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Iraq
has cast a giant shadow over British politics
throughout this week as controversy over the
legality of the war merged explosively with the
final stage of the general election campaign. But
events in Iraq itself, against a background of grim
and relentless violence that claimed at least 24
more lives in nine coordinated suicide bombings in
Baghdad and elsewhere yesterday, are a powerful and
deeply disturbing reminder of the continuing
consequences of that war - far from the corridors of
power and the TV studios in London and Washington.
Amid the mayhem, the good news is that Iraq now
finally has a government. The bad news is that it
has taken three tortuous months since the January 30
elections to get to this point, and that even now
key ministerial positions have had to be left
unfilled because of unresolved tensions between the
different communities. Supporters of the war have
made much of the historic achievement of holding
free elections in a country previously ruled by coup
d'etat and secret policemen. But the long delay as
politicians haggled to form its first democratically
elected administration has had a deadly effect. The
insurgents, caught off guard after failing to
sabotage the polls, have regrouped with a vengeance.
Some extraordinary and positive changes have already
taken place. The president, Jalal Talabani, is a
Kurd. The prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, is the
leader of the Islamist Daawa party and represents
Shia Muslims, the 60% of Iraq's population excluded
from power under the Ba'athist regime. But he has
taken on the defence portfolio because of the
collapse of a deal to give this highly sensitive
post to a Sunni. And without agreement on the oil
ministry, this is being run by Ahmed Chalabi, the
discredited former Pentagon favourite.
This unfinished business matters because without an
accommodation it will be hard to move ahead. The
delay already means that the August deadline for
drawing up a constitution looks like being missed,
which will in turn put back December's elections.
The principal priority must remain giving the
Sunnis, who lost most from the overthrow of Saddam
Hussein but form the backbone of the insurgency in
places such as Falluja and largely boycotted the
election, a real stake in the new Iraq. Hopes of
attracting credible Sunnis into government - they
have six of the 32 ministries - have been dashed.
Sunnis and Kurds, seeking to improve their own
position, fear the Shias, also controlling the
interior ministry, will use power in a sectarian
way, risking the growth of Lebanese-style militias
and local warlords. That would be short-sighted and
dangerous.
The slow pace of political change is crippling the
ability of the government to tackle the insurgency
and the larger wave of criminal violence that have
made too many yearn for safer pre-war days.
According to a new report for the International
Institute of Strategic Studies, 20,000-50,000
insurgents organised into some 75 units still pose a
formidable challenge to the understrength Iraqi army
and police. Most are homegrown Ba'ath loyalists or
those who combine nationalism and Islamism. Only a
handful are foreign Sunni "jihadists" such as the
notorious Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Mr Jaafari and his colleagues face a truly mammoth
task: delivering security, ending corruption,
creating jobs and restoring basic services such as
electricity. They need and deserve the help of the
outside world, especially the US, Britain and other
governments that took the lead in toppling Saddam.
But they also bear a heavy responsibility. No reader
of this newspaper needs reminding that the events
and motives that led to war are under close
scrutiny. But that should not divert anyone from the
need to watch carefully so that Iraq's future turns
out better than its rightly unlamented past.
www.guardian.co.uk
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