What's going on in Iraq? (all the real shit you won't hear from Bush)

It seems the Administration may be getting ready to cut and run. Apparently they're not going to ask for more than the $18 billion they already got for Iraqi reconstruction. So if they're giving up on reconstruction, how soon will they give up on having our troops killed? My guess is the Republican leadership will force Bush to pull out by summer 2006 when they'll be running scared at the slate of Democratic ex-Iraqi soldier candidates against them.
If Bush resists, he's going to have a fullscale Republican revolt against the presidency on his hands. Now that will be something to see.
But I think he'll buckle before then. Expect a speech before summer that we've won the war in Iraq, that our troops have served with great honor, that they did not die in vain, that Iraq is well on the way to democracy, and other face-saving BS.
The media will be kind to Bush; Cheney and Rumsfeld will probably get most of the knocks.


1. "Old Half-Witted Sheep": A New York Times Editorial Contemplates Iraq -- by ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
It learns the storm-cloud's thundering melody,
Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
Now dream-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep;
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
That bleats articulate monotony
And indicates that two and one are three,
That grass is green, lakes damp and mountains steep.."

As regards the half-witted sheep, J.K. Stephen could just as well have parodying newspaper editorials as about Wordsworth.

These days editorials barely matter. Few people outside the professional political classes bother to read them. It's a form of writing as dead as the dodo, so we should find a specimen that is still in decent enough condition to be stuffed for the benefit of posterity.

By great good luck, the day after Christmas, the New York Times produced an absolutely perfect specimen of the editorial genre. Devoted to the elections in Iraq held on December 15, it should be carted off at once to the Museum of Natural History, and put in the "journalism" diorama next to the green eyeshade.

A word here about technical terms. Many newspaper readers describe opinion articles such as this one as "editorials". Within the newspaper business this is a "column", not an editorial, which refers solely to the unsigned expression of opinion usually appearing on the left hand side of the page, below the masthead. The editorial reflects the position of the newspaper, therefore, in the first analysis, of the owner of that newspaper.

On local issues a strong editorial can still make a bureaucrat or department czar tremble. Political endorsements in contests for judgeships and the like also count. The New York Times could call for Bush's impeachment tomorrow. But would even that makes waves?

In the main, the editorial thunderbolt, hurled from on high with stately and effective violence is a thing of the past. Newspapers, as institutions, simply lack the credibility to be seen as tribunes of the people. The Eighties and nineties took their toll. What respect can be granted to newspaper publishers mostly preoccupied with monopolizing cities and ensuring themselves a 20 per cent rate of return?

Of course editorial writers _ often veterans of the foreign bureaus put out to pasture -- don't see their trade in such guise. They take their labors with tremendous seriousness. They believe, wrongly, that the world is listening.

The late Murray Kempton once famously wrote that the function of editorial writers is to come down into the valley after the battle to shoot the wounded. What Murray didn't stress that this descent into the valley is rarely marked by undue haste. Sometimes the descent is so delayed that the wounded have long since expired, their entrails consumed by vultures and their bones dried in the sun.

Nearly a week before the Times' editorial writer squared up to the topic, informed observers had scrutinized the preliminary results of the Dember 15 poll in Iraq and noted that they confirmed pre-election presentiments. For example, writing on the CounterPunch website five days before Christmas, Patrick Cockburn concluded succinctly "The election marks the final shipwreck of American and British hopes of establishing a pro-western secular democracy in a united Iraq. Islamic fundamentalist movements are ever more powerful in both the Sunni and Shia communities.

He quoted Ghassan Attiyah, an Iraqi commentator. as saying that in "In two-and-a-half years Bush has succeeded in creating two new Talibans in Iraq."

In fact it didn't even require Patrick's expertise to see that the elections, portrayed by President George W. Bush as a sign of success for US policies in Iraqin fact meant a tremendous triumph for America's enemies, both inside and outside the country.

I did a great deal of driving during the Christmas season, hence listened a lot to the radio and more than once heard even-voiced commentators on NPR, one of them a New York Times correspondent, expressing gratification at the elections as a American triumph, launching the nation of Iraq on its first faltering stumbles along the path of liberal democracy.

