don't think that Maliki is a dead man walking. He did, he personally garnered the most votes out of any candidate. There's no question that his movement is powerful and does have grassroots support. I think the resistance to Maliki is most evident at the level of political elite who have seen the irrigation of power in the post of the Prime Minister are concerned about some of the actions and some of the behaviors that Maliki has taken in recent years. And that's where the resistance comes. So I think that he's still a very powerful force and I don't think he's a dead man walking. And I think that there is a question of, you know, what opposition would look like? Could state of law actually, if it's not in the government? And again, this is all very up in the air, but could state of law actually be a very viable opposition movement? Could it be a viable longstanding movement? And I think that there are a lot of legs for state of law, but again, there are hurdles to Maliki personally because of resistance amongst the political elite who have seen some of his actions and aren't very wary about it. So that's my sense. Thank you. Yost, I think you probably have some thought on this as well as you made some comments about how the Kurds regard the Maliki coalition and the state of law. Well, the Kurds could deal with anybody because for them, the importance is to be in Baghdad and to advance their own interest in Kurdistan. And in Kurdistan. So they're pragmatic in that sense. But I think if they had the chance, they would not want to have Maliki as the prime minister simply because of the past experience with him. But the bottom line is they will deal with anyone. I think Marissa is right about the Maliki having no elite support. And this is what counts and he has quite a bit of popular support. And that's what he, of course, he's gonna use in order to get this position back. And I suppose that the reason why Maliki is pushing so hard to get the recount and to get a victory here is not because he thinks that in the end there won't be a government that excludes state of law. I think it's quite likely that state of law will be part of a new government. It's very difficult to exclude them. In fact, because if you look at just the numbers I think it's very difficult for Alawi to form a government. So it's going to revert to Maliki anyway even if Alawi is given the first chance to form a government. But the question then becomes will Maliki's coalition partners accept him as prime minister? And I think this is a real difficulty because at the elite level, those people don't want him. And so that is going to be the big fight. And the question is, will Maliki's own supporters in Dawa and in the state of law less more broadly, will they back him up or will they go to an alternative candidate? And all the debate in Baghdad right now is about alternatives. I think that might actually get back to the question of possible compromise candidates that Ren mentioned. Yes, sure, sure, Ren. A couple of words. I think that what we're saying about Maliki not being favored as a prime minister, as the next prime minister, is very much in the press. I mean, what we're saying is what is reported in the press and particularly Muqtada Sada who has been extremely opposed to Maliki and even to the Dawa party as a whole. So it's not just a personal opinion. You can check it out in the papers. I do not think, I agree, I don't think he's dead man walking. I think he still has a lot of power, a lot of negotiating capability. But he has obstacles. Also, I did mention that Maliki did not instigate the debatification process, but he benefited from it enormously and it's still going on. And finally, yes, Dawa is in a stronger position now after these elections. It has moved from strength to strength since the provincial elections. And part of the reason is the advantages of incumbency. I mean, you've got the tools of the state in your hand. You know, whether it is the army, the police, it's all sorts of tools that people who are in opposition or who are not in government anyway, don't have access to it. It's quite simple. About the recount in Baghdad, there's no doubt in my mind that it's being done because Maliki feels he wants more seats in parliament, that's why. Otherwise, because there are, by the way, there are questions about the votes in all of the provinces. You mentioned Korkuk, a very strong example and an example that works against Iraq, by the way. Iraq has asked for recounts in Najaf and Basra and a few other provinces. They picked Baghdad. It's indicative. Yeah, I think the worry that you've kind of outlined is that this is going to lead to a snowball and a recount request which is going to delay the whole process. Or not. If it does not lead to other recount requests, it could be just as damaging politically because it will be seen as a decision by the court that simply serves Maliki's political desires that is ignoring and sidelining the wishes of other political groups. Okay, thank you. And I think, yes, sir. Take your question. Maurice Chuchet from the Washington Institute. I have a question, one for Jeremy and one for Marisa. Jeremy, how do you look at the production of the Iraqi oil seven years after the war still below the level that it was at the time? Don't you see it as a failure of the Iraqi government for the economic point of view? And Marisa, you touched on the killing of Al-Bardadi and Al-Masfi. If we look at what happened according to the media, the Iraqi forces just surrounded the house where those two were there. They needed the American help in order to attack the helicopter rocket and kill those two people. How can you put the readiness of the Iraqi army four months before August when it's supposed to go the American number