In Iraq, New Leadership but Same Reality

.Are they prepared to face this challenge? Could they stand for democracy in those environment?
The answer should be faced in few years.


In Iraq, New Leadership but Same Reality
By STEPHEN FARRELL

BAGHDAD—Operation New Dawn is rising over Baghdad, but all too often the first light of sun is beaten by the first sound of rockets.
The sound of explosions from the Green Zone across the river is a familiar sound to anyone in Baghdad.
In the bad old days you could set your morning alarm clock by the pre-dawn barrage. But since 2008 you could go for months without hearing the “Duck and Cover” tannoy.
A powerful cocktail of factors is behind the general fall in violence since 2007: the Sunni Awakening; the American troop surge; war fatigue; Sunni reconciliation to the electoral process; the growth of Iraq’s security forces and a sustained campaign to arrest and kill Shiite death squads.
But the rockets are back now, with Shiite militias the suspects. American commanders say that there were about 60 attacks on the airport and Green Zone in July and August, and 23 in September.
Few people are killed, but that is not their main purpose. The daily explosions are great bangs for their buck: they are heard clear across central Baghdad.
It would be misleading to read too much into the rockets. The American Embassy compound is sometimes hit, as are its neighbors. An Iraqi friend showed me his Green Zone home last month, and it was scarred by shrapnel.
But far more deadly are the bombings. American commanders are swift to point out that attacks are still very low compared with the bad old days, with Brig. Gen. Jeffrey S. Buchanan, an American military spokesman, saying last month that they were down by “a factor of 10 if you compare it to 2007.”
But figures have never told the full tale in Iraq. Beyond the numbers, the mood is depressed and fearful.
Certainly one can find Iraqi entrepreneurs building new shops and businesses, landmark buildings are getting renovated, and municipal gardens of grass and flowers. But among people I interviewed this summer I met scarcely a single optimist, other than those who are paid to be.
The reasons are not hard to see.
The political process is painfully flawed in the eyes of many Iraqis: only now, seven months after the March parliamentary elections, have the squabbling parties begun top put into place the building blocks of a new government.
The electricity, water and other public services have left most Iraqis in despair, and out of pocket paying for black market alternatives.
The Iraqi security forces have also been tested severely this summer, and are an unknown quantity if there is a crisis and the Americans are no longer there in large numbers to back them up.
Furthermore many increasingly suspect that despite daily updates about arrests of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia operatives, the insurgency has not been broken. Indeed, it has shown itself to be resourceful and resilient.
In August a lone suicide bomber killed dozens of Iraqi Army recruits outside a military base by strapping the explosives to his legs and walking straight past the guards, who only searched down to the waist.
Two weeks later insurgents attacked the same base, spurring American forces, whose principal job is now meant to be “Advise and Assist,” to enter the fight.
The result is that Iraqis are increasingly nervous about the future.
Almost none of the variables that brought about the fall in violence has remained constant. The American surge is long gone; many Sunni insurgents co-opted into the Awakening movement feel marginalized by
the Shiite-led government. Furthermore, Sunni Arab voters are unhappy that the moderate cross-sectarian coalition for which many of them voted won more parliamentary seats than any other in the March elections, yet the Shiite incumbent Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki refused to cede real power, and looks increasingly likely to cling to office.
Shiites are just as nervous. Around Sadr City there are mutterings that militia bogeymen, real or imagined, have returned. Other Shiite militia leaders are being released from prison, amid political deal-making. A Shiite friend grumbled to me that, Corleone-style, he had to visit the home of one newly-freed Sadrist leader, to pay his respects.
My friend is leaving Iraq, fearing for his chances of survival in a mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhood if there is more sectarian blood-letting.
It is not an isolated decision. Many of The Times’s Iraqi staff members in the Baghdad bureau have already left for the United States on an asylum program, or have applied to go. One journalist friend who chose to stay is now reconsidering the decision. Another got out of journalism because her life was threatened.
And there is one important difference between now and 2003, a similar period of limbo when it was also unclear which way the country would go. Back then, Iraqis blithely recited to foreigners the canard that Iraqis are loyal to Iraq, not to sect. They know differently now.
After one recent explosion Dr. Ali Yousif, a 37-year-old ophthalmologist, stood outside his shattered home and held the politicians responsible for letting the situation slip back. “It is because of the situation, the political instability,” he said, “Our last election was more than six months ago, and we have no government. It has created a medium for instability. Our security situation was much better one year ago. It started to deteriorate after the election.”
He said he was particularly afraid for his children. “They will face a very bad future,” Dr. Yousif said. “It won’t be stable for a long time. We have faced such situations for decades, and I don’t think it will improve soon.”
He is by no means alone. The talk, the newspaper headlines and the rumors are of assassinations, kidnappings and corruption. Such impressions are only representative of a mood, nothing more concrete. But that is itself significant, as one goal of counterinsurgency doctrine is to make populations feel safe.
Despite its name, Najaf’s Valley of Peace cemetery is not a place to go if you want to feel safe. One of the largest graveyards in the world, its Shiite gravediggers and body washers are a barometer of Iraq’s violence.
“The war is not over, it’s not over,” said Ali al-Musawi, a gravedigger in the unidentified bodies section. He works from 5 a.m. until midnight, and although not all are victims of violence, many are.
“This hand is cut off, and this body is cut from here to here, and this one has its neck cut, with no head,” he said, gesticulating to the unmarked graves around him, and using his own body as a butcher’s chart. “This part is missing, this one up to here, to the knee, the feet, 22 hands, a human being in bits, cut into pieces, 45 heads with no bodies.”
He paused, with genuine sadness, then added: “Who is killing them? Explosions every day, like the day before yesterday an explosion in Adhamiya, in Baghdad. A car bomb, a poor traffic policeman, and they kill him?”
It was a similar story at Baghdad’s morgue, where dozens of Iraqi families still come each day to stare at pictures of unclaimed bodies, searching for missing relatives. Talk of violence being down X percent means
little to a mother who has just seen her son’s dismembered body on probably the most horrific Google Picasa slide show in the world.
Amir Mubdhir, the morgue’s gallery operator, is kind and patient with the families.
“It’s normal, ” he sighs, as a woman runs shrieking from the room. “We have got used to it, the crying and the screaming.”
He goes back at his computer, but he isn’t working. On his screen is the video game Plants vs. Zombies, a violent cartoon escape from the real death all around him.
These people have seen a lot.