The level of self-delusion reminded me of similar delusions among the left, after the Ayatollah Khomeini took over in Iran in 1978 when there were confident assertions that the Ayatollah had lived in Paris, had absorbed therefrom the spirit of the Enlightenment. It took the sight of thousands of leftists hanged en masse in Teheran to make the left realized that the Ayatollah had not spent too many hours in that Paris sojourn reading Condorcet.

So the post-Christmas Times editorialist went down into the valley and did manful battle with the obvious, always excepting the fact that the US administration had had sustained a terrible defeat. "The final votes must still be counted in Iraq, but the trend is already clear," the editorial crooned. "The biggest winners appear to be the Shiite religious parties whose politicians have run the ministries and whose militias have run the streets of southeastern Iraq for a year or more."

Actually, the Shia militia have been running the entire south and much of Baghdad. The whole editorial nervously evades admitting how bad things are for the US.

After noting Kurdish strength in its region, the editorial sadly assessed the skimpy sub-20 per cent for America's man, Ayad Allawi, and the less than 1 per cent for Ahmad Chalabi and delivered its expert judgment: "the biggest losers were secular parties and those who tried to appeal to all of Iraq's communities, not just one religion or ethnic group."

Then, with a sad wag of the head, the editorial added gloomily, "Anyone who hoped that Iraq's broadest exercise in electoral democracy so far might strengthen women's rights, secular protections or national unity will be disappointed."

Say something twice, so why not three times? "Iraqi politics are settling into an unsettling pattern. Very few people vote as Iraqis; most vote as Shiites, Sunnis or Kurds."

By law, an editorial writer is duty-bound to detect "signs of progress", and the Times' writer did not fail in this duty: "It is progress that Sunni Arabs turned out in large numbers, but" (here a cautionary wag of the editorial finger,) "that may not be enough to assure them a meaningful role in reshaping a dangerously divisive constitution and forming a broad-based government."

Already the editorial is lunging towards fantasy. Nobody in Iraq thinks the Constitution is going to be significantly amended. If the Kurds had thought so they wouldn't have agreed to compromise in the pre-referendum period. A few paragraphs later, the editorial writer calls for such a constitutional rewrite to ensure that oil revenues 'flow to the central government". Why would the Shia and the Kurds want to surrender the revenues from their own new super-regions?

But by now the editorial writer is ecstatic in his ghost dance, urging "the victorious parties" to summon "the sense to reach out to a Sunni Arab community that now has one foot in the political process and the other in the insurgency."

The strong vote for the Shiite religious parties, the editorial writer bravely continues, "does not necessarily mean that Iraqis have abruptly turned fundamentalist." Why not?

Then, just like those leftists in 1978 thinking Khomeini had read Condorcet, the editorialist advises the Grand Ayatollah Sistani and the equally triumphant nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr that "The legal rights of women, currently in limbo between civil and religious law, need reinforcement." As Patrick had pointed out, already most girls leaving schools in Baghdad wear headscarves. Women's rights in cases of divorce and inheritance are being eroded.

The Times writer scatters advice with a measured hand: "The victorious Kurdish parties need to face up to their larger responsibilities" and by the same token "The Sunni parties need to face practical political realitiesThe last thing they should be talking about is reviving the electoral boycott strategy that cost them so heavily earlier this year."

If the Sunni made such a mistake in boycotting in January why is the New York Times and US government so keen on conciliating them, drawing them "more deeply into political life". Obviously because they go round blowing people up.

Time for the editorial finale: "It is in everyone's interest to draw the Sunni Arab community more deeply into political life, not to shut it out. Otherwise, Iraq's future will be civil war and this election will have no real winners."

There's another way of putting this. The election was notice of Iraq's funeral, and the triumph of Shia-style Islam. An astute editorial writer could have asked, in conclusion, How long will it be before the US is pumping arms and other supplies into the Sunni resistance as a counter-weight to the Shia? But that, though germane, would be cynical, and editorialists despise cynicism because it goes piggyback upon reality, and hence is an unfit companion for their stately excursions.


