The UVF is not only officially on ceasefire but also is supposedly disbanding its militaristic structure.
A continuation of the army's campaign against the Welfare Party maybe even a court order disbanding the party will give new ammunition to the people in the European Union who say that Turkey will never be democratic enough to be a full member of the EU (even though its economic qualifications for membership are in some ways better than those of most of the EU's other current applicants).
Egypt's judges have serially and petulantly interfered with the creation of better democratic institutions, disbanding an elected parliament on a technicality and threatening to scrap the constitution-drafting body.
Mr Bush recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom America's highest civilian honour to the man who said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and another man responsible for disbanding the Iraqi army.
In a country with little history of political compromise, all deserve praise for this, even Mr Zardari, who had provoked the crisis by leaning on the Supreme Court, which last month barred Mr Sharif and his brother, Shahbaz, from holding public office, and then by disbanding their government in Punjab.The political fallout is also worth celebrating.
Zalmay Khalilzad, America's ambassador in Iraq, said on October 24th that the Iraqis had now laid out a "timetable" for key decisions: devising a system to share Iraq's oil wealth, amending the constitution, changing the agency in charge of purging former members of the ruling Baath Party into a body focused on reconciliation, and disbanding the militias.The Americans mean to keep them to it.
"Disbanding the Iraqi army was a big mistake," he says.
A group of about 60 intellectuals, lawyers, human-rights activists and journalists joined in by posting an online "charter for disbanding the plutocratic model of the Bulgarian state".
In the Brotherhood's version of the story, his aim was to stop the courts, still dominated by Mr Mubarak's appointees, from again dismissing the constituent assembly, as they had at the time of the presidential election, and disbanding the Shura Council the only elected legislature, since the courts had disbanded the lower chamber at the time of the presidential election.
In July British troops, with American backing, arrested one prominent war-crime suspect and killed another; in October NATO-led troops seized transmitters used for propaganda by Bosnian Serb television; and in November the force began disbanding sinister special police units within the Serb Republic.This more robust western action has also influenced the power struggle among Bosnia's Serbs.
Meanwhile, the most influential Shia political leader in the ruling coalition has upended electoral predictions, disbanding his party and retiring from politics with a departing blast of accusations against his former partners.Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, in power since 2005, puts a positive spin on the downward spiral.
