Tuesday, January 10, 2006

EVEN AS IRAQ'S political leaders inch toward agreement on a new government, its militants are racing to tear the country apart. In the past week suicide bombers have unleashed a new onslaught, killing more than 200 people in both Shiite and Sunni towns, including 29 in an attack yesterday. Five more bound and blindfolded bodies were found in Baghdad on Sunday, the likely victims of sectarian death squads. U.S. forces, meanwhile, have suffered a grievous spike in losses, with 28 soldiers and civilians killed since Thursday, a dozen of them in the crash of a Black Hawk helicopter. The carnage, combined with failing supplies of gasoline and power, has caused some Iraqis to conclude that conditions in their country are the worst they've been since Saddam Hussein fell. Unless the politicians act quickly, the pessimists will be proved right.

Much of the violence aims to ignite war between Iraqi's Sunni and Shiite communities just as their newly elected leaders begin to explore political accord that could create a "unity" government designed to hold the country together. A vicious bombing in the Shiite city of Karbala last Thursday slaughtered 54; the same day, 80 died when a bomber attacked a police recruiting station in the Sunni town of Ramadi. Radicals are responding: Shiites marching in Baghdad last week demanded that American authorities stop trying to restrain Shiite militias that have been abducting, torturing and murdering Sunnis. U.S. officials say that Sunni leaders, for their part, have threatened to establish their own militias in self-defense.

At least some Iraqis are directing their anger toward the real authors of the bloodshed: In Ramadi, some residents publicly denounced al Qaeda. There are signs of a rift between foreign extremists and Iraqi insurgents, as U.S. officials were again reported to be engaged in negotiations with Sunni militant leaders. Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Zarqawi released a frustrated denunciation of Sunnis who participated in last month's successful parliamentary election. Most promising, Kurdish politicians who have been working to broker an agreement between Shiites and Sunnis said consensus had been reached in principle to form the coalition government that the Bush administration is rightly pushing for.

For now, however, the politicians look feckless compared with the terrorists. Because Sunnis have disputed the balloting, the official results of the election have still not been announced; at best they will be issued at the end of this week, one month after the vote. Sunni leaders remain loath to acknowledge the minority status that the election results confirmed. The largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, meanwhile continues to press an agenda that centers on the establishment of a Shiite ministate in southern Iraq, a step that would greatly benefit its close ally, Iran. Despite the reported agreement on a unity government, there has been no public sign of compromise on the key issues of power and resources that divide the Sunnis from the Shiites and Kurds. All the parties still have an interest in compromising so that democratic politics, rather than civil war, decide Iraq's future. But the time for politics is running out.