2. Leave the Field Now - the Iraqi Endgame is About to Begin -- by Simon Jenkins

The good news is that 2006 will see the effective end of the western occupation of Iraq. It will end because everyone will be exhausted: the Americans, the British, the Iraqis and their neighbours. It will end because all justification for its continuance will have evaporated.

The election whose result is to be declared this week is good news. The federal constitution fashioned by Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, is good news. The resulting coalition government will be good news since it will put the strongest group, the cleric-backed pro-Iranian Sciri, or Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, in effective power.

But all this good news will depend on one thing: the new government being seen to stand on its own feet. It must have the legitimacy and authority to forge its own alliances and hack its own deals. As long as its land is pockmarked with fortresses stuffed with 180,000 foreign troops, such independence will be unreal. Such a government will continue to be treated as an American puppet.

On December 22 Tony Blair paid his Christmas call on British troops in Basra to tell them how much things were improving. This time he said security was “completely changed” from last year. What he meant was unclear. It was as if Gladstone had visited Gordon during the siege of Khartoum. Did it not seem strange to Blair that he could not move outside his walled fortress, could not drive anywhere or talk to any Iraqis? Did he wonder why British troops have withdrawn from two anarchic provinces? Was he really told that security is transformed for the better? If so he is horribly deceived.

Reliable reporting from Iraq is now so dangerous that the level of insecurity can be gleaned only from circumstantial evidence. Baghdad outside the American green zone is now all “red zone”, off limits to any but the most reckless foreigner. The death rate and the number of explosions are rising. While some rural areas are relatively safe there is no such thing as national security. Iraq’s borders are porous. Crime is uncontrolled. The concept of an “occupying power” is near meaningless.

The Americans cannot even protect the lawyers at Saddam’s trial, two of whom have been killed. Iraqis are meeting violent death in greater numbers probably than at any time since the Shi’ite massacres of 1991. Professionals are being driven into exile, children are kidnapped, women are forced indoors or shot for being improperly dressed. Those Britons who preen themselves for “bringing democracy to Iraq” would not dare visit the place. They have brought three elections, but elections without security do not equal democracy.

This is no time to rehearse the self-delusion, vainglory, ineptitude and cruelty of this venture. The only sensible debate is how to help Iraq back on its feet after this bungled attempt to “defeat terrorism” in the region. It will not be easy. It requires the victorious Shi’ite leaders to respect a devolution of power and money to the Kurdish and the Sunni minorities, as ordained by the federal settlement in Khalilzad’s constitution. Local Sunni and Shi’ite power brokers must fix the boundaries of their domains and the spoils that go with them. Such deals are crucial to a future Iraq. The alternatives are tyranny or separatism, probably both.

Such a settlement will have traction only if negotiated not under American guns but by plenipotentiary ministers and provincial chiefs. Already such ministers depend for support and protection not on a national army or police force but on private militias and mercenaries. These include those of the interior minister, Bayan Jabr, allegedly responsible for reviving Saddam’s killing squads and torture chambers. Governors, mayors and police chiefs depend for their authority on cutting deals with gangs and militias. This, not the occupation, is the fact of power in Iraq.

In reality the occupation cut and ran from Iraq in the course of 2004. This was when the Americans and their allies abandoned the policing of towns and cities and retreated bruised to more than 100 fortified bases. This is not like the Vietnam war, when American soldiers could move round Saigon at will. The bases are like crusader castles dotting a hostile Levant. Movement between them must be by air or heavily armoured convoy. Ferocious search-and-destroy sallies by the US Marines do not project power, only death and resentment.

The recent Anbar operation reportedly turned local support for Al-Qaeda from a trickle to a flood. Money is sprayed at sub-contractors (much of it stolen), but America exerts no executive power outside the capital. It imposes no law and order and cannot even protect infrastructure. This is not an occupation. It is a military squat.

The question for Tony Blair and George Bush is almost irrelevant to Iraq. It is how can the squatters leave with enough dignity to pass muster back home and not seem like weakness abroad? How can it be staged to fit in with Bush’s mid-term elections and Blair’s legacy agenda? The policy stance in both Washington and London is of withdrawal “as soon as the security situation permits”. Hence presumably Blair’s insistence that security is getting better. Since it is not getting better he must be saying it as cover for withdrawal.

