Via Spencer Ackerman, Leila Fadel and Hussein Kadhim report for McClatchy on the state of political reconciliation in Iraq:
“The new flag is done for a foreign agenda and we won’t raise it,” said Ali Hatem al Suleiman, a leading member of the U.S.-backed Anbar Awakening Council, “If they want to force us to raise it, we will leave the yard for them to fight al Qaida.” [...]
A slim minority of parliamentarians approved the new flag, which doesn’t have Saddam Hussein’s handwriting or the three stars that represented his Sunni-dominated Baath Party.
The good news is that I assume our new friends aren’t literally going to turn around tomorrow and fight alongside al-Qaeda over this flag issue. Still, if you’re looking for a clearer indication that the “Awakening”/CLC movement is not going to be the basis of national unity in Iraq I don’t think you need to look much further than this.
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