As the seventh anniversary of the war in Iraq approached, the country held national elections on March 7, 2010, that illustrated how far the country has come and how far it has to go in its hoped-for transformation into a stable, secure democracy.
Insurgents launched a wave of violence meant to disrupt the vote, with 100 attacks in Baghdad alone. At least 38 people died, but the turnout was higher than expected. Sunnis who largely boycotted previous elections voted in force, and an intense competition for Shiite votes drove up participation in Baghdad and the south.
The short and fierce political campaign could end up either solidifying Iraq's nascent democracy or leaving the country fractured along ethnic and sectarian lines. But it was arguably the most open, most competitive election in the nation's long history of colonial rule, dictatorship and war.
Initial reports indicated that two coalitions seemed to have fared best: the one led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has campaigned for a second time on improved security in Iraq, and another led by the former interim leader, Ayad Allawi, who has promised to overcome Iraq's sectarian divides. As expected, neither coalition appeared to have secured an outright majority in the new 325-member Parliament, and so it was unclear whether Mr. Maliki had succeeded in winning another four years in office. That sets the stage for a period of turmoil - months, not weeks, politicians here predict - as the winning coalition tries to cobble together enough votes to elect a prime minister.
At stake is not only the question of who will lead Iraq, but of whether the American military will be able to stick to a timetable that calls for large-scale troop withdrawals later in 2010. By August, the number of troops is set to be down to 50,000, and they would be restricted to non-combat roles.
According to political advisers, Mr. Maliki is intent on changing the nature of Baghdad's relationship with Washington, shifting Iraq's role from a client state to a more equal partner. But internally, the transition from insurgency to politics to governance-a key to stabilising the country after six years of war-was proving to be anything but steady and sure. Iraq's provincial elections on Jan. 31, 2009, passed with strikingly little mayhem, raising hopes that democracy might take hold.
Mr. Maliki's Dawa party, running as the leader of a coalition called State of Law, was the overwhelming winner, but the bloc fell short of being able to operate without coalition-building. Over all, the results remained divided along sectarian lines, with Shiite-majority provinces choosing Shiite parties and Sunni-majority provinces choosing Sunni parties. The election outcome conveyed a dual message: many Iraqis want a strong central government, rather than one where regions hold more power than the center, but they do not want all the power in the hands of one party. On the ground in the provinces, however, what happened in the months after the election was something all too familiar to Iraqis: threats, intrigue, back-room deal-making, protests, political paralysis and, increasingly, popular discontent. Almost immediately the campaign for the parliamentary elections began, at least unofficially. Political jockeying and a weakened economy due to oil prices largely stalled progress on most legislative issues.
Mr. Maliki, hoping to build on his success in the provincial elections, sought to form a broader, cross-sectarian coalition that would include Sunnis, Kurds and other minority groups. Other parties followed suit, appealing for "national unity" in a country where it has rarely before existed, and only then a unity ruled by an iron hand. Mr. Maliki refused to join another, largely Shiite coalition, called the Iraqi National Alliance, which included many of those with whom he formed the country's first parliamentary majority.
They faced a formidable challenge from a coalition led by Ayad Allawi, a Shiite who served as interim prime minister before the 2005 elections. Mr. Allawi's alliance, called Iraqiya, drew broader support across the country's sectarian lines, attracting Mr. Hashimi, the Sunni vice president, and Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni lawmaker who was the most prominent candidate barred from running in March's election. Jawad al-Bolani, the interior minister, formed a similar coalition with one of Anbar's most prominent sheiks.
The election was originally scheduled for January, but was delayed for months by political bickering. A fight over the election rules prompted a veto by one of Iraq's two vice presidents, Tariq al-Hashimi, who said Sunni Arabs inside and outside the country faced disadvantages. Then in January a parliamentary commission with disputed legal standing disqualified more than 500 candidates on the grounds they were former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party or remained sympathetic to it.
The disqualifications - on grounds that have even now not been made public - reignited sectarian tensions that are never far from the surface, and the turmoil raised questions about the strength of Iraq's democratic institutions. The murky process was orchestrated by two candidates in the election, including Ahmad Chalabi, a former exile who was warmly embraced by American officials who lobbied to overthrow Mr. Hussein's regime. That glaring conflict of interest provoked outrage but did not derail the process.
