Just two months shy of Iraq’s national elections in March, an apparent bombshell of a development hit the country. The country’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), as per the requests of the Accountability and Justice Commission, decided to ban more than 500 mainly Sunni electoral candidates from contesting the elections. Iraq’s Sunni groups have organized and galvanized themselves in an impressive manner for the elections. There are at least three formidable groups that many expect to pose a serious challenge to post-2003 Iraq’s traditional powers: the Shiites and the Kurds. The Iraqi Accord Front, the Iraqi National Movement (INM) and the Unity Alliance of Iraq comprise serious and experienced politicians that, individually at least, have already proved their worth in Iraq’s previous elections. Out of the three, it is the INM that has hit the headlines. One of the political parties within this coalition belongs to prominent Sunni Saleh al-Mutlaq,
Dr Ranj Alaaldin is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Doha. He specialises in intrastate conflict, governance and human security issues in the Middle East.
