Finally, some good news.

Aljazeera reports that Prime Minister al-Jaafari is being pressured by senior leaders in his United Iraqi Alliance (the Shia party that has about half of the seats) to resign. The Kurds and Sunni Arabs have been calling for his resignation for some time now, though the Shia have ignored them until now. Many people had, and still have doubts about the ability of the Iraqis to compromise, so this is great news in that respect.

From what I can gather, the Sunni Arabs and Kurds are upset with al-Jaafari's leadership for a few reasons. A big one is his failure to prevent government security forces from being infiltrated by religious militiamen. The result is government forces that have questionable loyalty. Many such government forces have been described as death squads that target Sunni Arabs (either in retaliation or revenge). Another reason people are upset with the Prime Minister is that he really hasn't accomplished much as far as infrastructure goes.

Hopefully we'll see more compromises in the future. The biggest deal right now is who will control the ministries of defense and interior. These are the ministries that would have control of the government military and police forces. The Sunni Arabs and Kurds, for reasons stated above, want these ministries. I really can't blame them.

So who may replace al-Jaafari as Prime Minister? One candidate is Dr. Hussein al-Shahristani. This guy is a badass, to put it bluntly. He was an Iraqi nuclear physicist who defied Saddam by refusing to work on a nuclear bomb. He was subsequently jailed and tortured for years. During the 1991 Gulf War he managed to escape from his prison during a US bombing run, and fled to Iran. And, he was one of the few Iraqis-in-exile that told the US government from the beginning that the invasion and occupation wouldn't be easy.