A special appeals court initially reversed the disqualifications, then after Mr. Maliki and other political leaders met with the head of the country's Supreme Judicial Council, the court reversed itself. In the end, only 26 candidates were returned to the ballot. Many accused Mr. Maliki's party and another largely Shiite electoral coalition of using the process to target their main challengers in the elections, largely secular coalitions led by a former prime minister, Ayad Allawi and the serving interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani.
The pre-election turmoil unfolded against a backdrop of violence and intimidation, and a steady withdrawal of American troops. At least one candidate has been assassinated, another kidnapped; several party headquarters were bombed. On February 12, the Islamic State of Iraq, the insurgent group that now includes the remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, vowed to disrupt the elections. While the level of violence has plunged from the shocking carnage of 2006 and 2007, suicide bombers continue to attack, seemingly at will, plunging Baghdad into chaos on a regular basis and undercutting Mr. Maliki's claims to have restored security. Political disputes between Arabs and Kurds in the north continue to fester, prompting the Americans to intervene. Mr. Maliki's use of the military and security forces to settle political disputes have also raised alarms, and put the Americans in the awkward middle.
After the vote, Mr. Maliki's supporters quickly asserted that his coalition had won a majority of votes in Baghdad, Basra, Najaf and other largely Shiite provinces in the south. And Mr. Allawi, also a Shiite, emerged as the unexpected standard-bearer of a bloc that appears to have done best among Sunnis in Anbar, Salahuddin, Nineveh and Diyala.
The election is the last major political milestone in Iraq that will be overseen by tens of thousands of American troops, albeit in a largely advisory role. Under the security agreement, the American military returned control of military operations to Iraq's military and police on Jan. 1, 2009.
President Obama, who campaigned on a promise to end the war, entered office that month indicating that he did not intend to waver from his goal. As a senator and candidate, Mr. Obama did not oppose the security agreement negotiated by Mr. Bush's administration, largely because it left him considerable flexibility to carry out his campaign pledges. What was initially unclear was how quickly his administration would move to withdraw American forces, particularly in light of advice from General Petraeus's successor, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who had developed a plan for a slower withdrawal - two brigades over six months, compared with one brigade a month. On his first full day in office, he told Pentagon officials and military commanders " to engage in additional planning necessary to execute a responsible military drawdown from Iraq. '' A month later, he announced a plan to withdraw all combat troops by August 2010, leaving only 35,000 to 50,000, who would then leave Iraq by December 2011. The timetable was only slightly longer than he had pledged during the campaign.
At the end of June 2009, also in keeping with the security agreement, the vast majority of American troops withdrew from Iraq's cities, garrisoning themselves on vast bases outside. Mr. Maliki declared June 30 a national holiday, positioning himself as a proud leader who ended the foreign occupation of Iraq. By the end of July, there were no longer any other nations with troops in Iraq - no "multi" in the Multi-National Force. As Iraqi forces have increasingly taken the lead, the United States became the last of the "coalition of the willing" that the Bush administration first assembled in 2003. The withdrawal from the cities - and the reduction in active combat roles - showed in declining American casualties. In December 2009, for the first time since the war began, no American soldier died in a hostile act.
Mr. Maliki's fanfare about ending the occupation rang hollow for Iraqis who feared that their country's security forces were not yet ready to stand alone. A series of catastrophic attacks in August, October, December and January 2010 - striking government ministries, universities, hotels - only heightened anxiety and suspicion among Iraqis. Even now, with the end of the American military operation increasingly in sight, the war in Iraq remains divisive, a source of argument even as the Obama administration has refocused attention and resources on Afghanistan.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. recently claimed that Iraq would be one of the administration's great achievements, irritating Bush administration officials who claimed the former president laid the foundations for ending the war by ordering the "surge" in 2007, which, they and others pointed out, Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama had opposed. Mr. Biden remained unbending, criticizing the war he took credit for beginning to end.
"No," Mr. Biden replied on NBC's “Meet the Press” on Feb. 14, when David Gregory flatly asked if the war had been worth it. "I don't think the war was worth it in the sense that we paid a horrible price not only in loss of life, the way the war was mishandled from the outset, but we took our eye off the ball, putting us in a much different and more dangerous position in Afghanistan. We lost support around the world. It's taken hard work to get it back."
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