Iraq Aff Wave 1

***1AC Iraq Politics Scenario (1)***

New Iraqi coalition government forming now – momentum from recent meetings

ABNA (Ahlul Bayat News Agency) June 13, 2010 “ Maliki-Allawi meet ends in agreement to set up national partnership govt” http://abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&id=191871

A one-hour meeting between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and al-Iraqiya leader Iyad Allawi on Saturday ended in an agreement on the need to form a national partnership government encompassing all groups, an advisor for Maliki said. “The meeting took place in a very positive atmosphere that would open the door for more dialogues and perhaps could give an impetus and lend more seriousness to them,” Ali al-Musawi told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. Meanwhile, Maysoon al-Damlouji, the spokeswoman for al-Iraqiya bloc, said the meeting, which took place at Maliki’s office today (June 12), witnessed talks on forming the next Iraqi government and helped “break the ice” between the two sides. The talks were attended by Sheikh Khalid al-Attiya, Hassan al-Saneed, Khudeir al-Khuzaie, Tareq al-Hashimi, Mohammed Allawi and Hassan al-Alawi. The meeting comes a couple of days before convening the first parliament session, expected on Monday, and two days after a meeting between a delegation from al-Iraqiya and a delegation from Maliki’s Dawlat al-Qanoon (State of Law).

Err affirmative on uniqueness – regardless of current opposition Iraqi’s are ingenious at negotiating out of sticky political situations

O’Sullivan, 10 - Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (Meghan L. O'Sullivan, March, 2010 “ After Iraq's Election, the Real Fight” http://www.cfr.org/publication/21612/after_iraqs_election_the_real_fight.html

Iraqis have demonstrated an ingenious ability to resolve sticky political issues. I have no doubt that an investigation of scraps of paper tucked into suit pockets, scribblings in notebooks and records of late-night diwans would reveal the intense calculations and courtships already underway among Iraq's political parties. The election results are just the final piece of this high-stakes matchmaking game.

Now is key- any delay would result in political destabilization in Iraq. Any renegotiation of withdrawal times will destabilize further progress in forming a government

Schneller, 10 - International Affairs Fellow in Residence at the Council on Foreign Relations (Rachel Schneller, April 29, 2010, “ Iraq: A Compromise PM?” http://www.cfr.org/publication/22015/iraq.html)

So here we are in 2010. Is it possible that some mediator could suggest a third person that's acceptable to both Allawi and Maliki? That's going to have to happen. The question is whether it will happen before Ramadan, the month-long holiday, which begins this year on August 11. If this isn't sealed before Ramadan starts up, all bets are off because nothing significant will happen politically in Iraq during Ramadan. That would be five months since the elections, and the American troops are supposed to be pulling out in the end of August. It's important to decouple the issue of American troop presence from the Iraqi political situation. The security agreement we have with Iraq is a separate issue from the Iraqi elections. There are two important dates. The official U.S.-Iraqi agreement signed at the end of 2008 calls for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops by the end of 2011. In addition, President Obama has set the end of August this year to begin withdrawing U.S. combat troops. It hasn't been shown that there's any connection between withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and security threats or attacks on Iraqi soil. If anything, the number of attacks has decreased. If you look at the number of attacks on Iraqi soil during the time that U.S. troops have been drawn down over the past year, there is no correlation between the two. What's happening now is a political battle. Any attempt to renegotiate an already negotiated and expected pattern of troop withdrawal from Iraq is going to draw attention away from the political negotiations going on among the Iraqi political parties and draw attention to the U.S. presence in Iraq and make that an issue up for debate in the Iraqi political process. That would not be helpful at all. What we need to do now is not make any sudden changes or sudden movements or variations from what's already been negotiated and planned. We don't need new surprises here.

