The grim routine of repeated violence may have a numbing effect when viewed from afar, but that is not so for those on the receiving end. Yesterday's news from Iraq was bad enough to make headlines on an otherwise quiet Sunday, but it also sharpens increasingly troubling questions about how the country's mayhem will end. Seventeen Iraqi civilians working for the US army were killed near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit while a National Guard commander and his bodyguards died in separate attacks that took the toll of three days of carnage to well over 70. Leaving aside the human tragedies these figures represent - most of which will never be known to the wider world - the grim tally attests to an insurgency that is sophisticated, callous, deliberate in its choice of targets, and highly effective. Last Friday saw one of the most audacious incidents yet, when several carloads of gunmen attacked a heavily fortified Baghdad police station, killing 11 officers, freeing prisoners and seizing weapons, a variant on car-bomb attacks against police recruiting offices. The result is to cast grave doubt over whether the Iraqi security forces will be capable of managing without the Americans, as well as over the timing and value of national elections that are now less than six weeks away. Bullets, bombs and ballots are a volatile mixture.
These questions need asking urgently because the official position, in Washington, London and Baghdad - where the interim government is nominally in charge - is that the violence is containable and the January 30 polls are on track. President George Bush has insisted that there should be no postponement - hardly surprising in that the timetable is closely linked to his own exit strategy. Ditto Tony Blair, who has at least managed to keep his promise that the Black Watch will be home by Christmas after their service in the "triangle of death". The interim Iraqi president, Ghazi al-Yawar, who has previously called for a delay, sounded determined in Washington yesterday, arguing that the elections should go ahead. It is hard to disagree with his view that "the main objective of the people committing these atrocities is to stop us from having our first chance to taste the harvest of liberating Iraq". But it is hard too to square his confidence with the bloody evidence on the ground. The latest attacks have taken place in Sunni areas around Baghdad in the wake of the supposedly successful US offensive in Falluja. Other attacks were recorded as far afield as Mosul in the north and on the distant Iraqi-Jordanian border.
The clear view of Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN special envoy, is that it will not be possible to hold the polls "if the circumstances stay as they are". ~snip~
It is hardly surprising that Washington is sounding unusually fractious about the way ahead. General John Abizaid, the head of US central command, admitted over the weekend that
Iraqi forces did not have the training or experience to do their job without US reinforcements - thus the extra 12,000 men now on their way to join the 138,000 already there, to maintain pressure on the insurgents and to help boost security for election day.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that they are heading straight for a Middle Eastern quagmire. more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1367210,00.html
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