Worse—and maybe better

Iraq

Jul 21st 2005 BAGHDAD
From The Economist print edition

Despite a recent spate of horrors, the picture is mixed

A RECENT spate of particularly lethal suicide bombs—on July 16th one blew up a petrol tanker near a mosque in the mainly Shia town of Musayib, south of Baghdad, killing at least 90 civilians—makes things look even worse than they are. Not that they are rosy. But there is no sign yet of an impending “tipping point”—either in favour of the insurgents, who seek a return to Sunni Arab dominance through a sectarian war leading to the ignominious departure of the American-led forces, or in favour of the western allies, who want to split the insurgency, beef up the new Iraqi army and police so that they can take over the main burden of security, hold another set of elections under a new federal constitution, and then beat a dignified retreat within the next few years or so.

In fact, the rate of killing in the past year has been going up and down (see charts). For sure, the overall trend, year on year, is up. But so far this year it has levelled off. The violence ebbs and flows. The week before the recent spate of car bombs was the quietest since the new government took office at the end of April. Spikes of violence tend to occur during set-piece events—for instance, the retaking of the rebel stronghold of Fallujah last November, the general election at the end of January, and the installation of a new government in late April. Then the killing rate has tended to come down again.

As parliament's constitutional committee gets close to agreeing to a new constitution and then puts it to a referendum—all being well—in October, a new spike of violence may be expected. In order not to let the insurgents gain momentum, the committee is said to be determined to meet its mid-August deadline, though the temporary constitution allows for a six-month extension. It may even produce a document ahead of time, early next month.
Most strikingly, the death rate for Iraqi civilians has gone up more steadily. Iraq Body Count, a diligent American-British monitoring group that was against the war to oust Saddam Hussein, said this week that nearly 25,000 civilians had been killed in the two years since the invasion by American forces. They, it reckons, caused 37% of those deaths, a third of them in the three weeks of the actual invasion, when bombs and missiles rained down on Baghdad. Since then, the insurgents, “unknown agents” and (most culpable of all) criminal gangs have been responsible for most of Iraqis' violent deaths.
Though foreign Islamists, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who proclaims a link with al-Qaeda, catch the headlines and perpetrate many (maybe most) of the grisliest acts of violence, such as beheadings and suicide-bombings, most analysts put their number at 5-10% of the insurgents, who, according to the American army, add up to about 15,000 to 20,000 fighters. It is unclear whether more Iraqis are becoming suicide-bombers.
In any event, the country's revamped security forces have been especially hard hit in the past year, partly because their number has risen dramatically, from around 30,000 in July 2004 to some 152,000 by March this year. Recruiting centres and queues have been favourite targets. But the death rate for the American forces and their allies has actually gone down sharply since the peaks of November, when 125 Americans died in action. In March, 23 were killed by insurgents; in June the tally was 70; if this month's current rate is constant, it will be around 30.
But a further, more ominous, feature of the fighting is that it is taking on a more sectarian hue. More recently, Shia gatherings—weddings, funerals and crowds milling around outside mosques—have become particularly vulnerable. In response, the killing of prominent Sunni civilians, such as their clergy, has increased. Many Shias and Sunnis living in districts where they are a minority have moved out. Some people in Baghdad say a low-level civil war has already begun.

Some Shia members of parliament, casting doubt on the effectiveness and loyalty of police and army units, have been demanding a wider call-up of neighbourhood militias. Most peace-minded Sunni Arab politicians, for their part, fiercely oppose such an idea. They also say, gloomily, that Iran is meddling more than before, egging on the government's two main Shia parties, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Dawa (“Call”) party, to let their militias off the leash. In particular, they accuse SCIRI's militias, the Badr Brigades, of sectarian murders and of torturing Sunni detainees.

But the political mood may be improving, despite a hiccup this week due to the murder of two peace-minded Sunni Arabs: Mijbal Issa was one of 15 co-opted on to the 55-strong drafting committee; the other was one of ten Sunni Arab observers on it. Friends of both men blamed Shia militiamen, not Sunni rejectionists, for their deaths. Their Sunni Arab committee colleagues said that, in protest, they were temporarily withdrawing.

The drafters, in any case, have been beavering away. The shape of Iraq's federal structure is still at issue. So is the degree of Islam's influence over the law. Women's groups have expressed worry about some clauses leaked from the emerging draft. And several of the thorniest questions, such as where the disputed province of Kirkuk fits into the federation and how to disburse the country's oil revenue, may be addressed in generalities and, in effect, set aside. “Everything can be deferred until judgment day if we get consensus on a draft,” says Adnan al-Janabi, another Sunni Arab on the committee.

More hopefully, out of Iraq's 18 provinces, only the four including Baghdad and surrounding it are relentlessly bloody. No less hopefully, the leaders of the newly dominant Shias, who comprise some 60% of Iraqis to the Kurds and Sunni Arabs at about 20% apiece, have so far refused to be drawn by the overwhelmingly Sunni Arab insurgents into a sectarian tit-for-tat that could presage an all-out civil war. In particular, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shia cleric, has restrained the angriest of the Shia militias. And even in the bloodiest provinces the mayhem is at least not worsening. “It's no more pear-shaped than it was six months ago,” says a hardened foreign observer in Baghdad. “Maybe slightly less so.”

Copyright © 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.