A Slipping Last Chance

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visits Washington with little to show for his new government.

THE IRAQI government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was commonly described as the country's last chance to avoid civil war when it took office two months ago. As he meets President Bush in Washington today, Mr. Maliki appears close to failing that fateful test. Violence in Iraq has been accelerating during the past several weeks, with an average of more than 100 civilian deaths a day. Most have been in Baghdad, the city Mr. Maliki vowed to pacify five weeks ago in his administration's first major initiative. A political program for national reconciliation that he launched a month ago has proved similarly unfruitful.

It's not that the Shiite prime minister and his coalition government aren't trying, but their steps are far weaker than those of foreign and Iraqi extremists. More than 50,000 Iraqi and U.S. troops have been deployed in Baghdad, and some have begun targeting the Shiite militias that, even more than Sunni insurgents, are driving the violence. But the sectarian attacks only grow bolder: Bloody bombings in the Shiite neighborhoods are answered with organized assaults on Sunni districts in which dozens of civilians are gunned down.

A reconciliation commission that Mr. Maliki created held its first meeting Saturday, but some prominent Sunnis refused to attend. There has been no tangible action so far on resolving critical constitutional issues governing the distribution of oil revenue and the extent of federalism. Under pressure from the U.S. Congress, the prime minister seems to have retreated from an offer of amnesty to insurgents who have fought American forces -- though it's hard to imagine a negotiated demobilization of Sunni militants without such a measure.

How to rescue the situation? Mr. Maliki and Mr. Bush are likely to discuss a reinforcement of U.S. and Iraqi troops in Baghdad, which might help. Those forces will have to be more aggressive in confronting Shiite as well as Sunni forces -- especially the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, which, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, seeks to create a state within a state to fight its own wars.

The most urgently needed action, however, must come from Mr. Maliki and other political leaders. The hopeful aspect of a deteriorating situation is that the country's elite, from Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to the heads of Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish political parties, remains publicly committed to the new democratic political system. If a civil war has begun, it has as yet no leaders. But the politicians must act quickly and aggressively to reach accords on Iraq's future. In particular Shiite leaders such as Mr. Maliki must offer minority Sunnis a fair solution to the constitutional disputes, and they must make the hard decision to dismantle their militias. If they do not act decisively, Iraq's failure will be their own.