"This will be Iraq for all without discrimination among Iraqi citizens, or ethnic or sectarian discrimination"
About this Quote
A promise like this only needs one verb to reveal its anxiety: "will be". Talabani isn’t describing Iraq so much as trying to will it into existence, staking out a future tense against a present already fraying. The repetition of "discrimination" isn’t rhetorical flourish; it’s triage. When a leader feels compelled to specify "among Iraqi citizens" and then spell out "ethnic or sectarian", he’s naming the fault lines everyone can already see, and signaling that the state is in danger of becoming the prize in a zero-sum struggle between identities.
The intent is plain: to frame citizenship as the primary allegiance, strong enough to outrank tribe, sect, and ethnicity. But the subtext is sharper: the very act of itemizing exclusions admits how real, organized, and politically profitable those exclusions have become. It reads like a constitutional ideal smuggled into a moment of emergency, a line meant to reassure minorities, restrain militias, and warn would-be strongmen that the new order won’t sanctify revenge.
Context matters. Post-2003 Iraq was being rebuilt under occupation, with institutions reshuffled and loyalties re-sorted at speed. Talabani, a Kurdish leader elevated to a national presidency, speaks from a position that is both symbolic and precarious: he embodies pluralism while knowing how quickly pluralism can be reduced to bargaining between armed camps. The sentence performs statehood. It tries to convert a mosaic into a single "Iraq" by denying the categories that, in practice, were starting to govern access to safety, jobs, and power.
The intent is plain: to frame citizenship as the primary allegiance, strong enough to outrank tribe, sect, and ethnicity. But the subtext is sharper: the very act of itemizing exclusions admits how real, organized, and politically profitable those exclusions have become. It reads like a constitutional ideal smuggled into a moment of emergency, a line meant to reassure minorities, restrain militias, and warn would-be strongmen that the new order won’t sanctify revenge.
Context matters. Post-2003 Iraq was being rebuilt under occupation, with institutions reshuffled and loyalties re-sorted at speed. Talabani, a Kurdish leader elevated to a national presidency, speaks from a position that is both symbolic and precarious: he embodies pluralism while knowing how quickly pluralism can be reduced to bargaining between armed camps. The sentence performs statehood. It tries to convert a mosaic into a single "Iraq" by denying the categories that, in practice, were starting to govern access to safety, jobs, and power.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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