The exit strategy at present relies on there being a fixed moment when the Iraqi army will pass some notional Sandhurst test. It will be “ready to take on the insurgents” and thus “prevent civil war”. Such talk has long brought comfort to the armchairs of Pall Mall. Thus was the Indian army to keep the Empire intact. Thus were Diem’s soldiers to take on the Vietcong and Moscow’s surrogates to defeat the Taliban. The concept of locals being “almost ready” to replace our boys has long appealed to the imperial imagination.

Having recently visited the Iraq army I can attest to the courage of its officers and the commitment of its instructors. But I was constantly being taken aside and told that it was inconceivable that these soldiers would obey an order from a partisan minister in Baghdad to advance against distant militias except under American protection. That was even assuming that the constitution allowed them to do so, which it probably does not. Only the Kurdish peshmergas would happily fight Sunnis or Shi’ites, and that would not be a good idea. As for the police, the basis of law and order, they are a long-lost cause.

Treating the Iraqi army as the cement that will glue together a new Iraq is unreal. Some Baghdad units might form a new Republican Guard were a strongman to emerge from the forthcoming coalition haggle. But if the most devastating American firepower cannot find, let alone suppress, Al-Qaeda’s Musab al-Zarqawi, what hope is there for an Iraqi army? Zarqawi will be suppressed if and only if the Sunni militias take it upon themselves to do so. That must await the end of the occupation. The same goes for the pro-Iranian hotheads in the south.

The operative word is await. All Iraq is waiting. Civil strife is appalling because the militias, gangs and police operate under no political authority and with an army supposedly being prepared to fight them. The idea that American or British withdrawal would “lead to civil war” suggests that Iraq is like Yugoslavia. It is not. Since the foreign troops spend most of their time in bases they have no role in policing Iraq’s communal strife. Their departure would rather end what Iraqis regard as a humiliation and remove a recruiting sergeant and target for the insurgency.

The next stage in Iraq is no longer within the capacity of America or Britain to determine. All they can do is postpone it. The country is about to acquire its third government in as many years. Left to its own devices this government might just find enough authority to hold its country together. Imprisoned in its green zone castle as a puppet of the Pentagon, it will certainly not. That is why withdrawal needs a date, and an early one.

I was told by a senior security official last month that the Iraq experience had been so ghastly that at least no British government would do anything like it “for a very long time indeed”. Funny, I thought. Why are 4,000 British troops leaving to fight the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, whence even the Americans have fled? Nobody can give me an answer.

(Simon Jenkins writes for the London Sunday Times and was previously editor of The Times. After ten years as its twice-weekly columnist he is shortly to join the new Guardian in the same capacity, combining it with his Sunday Times column. He has written and broadcast extensively about politics and his second love, architecture. He wrote histories of the Portuguese revolution, the British press, the Falklands war and is currently writing a political biography of Margaret Thatcher and Thatcherism. His two recent compendiums, England's Thousand Best Churches and England's Thousand Best Houses are published in America by Viking.)


3. U.S. Has End in Sight on Iraq Rebuilding: Documents Show Much of the Funding Diverted to Security, Justice System and Hussein Inquiry -- by Ellen Knickmeyer

BAGHDAD -- The Bush administration does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request going before Congress in February, officials say. The decision signals the winding down of an $18.4 billion U.S. rebuilding effort in which roughly half of the money was eaten away by the insurgency, a buildup of Iraq's criminal justice system and the investigation and trial of Saddam Hussein.

Just under 20 percent of the reconstruction package remains unallocated. When the last of the $18.4 billion is spent, U.S. officials in Baghdad have made clear, other foreign donors and the fledgling Iraqi government will have to take up what authorities say is tens of billions of dollars of work yet to be done merely to bring reliable electricity, water and other services to Iraq's 26 million people.

"The U.S. never intended to completely rebuild Iraq," Brig. Gen. William McCoy, the Army Corps of Engineers commander overseeing the work, told reporters at a recent news conference. In an interview this past week, McCoy said: "This was just supposed to be a jump-start."