of forces, supposed to go to 50,000 soldiers? To me, it's like the way they killed Salkawi four years ago through Iraq. So the Iraqis still need the Americans for help and they don't have an air force. Well, I think on the comment on that, it's not as though American forces are going away. It's still going to be a sizable force that's staying. So I'm not sure it's not as though every American soldier is packing up and leaving as of August 31st. Touching on the readiness of the Iraqi forces in terms of such an operation. Sure, okay. Well, okay, let's actually go ahead and get some answers to those and we'll move on. Jeremy, do you want to take on the question about briefly about Iraqi oil? Because it's not as remain to the topic of elections in post-production government formation. I certainly wasn't suggesting that that should be regarded as a success or a justification. It is definitely the case that part of the benefit that Iraq has realized in terms of increasing resources and material base for sovereignty was the result of high oil prices through 2008, which together with some recovery of production and exports produced a real benefit to the state. But I think that what we've seen in the last year or so has been the Iraqi oil ministry having worked through a process that was much slower and different from what the US has envisioned at various times is laying the groundwork, the medium and long-term groundwork for the kinds of agreements with international oil companies that will in the medium and long term result in a very significant increase in production and exports for the benefit of Iraqis. Thank you. And actually I think it's the tie into to the election government formation question. It's interesting that I think Sheriff Stani, the oil minister, has been mentioned at least in some circles as a possible compromise candidate, which is somewhat intriguing. Marissa, do you want to take a question about the American withdrawal? Yeah, on the question of American withdrawal, I think it's worth just taking a moment to discuss what September 1 will actually look like. What US forces are doing now, they're already conducting stability operations. They've always been partnering with the Iraqi security forces and they're doing so in an advise and assist capability where the Iraqis are in the lead. They are conducting the cordons and they are conducting operations. So not much is going to change from now to one September. The biggest one is the numbers and in terms of the combat forces you're looking at 50,000 troops going down. They've already transitioned from the combat counter insurgency mission to stability operations. So that's already been ongoing. With regard to the operation itself, that was a very high level operation. So I think that there should be some distinction made between Iraqi capabilities on a daily basis and this special operations force raid of the top al-Qaida and Iraq figures. But Iraqis were in the lead there and I think that you are right to point out that there is a need for continued training and assistance, particularly with the Air Force, the Navy, logistics, the statement. There's no question and that's something that the Iraqis also understand. We have a number of engagements with senior Iraqi officials. But it's not going to end one September. This is going to continue through the end of the security agreement for now through the end of 2011. So there's no question there are still issues where the Iraqi security forces need assistance. They've come a tremendous way from where they started and it's also worth in understanding what September one means. It's 50,000 US forces will remain and they're gonna conduct the stability operations mission that they're already conducting right now. Right and the anti-terrorism activities is a major part of that. Is a major part of stability operation. Yes, sir. Yeah, good morning. This is a really good panel. I'm Bob Dreyfus with the Nation magazine. My question's really for Yostin and for Rend and it has to do with Iran's relationship separately with Maliki and with Sadr. We know these guys don't particularly like each other for a long time and back in 2007, at least people that I talked to said that the general Soleimani from the Revolutionary Guard went to Maliki and said, okay, go after Sadr, smash the guy and then we'll come in and broker a deal which is exactly what happened in Basra. And obviously Sadr has not forgiven Maliki for that nor I suppose does Maliki particularly wanna apologize for it. So my question is what's the relationship that Iran has first of all with Sadr who's been living there now for three years, right? Who's he hobnobbing with and who does he talk to and what's that all about? It's amazing to me how it's dropped out of the press and investigative reporting and everything else. And the second with Maliki, as Yostin, Iran may not love him, whatever it is, kind of hurting cats for the Iranians with these guys. But my question is, I mean, I've been told that Iran has massive covert relationship with Maliki, not in a public sense, but that key people very close to him are outright Iranian agents, I mean, not just friends of Iran and so forth. I don't wanna go through the details. So nevermind whether they can make a deal and what the election, what's their Iran's relationship with these two individual characters like? Some good questions there. Actually, I had not forgotten Mr. Al-Waqabi's question lest you thought I had. And I think it dovetails nicely too in terms of your question about Raqi as a recent sort of traipsing to Tehran as well. So perhaps, do you wanna take first crack, Rand, on this question about Iran's role and relationship with Al-Sadr and Maliki? I have to say that I think if anybody thinks I'm here speaking