Iraq: contentious, controversial and explosive

The Kurds are suspicious as ever that Baghdad does not want to see a successful Kurdish entity developing. The lack of a decisive response from Baghdad over the recent Turkish invasion of Kurdistan only added to their frustration.

Ominously the issue of oil-rich Kirkuk, side-stepped for many years by Baghdad, is coming to the boil and another delay in the referendum, original scheduled for the end of 2007, may call the Kurds' bluff and induce a deadly conflict.

The US surge

Under the controversial US surge strategy initiated in early 2007, violence has steadily declined and security has dramatically improved. However, while the US has been credited with a successful strategy, there have been a number of key factors in the turn around that may yet produce a future minefield that Iraq could well do without.

Increasingly alienated by heavy handed al-Qaida tactics, chronic lack of employment and years of fighting, the Sunnis turned against the insurgents. The advent and expansion of Sahwa or Sunni Awakening Councils, armed and funded by the US, were a success story that at least on paper paved the way for greater national reconciliation.

The benefit of driving out al-Qaida cells from their neighbourhood is a bigger slice of the political cake, the inauguration of the Sunni militias into the Iraqi security forces and ultimately an overhaul of the constitution.

The other factor in the decline in violence is the ceasefire by influential cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who enjoys great support in the Shiite-dominated south. However, recent well documented violence in Basra may yet mean that the 60,000 strong Mehdi Army may enter back into the fray.

As important as Sunni support remains, the key for the US is containing al-Sadr. In 2006, sectarian hit squads on the back of high-profile bombings of key shrines threatened to send the country to the brink of civil war.

The trillion-dollar war?

By most conservative estimates, the war in Iraq has already cost the United States more than US$400 billion, however according to a Nobel Prize-wining analyst the war, at the current rate of expenditure, could astonishingly surpass three trillion dollars by 2017.

With the number of American casualties in Iraq now past the critical 4,000 mark, coupled with the huge cost of combating a war with no end in sight, the growing disillusionment of the US public is easy to see. The good name of the US has been severely tarnished abroad and public opinion at home has turned slowly from anguish to anger.

The US mid-term election of 2006 for control of Congress was by far dominated by the Iraq war with the Democrats making significant gains.

Both Democratic presidential candidates have called for a comprehensive troop withdrawal. Hillary Clinton promised to undertake serious troop reduction "in the first 60 days" of her administration, with her rival, Barack Obama, pledging to see combat troops "out within 16 months".

Reconciliation in Iraq

Although, the US and Iraqi governments have tried in vain to embed a national unity government by appeasing Sunnis and promising political accommodation, the long-term strength of the devastating insurgency remains to be seen.