Breakfast, Bombing, Then Lunch: Iraq Returns to Its Grim Rhythms |
Posted: June 21, 2012 |
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Iraqis remove the body of a man killed Wednesday in a bombing in Kirkuk. More than 150 Iraqis have died in the past week. BAGHDAD — On Saturday, a young Shiite man, bloodied from bombing wounds to his arms and head, was lying on a hospital bed when his cellphone rang.
“I remember visiting my friend in the hospital when he was wounded from an explosion,” said the man, Sahir Talib, 23, who was hurt in a suicide car bombing during a religious festival here. “He just called to tell me it’s his turn to visit me in the hospital.”
Pausing a moment, he added, “Our life will never change.” Just last month, a poll showed that for the first time in almost two years, a plurality of Iraqis felt that the country was going in the right direction. Now, that measure of hope, nurtured by a lull in violence that some had begun to believe could last, is being tested by the return of some painfully familiar miseries for Iraq: bloodshed, insufferable heat and political struggle. Over the past week, more than 150 Iraqis have been killed, and hundreds more have been wounded, in an escalation of sectarian violence that included the country’s deadliest day in nearly two years. At the same time, temperatures have soared to 120 degrees, while intense sandstorms have kept Iraqis from sleeping on their roofs — a critical escape from the heat at a time when electricity to power air-conditioners is working for only a couple of hours a day because of the strains to Iraq’s power grid. The government, meanwhile, remains paralyzed as Sunni and Kurdish rivals to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki push hard for his ouster, though diplomats and analysts say he seems likely to weather the crisis. In times like these, a particularly Iraqi character trait — part stoicism, part defiance — comes through. “Iraqis have gotten used to this situation,” said Ali Husain, the editor in chief of the newspaper Al Mada. “It’s part of life. You have your breakfast, then there’s a car bomb, and then lunch after that.” But even as Iraqis insist that they are managing just fine, this grim stretch has driven home the reality that, for the first time after years of American occupation, they must manage alone. Not only has it been six months since the departure of the American military, but the United States, which is without an ambassador to Iraq, is also largely disengaged politically. The State Department is slashing the size of its embassy here, and the Obama administration’s nominee to lead the mission, Brett H. McGurk, who has worked in Iraq since the Bush administration, withdrew on Monday in the face of Republican opposition. This month, a local news agency reported that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. would arrive in Baghdad “within days” to resolve the tensions surrounding Mr. Maliki. At the time, that did not seem to be a stretch: Iraqis have become accustomed to seeing American officials rush to the scene of their latest political drama. But this time, Mr. Biden never came. “It seems the Iraqis — not without some sort of loud cheering from the Turks and the Iranians — will be sorting this one out themselves,” wrote Reidar Visser, a blogger and a historian of Iraq. At the same time, the recent violence, mostly against Shiite religious pilgrims, has raised new questions about the capabilities of Iraq’s security forces. While the police and military forces are generally regarded as well trained, there are still concerns about loyalties and corruption. In one common scheme, absent soldiers pay half of their salaries to their officers. “This phenomenon exists, and I call on officers in the Interior and Defense Ministries to investigate,” Mr. Maliki said in a statement released on state television on Monday. “This is treachery.” Also, at checkpoints in Baghdad, soldiers still use wandlike devices that they believe can detect bombs but that have been determined by researchers to be useless and have led to fraud accusations against the British company that makes them. Still, Iraqi defiance is in evidence. Even after dozens of attacks last week left more than 90 people dead, flatbed trucks were still seen throughout Baghdad, carrying away the beige blast walls that have come to dominate the look of the city. Walls that protect Parliament are even being removed, and one lawmaker said in the local press that it was time that the politicians “share with the people the danger of terrorist attacks.” Politically, the enthusiastic and quixotic effort by Mr. Maliki’s rivals to push him from power has actually seemed to help him. Recent polls show that the crisis has cemented his popularity among his Shiite political base, and even some Sunni tribes are warming to him. Meanwhile, the Sunni and Kurdish opposition has become more divided — and in some cases less popular among the groups’ constituencies — as the challenges to Mr. Maliki have created a legislative logjam. (One issue that the government has discussed recently is a ban on celebratory gunfire, which probably has as much chance to succeed as a ban on public smoking that Parliament passed late last year, and that has gone nearly totally unobserved.) Mr. Maliki has also received some political cover from the Iranian government. After calls by the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, Mr. Maliki’s sometime ally and perpetual rival in Shiite politics, for Mr. Maliki to step down, Iranian officials summoned Mr. Sadr to Tehran and urged him to ease up. Although the summons seemed to have little effect on Mr. Sadr’s stance — over the weekend he insisted again that opposing Mr. Maliki was God’s will — it was a clear message to the Iraqi public that Iran still backed the prime minister. In that, Iran and the United States appear to be in agreement, even if American officials have seemed to try to maintain some distance from Mr. Maliki and what is seen as his taste for authoritarian behavior. To many Iraqis, however, that stripe in Mr. Maliki’s character — evident in power grabs in recent years over the security forces and the justice system — is more expected than alarming. His popularity in polls has generally risen as he has moved to solidify his authority, signaling that Iraqis still value strength and resilience as critical to weathering the crises that face the country. “I think he’s the only one who cares,” said Karrah Ali, the owner of a men’s suit shop in the capital whose clients include members of Parliament and their bodyguards. “He’s interested in working and doing something.”
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