on behalf of Raqi, I hope nobody's under misconception. Well said. In any case. Right. Muhtar Al-Sadr has been in Qom for three years. And the question is, how much influence does Iran have over his political decisions? Is he a free actor? Can he make decisions as he pleases? It strikes me as very unlikely that if he's sitting in Qom, and some people even say that he's under house arrest on Qom, but I'm not sure about that, I can't believe that Iran would allow him to stay on Qom for three years and not have a say in the decisions that he makes. But to what extent we don't know. The recent, I've often suspected that the recent referendum that the Sundries held for prime minister was something that the Iranians came up with in order to put the fear of a guard into Maliki. I mean, this is purely hypothetical or theoretical. So, and then again, how much influence does it have or what are the relations between Iran and Maliki? I have certainly heard that there are behind the scenes relations and trips from Maliki's group to Iran, communications which are not open to the public. I know some of myself personally. But is it more than other groups in Iraq? I mean, we know some other groups among the Kurds, for example, have strong relations with Iran. Iran is a major player in Iraq, and I think we would be very wrong to think otherwise. And so long as we have a weak state, and I'm not talking just about a weak government, but a weak state, then we're going to have a power vacuum. We're going to have a state that is vulnerable to Iranian or to anybody else's influence. But Iran is quick to rush in there more so than any of our other neighbors. Iran feels that it has more at stake in Iraq than say the Turks feel or the Saudis feel. Iraq is a big deal for Iran, and it's going to walk in every time it sees an open. On the issue of Maliki versus Muqtad-e-Sader, my analysis is that Iran does not get into details in this way as it affects the elections. Iran feels that there are only a couple of legitimate Shia groups from which the government should emerge. Those are the Dawah or SOL. It may or may not like Maliki, it doesn't matter. It is the INA, Sader and Iski. It is, as far as Iran is concerned, it is those groups, those two groups, from which the future government should emerge, including the future, and which should decide the shape of the future government. Now there may be an Iranian veto on this or that person, but I think it's more important for Iran to restrict legitimacy of governance within the groups that it can deal with, or that it deals with the worst. This is my personal analysis. I have obviously no documentary proof of this. Do you want to elaborate on a little bit, especially if you broaden it out a little bit because we've noticed the Saudis have taken a much stronger interest, and there's often a comment that the Gulf Arab states have been absent from the scene in Iraqi many respects, or playing a somewhat passively aggressive role that, say, Saudi Arabia has been playing. What's your own assessment of the stakes for them and how they're engaging right now? Well, they are not very good at engaging, that's clear. I think Saudi showed again that it doesn't engage very well by failing to invite Maliki to Riyadh. I think that was a blunder, and they should have done what the others do, and is to invite everybody, and to have an open discussion with everyone. The Saudis have a total blind spot in Maliki, and will not deal with him, and I think that's, I don't know, fatal, but I think it's a strategic error on the Saudi part because in the end, whether it's Maliki or someone else from state of law, or the broader Shiite bloc, they're going to have to deal with them in the long term, and they certainly are not laying the groundwork for it. So I think the Saudis are particularly poor at dealing with Iraq, and it's true for the other Arab states as well. Syria is doing it mostly by in negative ways. The only clever players other than Iran, and I totally agree with Iran's analysis on this, but the only ones who are clever are the Turks, and they also are talking to everyone. Their stake is not as great as Iran's, I agree with that as well, but they have made sure to keep all the doors open. I think the bottom line, they would prefer Alawi as Prime Minister, but they will deal with any alternative as well. And they are doing it simply because they are concerned about Iranian influence, and they want to curb it, and they do it by also talking to everyone just like Iran is. But their influence is less in Baghdad, clearly, but they have certain things to offer that Iran doesn't, for example, better produced goods, and a channel to the Western markets, energy pipeline, et cetera, et cetera. So Turkey's playing a role. I would just, I really don't think that Iran has any favorites among the Shiite politicians. I really have not seen any evidence that they favor one or the other. They're always playing one out against the other. And I have to say, in terms of, you know, Muqtara Sadr may be being on the house arrest in Iran. I don't know, but I remember being in Iran in 2002 before the invasion, and meeting with Mohamed Bakalakim, Ayatollah Mohamed Bakalakim and his lieutenants. And they were captive of Iran or, but proxy of Iran or, you know, supported by Iran, equipped, financed, everything appointed, and they hated Iran. And they were making it clear, as I was there in Tehran. They were making clear how much they hated the Iranians. And that really struck me. And that was before they came back to Iraq and then had to defend themselves against the accusation that they were Iranian proxies. These guys were not Iranian proxies, but they couldn't get rid of the stigma. And they've suffered a lot from that in popularity. So, and