their political tutors from the United States in 2004 devised a process for the three
elections held in 2005 followed by the formation of a permanent government bridg-
ing the country’s sectarian divide. This process began with an election in January 2005
for a Transitional National Assembly, which governed Iraq temporarily and wrote a
new democratic constitution, which voters approved in an October 2005 referendum.
Iraqis returned to the polls in December 2005 to elect a permanent parliament—or
Council of Representatives—which chose a new government after intense bargaining
early in 2006.
Each step of this process came fraught with numerous difficulties and was over-
shadowed by the daily toll of deaths and injuries from car bombings, suicide bomb-
ings, kidnappings, assassinations, and other forms of violence. A basic problem at the
outset was persuading minority Sunni Muslims—who previously had governed Iraq
and still thought of themselves as the country’s natural leaders—to accept the fact that
they were a minority and would no longer exercise unilateral power. Sunnis boycotted
the first elections in January 2005, but some Sunni leaders later realized that this had
been a mistake because it left them without a voice at the table where decisions were
made. Many Sunnis also believed that the process of writing the new constitution was
rigged against them, so many of them boycotted the referendum on that document
the following October.
The real test of Iraq’s new experiment with representative government began with
the December 2005 elections. In technical terms, these elections went smoothly and
IRAQ AND THE GULF WARS 527IrbilSinjar Mosul
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