Open Accounts

The attacks in Baghdad show that the Iraqi government has no control over the nation. The United States may be forced to delay its military withdrawal.

The earth shook in Baghdad. The foreign office, destroyed in August, has still not been completely repaired; the ministry of economics is only partly functioning; and then came the latest car bomb on Sunday that left the ministry of justice a smoking ruin. Terrorists have reduced three central pillars of the Iraqi government plus the provincial government of Baghdad to rubble and ashes over the past two months. More than 250 people have been killed and the wounded number in the thousands.

Because of this inferno, the United States, Europe and NATO are worried. These suicide bombers could well break the back of a post-Saddam Iraqi republic before it is able to get on its own feet. At the same time, it could also force the United States to delay its withdrawal of troops from Iraq at the cost of disrupting its newly announced reprioritization for the region, namely the escalation of operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the internal stabilization of the Pakistan situation and preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

But the Iraqi crisis is not solely caused by bombs and suicide attacks. Iraqi politicians and ineffective security forces are also to blame. They have 750,000 people in uniform as soldiers and police personnel in Iraq. Each new attack exposes the fact that the security forces only carry out their duties reluctantly and in a sloppy manner. In August, checkpoints in the government quarter were bribed so that truck bombs could pass through with their deadly cargoes. On Sunday, a truck traveled over thirty miles from Fallujah and successfully took a ton of high explosives right to the front door of the provincial government.

The prospects for politically defusing ethnic and religious tensions look equally dismal. Nothing here is progressing, either. Every ethnic group and region still has dangerous scores to settle, and the inability of parliament and the government to settle on a new election law has maneuvered them into a dead end. The current powers-that-be show little inclination to take on modernizing the electoral system so a frustrated public can hold elected officials responsible for their actions. The new law aims to empower ordinary citizens by opening the denominational unity lists and introducing direct voter mandates. This way, candidates of diverse religious or ethnic origins could come together to negotiate solutions and overcome old divisions.

But even on the evening of this latest gigantic explosion, with President Obama on the telephone imploring them to settle their differences, the “Political Council for National Security,” to which all Iraqi party bosses belong, hesitated to cut the Gordian knot. Many representatives fear they will lose their mandates under the new election laws. They are working for better prospects for themselves at the cost of better prospects for their nation.