Iraq, From Security to Political Management

This study begins with an assessment of the years of US occupation in Iraq, focusing on its repercussions, explicating its outcomes, and exploring the horizons of political evolution in this country after its ridding of dictatorship and foreign occupation.Unlike other studies that dealt with the Iraqi issue from the perspective of its regional ramifications and repercussions, it attempts, as much as possible, not to discuss the questions of Iranian and Saudi influences, or Sunni-Shi`a regional competition, limiting the analysis to the manner in which "regime change", "state-building", and democratization were approached in US assessments of the Iraqi situation, while comparing them with the Arab conception of the same notions. This paper links all these issues to the quantitative and qualitative data of the occupation, the political and juridical structure of the troop withdrawal agreement, and the threats emanating from power vacuum and erroneous interpretations of the Iraqi situation.