Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 02/2010

Iraqi Voices Entering 2010

Rusty Barber, William B. Taylor

January 2010

United States Institute of Peace

Abstract

An Iraqi acquaintance once characterized his country’s trajectory over the last six years since the U.S. invasion as “always halfway down a path to either democracy… or total collapse.” Recent high profile attacks and the Iraqi government’s incapacity to prevent them raise the specter of the latter scenario. Yet the horrific bombings on Iraqi institutions over the last several months mask something nascent but increasingly audible in Iraqi society: an emerging vox populi that found potent expression, as in provincial elections last January.