Obama faces an early test in Iraq

BAGHDAD - Iraq will serve as an early test of Barack Obama's skill in weighing options and measuring risks.

The next few months should give an indication whether he can end the Iraq war without risking new violence that could threaten U.S. interests throughout the Middle East.

Ending the war, which the Congressional Budget Office says costs $145 billion a year, would fulfill an important campaign promise and free up military resources for the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

But can Iraq stand on its own without the U.S. presence?

The first signs of where Iraq is headed should come soon after the president-elect takes office Jan. 20, when Iraqis choose ruling councils in most of the country's 18 provinces.

At the same time, the Iraqis will be assuming more control of Baghdad and integrating former Sunni insurgents into the security forces or civilian government jobs.

If those steps go smoothly, Iraqis will have a real chance of maintaining security gains made since the U.S. troop buildup of last year.

If they don't, the new president would have to decide whether to slow the U.S. departure despite his promise to remove American combat troops within his first 16 months in office.

Provincial elections have been seen widely as a major step in forging power-sharing agreements among Iraq's religious and ethnic communities that the U.S. believes are key to lasting peace.

There's real fear that the elections, expected at the end of January, could heighten tensions among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds - especially in the ethnically mixed north where those groups are competing for power in the volatile city of Mosul and elsewhere.

Trouble also is possible in the heavily Shiite south, where the competition is between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's party and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the two main Shiite parties in the national government.

Both face a common challenge from followers of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who maintains a following among impoverished Shiites despite the defeat of his Mahdi Army militia in fighting last spring.

The Supreme Council, which controls most southern provinces, wants to establish a nine-province Shiite self-ruled region in the south similar to a Kurdish area in the north that has enjoyed broad autonomy since 1991.

At the same time, the elections also will show whether Iraq's army and police, which now control all southern provinces, can provide security without favoring any political party. In the north, Kurdish units from the Iraqi army will face the same test.

The U.S. plans to hand over security in Baghdad to the Iraqis and move all U.S. soldiers out of the city by June 30 under a proposed security agreement that has yet to be ratified. U.S. troops already are handing over more responsibility in the capital to the Iraqis.

Their performance has been mixed. Although violence is down sharply, a string of attacks in the city this week has killed more than 30 people since Monday. That shows that extremists still are active within Baghdad and could step up operations once the Americans are gone.