As attacks fueled by an al-Qaida affiliate in Iraq have helped push the death toll to its highest level since 2008, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is scheduled to meet Friday with President Obama at the White House.David SiegelAssociate professor of political science, Duke Universitydavid.siegel@duke.eduhttp://polisci.duke.edu/people?Gurl=&Uil=17347&subpage=profileSiegel specializes in collective action as it relates to political violence and terrorism, elections, opinion and identity formation.Quote:"There are two things acting in concert that are primarily driving the increased violence in Iraq. One, many of the factions within Iraq have clear favorites in the Syrian civil war, and some are acting to support their favorites. "Two, the al-Maliki government has done a poor job putting in place the kind of institutionalized power-sharing agreements that are absolutely vital to governance in the presence of a minority group, the Sunnis, without access to the same level of resources as the majority Shiites. Without power sharing, there is no reason for Sunni elites to support the government. "As we saw during the surge, Sunni buy-in in Anbar province and elsewhere is necessary to deny al-Qaida and its affiliates the local support they need to function. In general, terrorist groups need some level of local support to have a significant effect, and working to deny this via power-sharing arrangements would be a far more effective strategy than increasing the level of U.S. military sales to Iraq, as the Iraqi government would seem to prefer."
