The Tragedy of Humayun Khan - POLITICO Magazine: "But in the end, the American efforts were futile. A combination of bad decision-making at the top of the U.S. occupation, and the rising Sunni-Shia divide in Baghdad and Diyala, doomed those efforts, Pittard says. “The election of January 2005 was pivotal. We assured the Sunni moderates that this can work. We had the highest percentage of Sunnis voting in the entire country. The key difference was the shenanigans played by the Shia-led Iraqi provisional government in Baghdad”—to whom Bremer had handed over power the previous June. Mysteriously, the government managed to eliminate from the ballot the odds-on favorite, the Sunni governor of Diyala, enraging the Sunni population. “That was last straw for the moderate Sunnis in Diyala,” says Pittard.
"
'via Blog this'