Since the reconstruction effort began in 2003, midcourse changes by U.S. officials have shifted at least $2.5 billion from the rebuilding of Iraq's decrepit electrical, education, water, sewage, sanitation and oil networks to build new security forces for Iraq and to construct a nationwide system of medium- and maximum-security prisons and detention centers that meet international standards, according to reconstruction officials and documents. Many of the changes were forced by an insurgency more fierce than the United States had expected when its troops entered Iraq.

In addition, from 14 percent to 22 percent of the cost of every nonmilitary reconstruction project goes toward security against insurgent attacks, according to reconstruction officials in Baghdad. In Washington, the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction puts the security costs of each project at 25 percent.

U.S. officials more than doubled the size of the Iraqi army, which they initially planned to build to only 40,000 troops. An item-by-item inspection of reallocated funds reveals how priorities were shifted rapidly to fund initiatives addressing the needs of a new Iraq: a 300-man Iraqi hostage-rescue force that authorities say stages operations almost every night in Baghdad; more than 600 Iraqis trained to dispose of bombs and protect against suicide bombs; four battalions of Iraqi special forces to protect the oil and electric networks; safe houses and armored cars for judges; $7.8 million worth of bulletproof vests for firefighters; and a center in the city of Kirkuk for treating victims of torture.

At the same time, the hundreds of Americans and Iraqis who have devoted themselves to the reconstruction effort point to 3,600 projects that the United States has completed or intends to finish before the $18.4 billion runs out around the end of 2006. These include work on 900 schools, construction of hospitals and nearly 160 health care centers and clinics, and repairs on or construction of nearly 800 miles of highways, city streets and village roads.

But the insurgency has set back efforts across the board. In two of the most crucial areas, electricity and oil production, relentless sabotage has kept output at or below prewar levels despite the expenditure of hundreds of millions of American dollars and countless man-hours. Oil production stands at roughly 2 million barrels a day, compared with 2.6 million before U.S. troops entered Iraq in March 2003, according to U.S. government statistics.

The national electrical grid has an average daily output of 4,000 megawatts, about 400 megawatts less than its prewar level.

Iraqis nationwide receive on average less than 12 hours of power a day. For residents of Baghdad, it was six hours a day last month, according to a U.S. count, though many residents say that figure is high.

The Americans, said Zaid Saleem, 26, who works at a market in Baghdad, "are the best in destroying things but they are the worst in rebuilding."

The Price of Security

In a speech on Aug. 8, 2003, President Bush promised more for Iraq.

"In a lot of places, the infrastructure is as good as it was at prewar levels, which is satisfactory, but it's not the ultimate aim. The ultimate aim is for the infrastructure to be the best in the region," Bush said.

U.S. officials at the time promised a steady supply of 6,000 megawatts of electricity and a return to oil production output of 2.5 million barrels a day, within months.

But the insurgency changed everything.

"Good morning, gentlemen," a security contractor in shirt-sleeves said crisply late last week, launching into a security briefing in what amounts to a reconstruction war room in Baghdad's Green Zone, home to much of the Iraqi government.

Other private security contractors hunched over desks in front of him, learning the state of play for what would be roughly 200 missions that day to serve the 865 U.S. reconstruction projects underway -- taking inspectors to work sites, guarding convoys of building materials or escorting dignitaries to see works in progress, among other jobs.

A screen overhead detailed the previous day's 70 or so attacks on private, military and Iraqi security forces. The briefer noted bombs planted in potholes, rigged in cars, hidden in the vests of suicide attackers. There were also mortar attacks and small-arms fire. The briefer also noted miles of roads rendered impassable or where travel was inadvisable owing to attacks, and some of the previous day's toll in terms of dead and wounded.

Colored blocks on the screen marked convoys en route, each tracked by transponders and equipped with panic buttons.

To one side, a TV monitor scrolled out the day's news, including McCoy's remark to reporters that December was the worst month on record for Iraqi contractors working on reconstruction, with more killed, wounded or kidnapped than during any other month since the U.S. invasion.

"For every three steps forward, we take one step back. Those are the conditions we face," said Col. Bjarne Iverson, commander of the reconstruction operations center. He followed with a comment often used by American authorities in Iraq: "There are people who just want us to fail here."

