Bloody day heralds birth of Iraq's new unity government
The formation of a new Iraqi government was praised by Bush and Blair yesterday as a sign of progress in the region on the same day that a series of attacks killed 27 people and wounded dozens more. Police also found the bodies of 21 Iraqis who had been kidnapped and tortured by death squads in and around Baghdad.
It has been five months since Iraq went to the polls.
During the long months that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish political parties negotiated the shape of a new administration, real control of Iraq has slipped further into the hands of Shia militias and Sunni insurgents. Ethnic and sectarian strife has been killing people at the rate of at least 40 a day.
"If the new government does establish security in Baghdad, they will be heroes," said Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani.
The new government has some strengths not possessed by its short-term predecessor. It has been chosen by a parliament elected for a full four-year term. It contains Sunni Arab members representing political parties who fought the election on 15 December; the Sunni had boycotted an earlier election in January last year. And Mr Maliki is said to be more flexible than his predecessor as Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
But the overall security situation in Iraq is far worse than it was a year ago. Baghdad and central Iraq, where Shia, Sunni and Kurd are mixed, is in the grip of a civil war fought by assassins and death squads. As in Bosnia in 1992, each community is pulling back into enclaves where it is the overwhelming majority and able to defend itself.
All of us wish the very best to the new administration. However, it would be foolish to indulge in the kind of false optimism and spin currently being indulged in by Washington and London. We must bear in mind that the task facing this administration is enormous.
The streets of Iraq are out of control and sectarian killing and ethnic cleansing are on the increase.
The task of restoring order to Iraq's streets is not going to be easy, especially when one considers that the combined armies of both the US and UK governments have failed in this objective.
One also feels that a major stumbling block to restoring order in Iraq is the presence of the occupation force itself.
Only when they leave, will we have any real idea of what state Iraq is in on the issue of unity.
Click title for full article.
Related Articles:
New dawn for Iraq marked by bloodshedTags:
No comments:
Post a Comment