Amid the chaos of war in Baghdad, Zuhal Sultan created a new national youth orchestra. Below, please find excerpts of her story from an article from Times Online:

Six months ago Zuhal Sultan stood in the wings of a makeshift concert hall in northern Iraq watching young musicians run through final rehearsals ahead of their first public performance. “I was crying a bit, because it was so emotional. The progress they had made was unbelievable, after all they had been through. I was so happy,” she says.

Sultan had every reason to be proud. Single-handedly, she had brought together professional musicians from some of the world’s leading cultural institutions and 33 Iraqi youngsters to form the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq (NYOI). The 18-year-old from Baghdad secured funding from organizations including the British Council and persuaded the deputy prime minister of Iraq to make a donation.

On February 3, I attended a lecture by journalist Tom Ricks of The Washington Post who spoke about the outlook for political reconciliation in Iraq. As a self-proclaimed pessimist, Ricks said that Iraq suffers from a strategically failed surge, unaddressed existential questions, and increasing Iranian influence, which compounded will make 2010 a dismal year for Iraqis.

The decline in American influence and the withdrawal of U.S. troops will render 2010 a “turning point year,” said Ricks, a year in which the nature of “post-American Iraq” is revealed. Ricks predicts that a spike in violence will parallel the monthly withdrawal of 10,000 U.S. troops. He explained that the postponement of elections until March means that the withdrawal will begin precisely at the vulnerable government-formation period in which Sunnis will discover “whether they were abused in the process or abused in the allocation of power” in what is bound to emerge as a Shia-dominated, sectarian government.

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill said yesterday that the process used to erase people linked to Saddam Hussein's regime was misguided from the get-go and has tainted the legitimacy of the March 7 general election. "I don't think there is any person alive who would say that mistakes were not made early on in the process," said Hill, referring to the controversial steps taken by Paul Bremer, the former U.S. Administrator of Iraq who headed up the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Paul Bremer ordered the process of de-Baathification, and it passed on May 16, 2003, the same day as the creation of the CPA. This order resulted in the removal of tens of thousands of Baath employees from public life and politics. I find it mind-boggling that Bremer insisted on such a defective policy that clearly would have long-lasting and ominous repercussions on Iraqi politics and society. Was it because he didn't understand that millions of ordinary Iraqis joined the Baath party out of necessity, not conviction? How did he neglect to realize that banning such a wide range of individuals would undermine human capacity in the post-Saddam era? And, perhaps the most pressing question: why didn't he realize that forbidding people loosely affiliated with the Baath party would consequently narrow Sunni participation and thus strengthen the influence of Shiite Islamists with the closest ties to Iran?

Above: Protesters in Karbala on Thursday held photos of relatives killed during Saddam Hussein's rule. (European Pressphoto Agency)

Last week’s decision by Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission to bar 511 candidates with suspected ties to Saddam Hussein and his outlawed Baath party has incited controversy in Iraq, threatening to derail the Iraqi general elections scheduled for March 7. Today, Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission chief, Faraj al-Haidari, said he expects more candidates to be blacklisted. This news is enough to stir anxiety within the war-torn country, particularly among Sunnis who believe it is an attempt to marginalize them, and enough to persuade the Obama administration to dispatch Vice President Joseph Biden to Iraq with the hope of defusing an ominous political crisis.

Ali Faisal al-Lami, leader of the Accountability and Justice Commission, claims that his commission was merely following Iraqi law by disqualifying candidates on the commission’s databases of former members of the Baath party or Iraqi’s security forces. Yet this ban is sure to have hefty repercussions on the upcoming elections, especially considering that members of the two biggest secular coalitions, Iraqiya and Iraq Unity, represent the largest number of disqualifications.