and other coalition troops in 2003 , persists with some 7,500 American troops still stationed in Iraq ( and about 2,500 additional U . S . troops currently occupying the northeastern part of neighboring Syria since 2015 ). Through wars , occupying armies generally bring with them their political value systems and laws and , failing that , their strategic and economic control . On the heels of WWII , the United States forced its political value system on Germany and Japan – a system which very much resembled the U . S . federal system , as reflected in : federalism , a primarily two-party system established in both Germany and Japan à la American model , and secularism , which separates politics from religion .
In the case of Iraq , however , it was sectarianism which was implanted by the Americans in Iraq – after it had been prohibited under the Baath regime which was largely secular – and sectarianism and ethnic regionalism were intentionally encouraged for the purpose of facilitating long-term control over the country by way of “ divide and conquer ”. Thus , in preparation for the war on Iraq in 2003 , the Americans allied themselves primarily with Iraqi Shiite groups that had been exiled and based in Iran - such as the Badr Brigade led by Nuri al-Maliki ; the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq ( SCIRI ) led at the time by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim ; and also with Kurdish ethnic groups in Northern Iraq who had been backed by the United States ever since the 1960s - namely the Kurdistan Democratic Party ( KDP ) led at the time by Mulla Mustapha Barzani ; and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan ( PUK ) led by Jalal Talbani .
Thus , the constitution which was formulated and adopted on October 15 , 2005 , under the tight occupation authority of U . S . “ civilian ” administrator over Iraq , Paul Bremer , replaced the Constitution of 1925 , which was still in effect under Saddam Hussein until 2003 . The federal system set by the 2005 Constitution – combined with sectarianism and regionalism-cum-pronounced separatist tendencies in the three Kurdish “ autonomous ” provinces in the North - which have had , since the early 1990s - their own separate military forces from the command and control of Baghdad – made Iraq , in effect , a confederal system with expanded decentralization . This type of expanded decentralization was not tolerated by
SPOTLIGHT
It was sectarianism which was implanted by the Americans in Iraq – after it had been prohibited under the Baath regime which was largely secular – and sectarianism and ethnic regionalism were intentionally encouraged for the purpose of facilitating long-term control over the country by way of “ divide and conquer ”. the United States itself starting in 1861 , when the Federal government in Washington waged a bloody and destructive four-year war on the Southern eleven Confederate states , 1861-1865 , to bring them under the submission of Washington . And it ultimately did through the outright defeat and submission of the rebellious southern Confederate States .
Parliamentary Elections post 2003
Since the American occupation of Iraq in April 2003 , three parliamentary elections have been held . The first was in December 2005 , shortly after the adoption of the constitution on October 15 of that year . The second took place five years later , in January 2010 . And the third was scheduled , according to the constitution , five years hence , in 2015 . Yet the swift invasion in the summer of 2014 by the terror group ISIS ( with clear foreign support by the same countries that have set the series of multi-layered wars on the Arabs since 1990 ) of large areas of northern and western Iraq – including the province of Mosul and the city of Mosul , the third largest city in the country , in addition to two other provinces , Salaheddin and Al-Anbar – put the country on the brink of total collapse , particularly as the well-armed and foreign-supplied terror group reached the northern periphery of the capital Baghdad .
However , with the fall of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki from power , as a consequence of his failure to foresee or yet to repel the invasion of ISIS and its swift control of Mosul ( 4-10 June 2014 ), a new parliamentary coalition was formed whereby President Fouad Ma`sum appointed Haidar al-Abadi ( pro-American ) to form a new government on August 11 , 2014 , which he subsequently did and undertook to coordinate the military plans between the army and the newly-formed Al- Hashd Al-Sha`bi militias , or the Popular Mobilization Forces , who are predominantly Shiite , to regain control of the areas invaded by ISIS . That bloody counter-military offensive lasted for three years until the summer of 2017 , during which the Iraqi government liberated first Salaheddin , then Al-Anbar , and in the summer of 2017 all of the city of Mosul and most of the Mosul Province , with a border section of the province ( in the area of Ba`shiqa some 60 kilometers inside Iraq ) still
40 • Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist • Vol 6 • Issue 8 • August 2018 , Noida