Nearly seven years after the Americans toppled Saddam Hussein, Iraq is still groping towards normality. If 2009 was its calmest year since the invasion, 2010 may mark the moment when it can claim to have fully recovered its independence.
The first big event of the year will be a general election due by the end of January. The second, if Barack Obama sticks to the timetable he adjusted after winning the presidency, will be the departure of most American troops by the end of August. By the end of 2010 it should become clearer whether Iraq can stand on its own feet both politically and militarily. The odds, just, are that it will do so. But it will be a year of danger and uncertainty as well as hope.
Much will depend on the smooth emergence of a new government and prime minister. Though shenanigans in late 2009 within the dominant Shia establishment cast doubt on the political survivability of Nuri al-Maliki, who became prime minister in 2006, he has a chance of keeping his post for the next few years. But he must decide whether to join an electoral list that embraces most of the main Shia religious parties, which together won the last general election four years ago, or whether he forges alliances with more secular-minded Shias and with Sunni Arabs of various stripes, including former Baathists once loyal to Saddam.
Good work and good luck.
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