It is promising that Kuwait is hosting a conference regarding raising funds to reconstruct the liberated areas and invite foreign investment, which is more needed to help Iraq than national reconciliation. Iraqis are already seeing bilateral relations between Baghdad and Erbil improve since the all-time low from the Kurdish referendum in September 2017. Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi has met with KRG Prime Minister and Deputy-Prime Minister multiple times in just the month of January. This is in addition to many meetings between other Kurdish delegations visiting the Iraqi capital looking to start a new page between the Kurdistan Region and the rest of Iraq leading into the 2018 national election.

As for Sunni majority governorates, there is an improved relationship between Baghdad and the latest governors appointed in the provinces of Anbar, Nineveh and Salahuddin than previous years. Abadi’s popularity is also at an all-time high in Sunni majority areas that should lead to stronger relations between the local governments and the federal government. Therefore, issues between the KRG and Sunni majority governorates with Baghdad are already being dealt with. Citizens see no real concern over these issues taking a wrong turn going into the election.

Foreign assistance can continue to support the reconciliation and decentralization process in Iraq but if the likes of the United States want to ensure that the democratization of Iraq continues to move in the right direction, they need to support the federal government with the issues its citizens are most concerned with. The voter turnout in the 2014 and 2010 elections were 60% and 62% respectively, and it is important for Iraq’s nascent democracy to not see that turnout to drop below 60% in May 2018 and beyond. The only way to ensure that does not happen is to deliver on the concerns of citizens. There will be pressure to do so as the defeat of Daesh by the Iraqi Security Forces leaves the federal government without the excuse of fighting a war for any shortfalls that may occur.