Aftandilian in The Arab Weekly on Iraqi Parliamentary Elections
Gregory Aftandilian, Lecturer at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published an Op-Ed on the United States view of the upcoming Iraqi parliamentary elections.
Aftandilian’s Op-Ed, entitled “U.S. Pins Hopes on Abadi in Iraq’s Election,” was published in The Arab Weekly on June 5, 2018.
From the text of the article:
Although the United States has avoided publicly taking sides in Iraq’s May 12 parliamentary elections, Washington clearly hopes that Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi will prevail. Abadi has worked closely with US forces in helping to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS) and is seen as the best hope among Shia politicians of keeping Iran’s influence at a minimum.
Every Iraqi prime minister since the 2003 US-led invasion has been a Shia. These prime ministers have often tried to refashion themselves into political figures who go beyond their sectarian base. For example, former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki tried to create the persona of an Iraqi nationalist with his State of Law coalition. Shias and non-Shias alike have regarded them essentially as Shia politicians.
One of Maliki’s chief problems was that he so alienated and marginalised the Sunnis that many of them grew susceptible to the entreaties of ISIS, which helped it seize large parts of Iraq in the summer of 2014. The success of ISIS that summer led to Maliki’s political demise — at least temporarily.
Abadi, Maliki’s successor, hails from the same Shia Dawa party, which was a clandestine Islamist party during the rule of Saddam Hussein when membership in it was a capital offence. Abadi, however, was seen as more moderate than Maliki, more urbane, having received a doctorate while in exile in Britain, and more willing to reach out to Sunnis.
Aftandilian spent over 21 years in government service, most recently on Capitol Hill where he was foreign policy adviser to Congressman Chris Van Hollen (2007-2008), professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and foreign policy adviser to Senator Paul Sarbanes (2000-2004), and foreign policy fellow to the late Senator Edward Kennedy (1999).