I think that's true for all of the Iraqis I've met. I know your father as well and others. You know, there are sympathies toward Iran, but there are sympathies toward others as well. And there is a recognition that you have to deal with the neighbors, especially Iran, because Iran is gonna be there forever. And Iran has a, it doesn't have to have a long memory. It has a 20 year old memory. It remembers the Iran-Iraq war. It will never forget that. And it's going to protect its strategic interests in the region and it's going to make sure that whatever emerges in Iraq will not hurt its interests. And that's a legitimate concern. Thank you very much for those comments, Joseph. I think the flicking of the lights is a good symbol that we're coming up on the hour so it's apt. So we have time for one more question and then we're going to wrap up. Yes. Yeah, cool. My name is Isan. I'm from the National. I think we have covered most of the formation of government scenarios with exception that we have neglected one scenario that may be important. That's a formation of Iraqi and Kurds that will bring them close to 163. So I would like to hear if there is any potential possibility for this coalition to be formed. And especially that Kurd have announced and they made a clear statement that they are in favor of Shia coalitions than Iraqi and they justify that by being not primal not against Mr. Alawi but against some figures in Iraqi which they described as anti-Kurdism. Is Iraqi attacking, I mean, it's again, is there any potential possibility for this formation? I would like to do that. Okay, well, thank you for your question. I emphasize, Ren's point, she is not here on behalf of any political party in Iraq. So with that, I don't know whether, what would you would like to take that on, Marissa, perhaps you first? I think anything is possible. And we're at the beginning of the process, so it's very hard to say with certainty. It's certainly possible, although there are a couple of factors to be considered. The first is there are certain elements within Iraqi that the Kurdish parties have said that they are less acceptable, that are not acceptable. They can particularly up the Jafi block and other anti-Kurdish blocks within Ninewa, Kirkuk and Ziyala. So there is that factor and it's not insurmountable, but it is something that might affect which elements of Iraq might or could ultimately ally with the Kurds. If that happens though, I think you'll see some other groups perhaps entering the lines. Again, anything is possible. With what Tel Avani said about the preference for the Shia Alliance, I think it's also worth noting that other statements were made in the last couple of days saying that's one thing, but we are still in the early process, we will look at other groups. So I think that it's worth noting that there was some statements from Kurds in response to what President Tel Avani stated. The groups that are perceived as anti-Kurds that have made statements, but again, I think it's a lot about perception. I think there's a lot of politicking that's gone on before and after the election. You notice different changes in tone from certain actors before and after the election. So again, it's always hard to say because there's a lot of posturing, there's a lot of posturing going on. Questions for the presentation, right? Any coalition has to achieve not only the magic number of 163, it has to include the Kurds. It has to include significant Shia groups and it has to include significant Sunni groups. An alliance between INA and the Kurds alone is not going to work because they need the Sunnis. An alliance between Iraq and the Shia alone is not going to work because they need Shia. So those three elements are essential. Now, having said that, I think the Kurds have repeatedly said and Iski has repeatedly said that they would like to see a government formed out of the four major political groups, the Kurds, the INA, Iraqi and SOL, okay? So the general direction is to include all four rather than to exclude. So this is what has been said in the press and said repeatedly. And I think that is what will in the end happen. Yeah, I'm sorry we don't have more time to talk about some of these potential sort of compromise candidates that you referred to. But we're also moving towards the, clearly as you suggested, it seemed that things are moving towards a grand coalition, perhaps end state. Yoast, do you want to give us a final comment? Just the bare numbers. I mean, Irapi has 91 seats, the Kurds are 57. So together they have 148, which is far below the magic number. So even if they tried that, they would still have to bring in some others and it's gonna be very difficult. But I don't see an agreement on Kikuk and the disputed territories before the government formation. And short of that, I don't see key elements of iratealists aligning themselves with the Kurds in a new government. I just don't see it. And if you look at Hewar, the dialogue front of Salah Muklaq, they have, we're still trying to get the numbers, but about 17 seats. And Nujayfi's group in Akhiyun have 18 seats. So let's say 35 seats, it may differ a little bit. But 35, so you take the 35 off the 91, you're gonna be 56. Then you add the Kurds, it's 113. It becomes a huge challenge to form a government. So I simply don't see it. And it's because of the disputed territories, these are the people who live in the disputed territories, the Kurds and Nujayfi and his followers. So they are not gonna come to terms before the formation of the government. It's gonna take a long time. And on that note, I wanna thank all of my panelists. I wanna thank my co-host, Marissa, as well as the Institute for the Study of War, Jews, Rend, and Jeremy as well. And thank you all for coming.