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Skip to bottom links Briefing The change in Iraq Is it turning the corner? Jun 12th 2008 | BAGHDAD AND ERBIL From The Economist print edition By all the main measures--military, political and economic--Iraq is now improving, from a dire base. But that does not yet mean it is headed for peaceand prosperity Eyevine THOUGH still lacerated by the tragedy of the past five years, Iraq is at last getting better all round. The violence, albeit still ferocious in parts of the country, has subsided dramatically. The American military "surge" that began a year ago has worked better than even the optimists had hoped, helped by ceasefires with Shia militias, by accords with Sunni tribal leaders and by the fact that sectarian cleansing in many areas is sadly complete. Politics is also beginning to stutter towards something approaching normality, with signs of an accommodation between the three main communities--Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Kurds--and the prospect of a series of vital laws, on such matters as sharing the revenue from oil, being passed, though they are still subject to endless last-minute hiccups. Some key laws, for instance on pensions and the budget, have recently been enacted. A set of provincial elections towards the end of this year has a chance of empowering the aggrieved Sunni Arabs. Various Sunni ministers who walked out of the government a year ago in a huff may soon be back in. The economy has begun to grow fast too, though its ripples have yet to be felt across the country. The soaring price of oil, along with a mild improvement in production to just above its pre-war peak, mean that the government has more cash to spend than it is has had since the first Gulf war of 1991. In sum, the worst of the horrors unleashed in the sectarian violence after the bombing of a Shia shrine in February 2006 may be over. Fewer Americans were killed in hostilities in May, when 19 died, than in any month since the invasion of March 2003 (see chart). That is half the average for the first four months of this year and one-quarter of last year's rate. Iraq Body Count, a group that collates a tally of casualties from media reports, noted 752 civilian and police deaths in May, a grim figure but less than a third of the average last summer. American officials in Baghdad are careful to avoid the misplaced triumphalism expressed immediately after the invasion five years ago. Progress, as General David Petraeus, the American commander on the ground, is wont to say, is "fragile and reversible". But in Baghdad's Green Zone, the sealed-off sanctuary on the west bank of the River Tigris where the American-led coalition's headquarters and most of Iraqi ministries are ensconced, optimism is back in the air, reflecting a broader change of mood in the country. An opinion poll in February that asked Iraqis "How would you say things are going overall these days?" found that 43% said they were going well, up from only 22% in September. among Sunnis, it went from a paltry 2% to 16%, but a notable jump all the same. If the poll were conducted today, the answers would be more positive still. One clear reason for hope is that al-Qaeda's Iraqi branch has taken a big knock. The CIA's director, Michael Hayden, recently said it had suffered a "near-strategic defeat". Serviced mainly by Sunni radicals from the wider Arab world, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (as it calls itself) was responsible for most of the huge car bombs that terrorised Shia communities and provoked their backlash of sectarian cleansing, almost tipping Iraq into full-scale civil war two years ago. Down but not out But al-Qaeda is certainly not defeated. It is still active in the mixed Sunni-Shia province of Diyala and in the northern city of Mosul and its surrounding Nineveh province. It attacks the tribal leaders of the Sunni Awakening (or Sahwa) movement, for instance in the western province of Anbar, who have been persuaded to throw in their lot with the Americans. AP A chance to build Another reason for the drop in violence is that the mass movement loyal to a fierce Shia cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, has also either decided to back off, perhaps just for the time being, or has been beaten back by a mixture of American and Iraqi government forces. Earlier this year, Sadrist violence had risen, culminating in March in a big battle for the southern port city of Basra. At first, the Sadrists seemed to have fended off attempts by the Iraqi army to squash them. The Sadrists' Mahdi Army militias elsewhere in southern and central Iraq and in the eastern slums of Baghdad known as Sadr City rose up in solidarity with their brothers in Basra. From their base in Sadr City, on the opposite side of the Tigris, they subjected Baghdad's Green Zone to a hail of mortar and rocket fire. Since then, the Iraqi army has been able to patrol Sadr City more or less unmolested, uncovering weapons caches and sniffing out leaders of so-called "special groups" of renegade Sadrists who appear to be beyond the control of Mr Sadr himself. The government will get a big boost if it can at last bring basic services into the wretched slums of Sadr City, such as electricity, sanitation and medicine. In Basra too, after an astonishing turn-round, the Iraqi army seems to have bested the Sadrists. Yet the Sadrists still have a wide base of support, especially among the poor. Mr Sadr himself may be planning to turn his movement into a mainstream political-cum-religious party. The prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, aiming his wrath at the Sadrists, has said that no party may take part in the provincial elections unless it first disbands its militias. No one expects the Mahdi Army to disband fully--and no one is sure how much control Mr Sadr has over his movement's fractious components. He may manage to persuade most of his militiamen to stand down. But if Mr Maliki seeks to disbar the movement from competing in the elections, the Sadrists may still run as independents--and could yet sweep the board in the south. In the north, further progress in pacifying Mosul and its surrounding area would allow the government to claim with some justification that it is winning the war. The city is a last redoubt of al-Qaeda and a bastion of nationalist Baathists. By most accounts, government forces, with the Americans, are making steady advances. Mr Maliki's reputation has risen sharply since his forces' success in Basra, particularly among Sunnis and Kurds, many of whom praised him for showing that he was prepared to take on the militias from within his own Shia community. Since then, Western diplomats in Baghdad have noticed Mr Maliki's growing readiness to take decisions without conferring with the Americans first. He is trying to strengthen his nationalist credentials in negotiations between his government and the American administration over a "status of forces agreement". Mr Maliki wants to end the UN's formal sway over Iraq enshrined in an agreement renewed periodically since the invasion. He would like to replace it with a bilateral deal that would curb American powers--for instance, the power to detain Iraqi citizens, to launch military attacks without having to consult the Iraqi authorities, to fly through Iraqi airspace at will, and to give American soldiers and contractors immunity from prosecution if they break Iraqi laws. In reality, Mr Maliki still relies on the Americans, so he is unlikely to force the issue. Moreover, the results of provincial elections in the autumn and of America's own presidential election in November may sharply change the political landscape. So he may well let the matter drag on towards the end of the year. But he has been flashing his nationalist teeth--and may yet succeed to some degree in shifting power from the occupier to the government of a sovereign country. An oil-fired recovery If, with the government's growing political and military authority, Mr Maliki could get the economy moving, then the much-uttered phrase "turning the corner" may be apt. The latest production figure is 253m, a shade higher than its pre-war peak. So far the cash has yet to be turned into decent public services. People in Baghdad say that they h...
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