Free Republic

WASHINGTON and Baghdad will be tempted, with the adoption of a new Constitution and the election on Thursday for a four-year government, to declare victory in Iraq. In one sense, they are right to do so. The emerging Iraqi polity undoubtedly represents a radical break not only with the country's past but also with the whole Arab state system established by Britain and France after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. But in the larger sense, such optimism is misguided, for none of the problems associated with Iraq's monumental change have been sorted out. Worse, profound tensions and contradictions have...

Wise words to recall. We covered it at the time on Winds of Change.NET as part of the whole debate over neo-sovereignty and an emerging neo-colonialist movement with adherents on the left (hard to describe the UN as anything else) and the right. It acquires new meaning in the wake of the recent Iraqi elections, coming as it did from a leading Iraqi dissident who called the key issue long ago.... [Editor's Note: Kanan Makiya, a leading Iraqi dissident and intellectual, and author of the Democratic Principles Working Group report for the State Department's Future of Iraq Project, will be...

FARIS AL-KAMEL had waited more than a decade to be able to sell his collection of political books in the open. Yesterday his patience was finally rewarded as he proudly arranged his samizdat editions in the Mutanabi Street book market in Baghdad’s old city. “It was a long process to publish books like these in Iraq,” he said. “First you had to get hold of a banned edition, then photocopy it, cut it, bind it and finally design the cover. That is the bit I enjoyed most. I am rather pleased with how they turned out.” The comparisons with the...