The End of the Beginning

Chrenkoff checks in with his roundup of the last two weeks' good news from Iraq.

Yet if Iraq does pull through, the signs of slow and gradual progress will always have been there to see. I have been chronicling them in this series for nine months now, and when majority of Iraqis defied threats and cast their ballots of Jan. 30, I was not surprised. The successful election was not a bolt out of the blue but a culmination of a year and a half of hard work by millions of Iraqis and citizens of the coalition countries. To paraphrase Churchill, the election, is not the end or even the beginning of the end, but hopefully the end of the beginning. Let us hope that the journey will continue in the right direction.

In related news a woman is to be named governor of an Afghan province.

An all-female shortlist including the former women's minister Habiba Sarobi has been drawn up for the governorship of central Bamiyan province, presidential spokesman Jawed Ludin said, though no decision has been taken.