The pull out method

Again it's been a long time since I wrote. That's partly because I've been busy when I've been here in Baghdad, partly because I've been away sometimes and partly because I don't know where to start. There's so much going on here and you can hardly pick up a western newspaper (or an Eastern one probably) without there being something about Iraq in there. Since I last wrote, there have been some potential laws referred to the Iraqi parliament, Tony Blair's mercifully departed office, several hundred Iraqis and dozens of coalition soldiers have been killed, support for Bush's surge has been collapsing, and Bush commuted "Scooter" Libby's jail sentence for obstructing an investigation into the leaking the identity of a CIA operative whose husband discredited one of Bush's pre-war claims about Iraq's "WMD". And there's been much more, but that's enough to list for now.

So..... the surge. Is it "working"? Is it time to pull the troops out? I was at a wedding in Sweden recently and everyone I met posed the question and had their own view on it. But is it possible to answer that question yet? I don't believe so. There continue to be headline-grabbing attacks now and then. About a month ago, a Shia shrine in Samarra was bombed, again, toppling 2 minarets and causing extensive damage. This was the same shrine whose golden dome was bombed in February 2006. That attack was what is widely understood to have really kicked off the sectarian trouble that still rumbles on today. There was a curfew imposed after last month's bombing for 3 days, as the authorities feared it would cause another increase in sectarian bloodshed. I never bought that, because the level of violence is already at a level that would be difficult to increase significantly further. There may have been a slight increase but I think that is mainly due to Al Qaeda wanting to put as much pressure on the US as possible in advance of September, when General Petraeus is due to report to Congress on whether the surge is working.

And that pressure is shown by high profile bombs such as the truck bomb that exploded in Kirkuk on Saturday, the death toll for which could top 150.

Not helping the situation is the continued uselessness of the Iraqi government. The Kurdish Regional Government has been pressing ahead and has agreed its own oil legislation and agreed a revenue sharing draft law with the federal government in Baghdad. The process isn't going anywhere fast in Baghdad however. It is likely at this stage that the Kurds will pass their own oil law allowing them to sign agreements with foreign oil companies, even before the Iraqi government passes its own oil and gas law (which was almost agreed in February but is now being rejected by the Kurds because the Sunnis and Shiites basically re-wrote it at a later conference). There's talk of making the revenue sharing law dependent on the federal oil and gas law, so this will take a while longer to be passed. There's little or no parliamentary activity going on at the moment anyway. Many of the MPs are out of the country for summer so raising a quorum is not necessarily going to be possible. Which could be lucky for Maliki, as a vote of no confidence is apparently being proposed against him in 5 days' time. It's questionable whether that vote will be passed, as explained better by the excellent Juan Cole blog.

So all in all I think it is too early to tell whether the surge will work. It's only in the last couple of weeks that the troop numbers have hit their peak, and violence does continue, albeit that some of it has spread from Baghdad to other places. I've heard it called the "water bed effect" whereby if you push down in one place, others rise. There are good signs in some other parts of the country, though. The western Anbar province was once a hotbed of Al Qaeda in Iraq activity but the Sunni tribal leaders there have had enough of Al Qaeda and are now fighting with the coalition troops to drive them out. That was unfathomable at the end of last year. So I think more time is needed to see how it will play out.

The Americans I have spoken to are very divided on the issue. Some think the troops should get out now, while others think that if that happens, a full blown civil war will erupt. Timing is everything though. It would be a sad irony if the surge, which is probably about the first thing Bush has got potentially right, is scuppered now by a Democratic controlled Congress which only starts asserting itself about 4 years too late, or by Republicans distancing themselves from Bush. It's unfortunate that what happens will be dictated not by events on the ground here, but political necessities in Washington. What you do clearly see now is how isolated Bush is becoming. Congressional delegations and people running for the Democratic or Republican presidential nominations for the next election are making trips out here to speak to people and get their own impression of events on the ground. I think John McCain is over here at the moment so that he can go back and come out with a statement of some sort that improves his chances of nomination. Whatever happens with troop numbers, Maliki has to go if there's to be any progress.

More on the hapless and cretinous parliament: on June 10 the parliament voted to change the Speaker of the Council of Representatives after one MP got his bodyguards to beat up another MP when he walked past his office. As the person who sent me the report said, "so, Iraqi democracy coming along nicely".

Mind you, with Bush commuting Scooter Libby's sentence to shut him up, democracy in America isn't exactly perfect. (Clinton was no saint either - he issued 140 full pardons in his final hours as president, among them to Marc Rich, whose lawyer was.... scooter Libby. If you're not too bored with reading about corrupt bastards looking after themselves in Washington you can read more here.)