***1AC Iraq Politics Scenario (2)***

Troop withdrawal deadline question is the key –they overwhelm sectarian differences – all of Iraqs energy has to be put into government formation – destabilizes the country

Meghan L. O'Sullivan (Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations) March, 2010 After the Elections: Iraq's Uncertain Future http://www.cfr.org/publication/21755/after_the_elections.html

That's the Iraq National Alliance and the State of Law? That's correct--together, they have 159 seats. It's not an absolute majority. They would need to get four more seats, but they could easily get that from the smaller parties or from the Kurds. And then they would get tasked to form a government. They could form a government that excluded Iraqiya entirely. That could be very bad for Iraqi stability. The Sunnis perceive that they "won" this election in the sense that Allawi, who was the person that they put most of their votes and support behind, has the most number of parliamentary seats. So their inability to be in government, or even be given the chance to try to form a government, after they won, could be explosive. The message that the Sunnis could take from this is, "even when we win, we're excluded." And this is very dangerous in a society where there are recent strong connections between political exclusion and violence. That's the scenario that could be least conducive to a stable Iraq. Maliki, I suppose, will say he'd be happy to have the Sunnis in his government, but is he really interested in that? It is easy for us watching from afar to overestimate the sectarian orientation of the elections and government formation process. Some people are looking at things as Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds. But many others are not; many are looking at the situation from the perspective of Iraqis. The calculations behind coalitions are going to be made based on a variety of things, not just sectarian identities. Certainly there are some people who are Sunni that Maliki would be happy to have in his government. He is just not particularly interested in forming a national unity government--one in which every party has a minister in the cabinet. This is because his experience with such a government has been difficult. But Maliki and other Iraqi leaders are wise enough to know they need a government that is national in character. So perhaps the cabinet doesn't include every party, but every Iraqi should look at the government and feel that his or her interests are represented in the broadest sense. It is a tough sweet spot to find. Someone told me that everything really has to get done before Ramadan. Ramadan is around August 11 this year. Will it take that long? I wouldn't be shocked if it did. The most important factor in timing is how the Iraqis hammer things out. But how quickly this is done also depends how aggressively Iran tries to get involved--and whether the United States chooses to stand back or to play a very subtle role. My guess is that Iran will try very hard to ensure there's no government led by Ayad Allawi. And that will translate into Iran pushing very hard for Maliki's State of Law and the Iraqi National Alliance coming together. An international confrontation with Iran is at the very top of my list of things that could put Iraq off the current positive trajectory it is on. A look at the Iraqi constitution reveals a multi-step process: certifying results, calling the new Assembly to order, electing a new speaker and two deputies, getting a new president, the president designating the nominee of the biggest bloc to form a government, and then the constitution gives that person thirty days to form a government. Assuming that those things actually happen in the time that the constitution allots, the formation would take until the beginning if everything goes according to plan. It is quite possible it could take longer--and in the past the Iraqis have found creative ways to extend the timeline. Certainly, there are issues that will create additional pressure outside the constitutional system. You mentioned one being Ramadan. Another is the planned withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces by the end of August. It is really not an ideal scenario for the United States to be halving the number of troops it has in Iraq when uncertainty about the incoming government persists. Prime Minister Maliki will be in office until the next government comes on board, but this will be a critical time, and it won't be a time where people have a lot of energy for things besides forming the government. Is it possible that the U.S. combat troops might stay longer? They are not obliged to leave in August. That's the Obama administration's decision, right? This is an important point. The United States has a Status of Forces agreement with Iraq that was negotiated and signed at the end of 2008 right before President Obama came into office. That agreement had two timelines that were negotiated and agreed in legal documents between the two countries. The first of those deadlines was that all American troops would be out of Iraqi towns and cities by June 30 of last year, and that timeline was met. The second deadline in that agreement is that at all American troops will be out of Iraq by the end of 2011. President Obama inserted a third date between these two timelines when he came into office last year: that all combat troops will be out by the end of August of this year. This is an important date because it's related to our ability to fulfill our commitments in other theaters, such as Afghanistan, and also it has major domestic, political implications for the president. But this date--the end of August 2010--doesn't have the same force as these other two deadlines. And I doubt that many Iraqis are aware of it. This August date is purely an American timeline; the Iraqis are more focused on the 2011 timeline.