The heavy emphasis on security, and the money it would cost, had not been anticipated in the early months of the U.S. occupation. In January 2004, after the first disbursements of the $18.4 billion reconstruction package, the United States planned only $3.2 billion to build up Iraq's army and police. But as the insurgency intensified, money was shifted from other sectors, including more than $1 billion earmarked for electricity, to build a police force and army capable of combating foreign and domestic guerrillas.

In addition to training and equipping police and soldiers, money has been spent for special operations and quick-response forces, commandos and other special police, as well as public-order brigades, hostage-rescue forces, infrastructure guards and other specialized units.

In the process, the United States will spend $437 million on border fortresses and guards, about $100 million more than the amount dedicated to roads, bridges and public buildings, including schools. Education programs have been allocated $99 million; the United States is spending $107 million to build a secure communications network for security forces.

Hundreds of millions of dollars were shifted to fund elections and to take Iraq through four changes of government. Funds were also reallocated to provide a $767 million increase in spending on Iraq's justice system. The money has gone toward building or renovating 10 medium- and maximum-security prisons -- early plans called for four prisons -- and for detention centers nationwide.

Tens of millions of dollars more are going to pay for courts, prosecutors and investigations. Millions are going to create safe houses for judges and for witness protection programs.

The criminal justice spending has been intertwined with the drive to try Hussein. The costs have been high, including $128 million to exhume and examine at least five mass grave sites.

A Gap in Perspective

The shifts in allocations have led Stuart Bowen, the inspector general in charge of tracking the $18.4 billion, to talk of a "reconstruction gap," or the difference between what Iraqis and Americans expected from the U.S. reconstruction effort at first and what they are seeing now.

The inspector general's office is conducting an audit to quantify the shortfall between expectations and performance, spokesman Jim Mitchell said.

McCoy, the Army Corps of Engineers commander for reconstruction, cites a poll conducted earlier last year that found less than 30 percent of Iraqis knew that any reconstruction efforts were underway. The percentage has since risen to more than 40 percent, McCoy said.

"It is easy for the Americans to say, 'We are doing reconstruction in Iraq,' and we hear that. But to make us believe it, they should show us where this reconstruction is," said Mustafa Sidqi Murthada, owner of a men's clothing store in Baghdad. "Maybe they are doing this reconstruction for them in the Green Zone. But this is not for the Iraqis."

"Believe me, they are not doing this," he said, "unless they consider rebuilding of their military bases reconstruction."

U.S. officials say comparatively minor sabotage to distribution systems is keeping Iraqis from seeing the gains from scores of projects to increase electricity generation and oil production. To showcase a rebuilt school or government building, meanwhile, is to invite insurgents to bomb it.

If 2006 brings political stability and an easing of the insurgency, Americans say, the distribution systems can be fairly easily repaired.

"The good news is this investment is not in any way lost; they're there," said Dan Speckhard, the director of the U.S. reconstruction management office in Iraq. "They will pay off, they will be felt, if not this month, then six months down the road."

While the Bush administration is not seeking any new reconstruction funds for Iraq, commanders here have military discretionary funds they can use for small reconstruction projects. The U.S. Agency for International Development is expected to undertake some building projects, as it does in 80 other countries, with money from the foreign appropriations bill.

(Special correspondent Naseer Nouri contributed to this report.)


4. Economy in Iraq Goes in All Directions
Showcase projects and lively entrepreneurs run counter to a bloated public sector and antiquated farming. Violence casts a shadow.
By Borzou Daragahi, Paul Richter and Doug Smith, LA Times Staff Writers

BAGHDAD — The crowded sidewalks along Sanaa Street offer one picture of Iraq's economy, a bustling entrepreneurial mecca that's a cross between Silicon Valley and the HBO western "Deadwood," where the young and ambitious can make their fortunes if they're not shot dead first.

The staid hallways of the Interior Ministry's residency office show another glimpse. Here, idle men and women shuffle papers and look ambivalent as desperate foreign visitors trudge from office to office in search of the elusive stamp that will let them stay in Iraq.

Umm al Shabab, a sleepy farming village along the Euphrates River, shows yet another side of Iraq's patchwork economy: Sharecroppers use ancient tools to plow the last bits of wheat and barley from the tired soil.

Taken as a whole, Iraq's economic landscape remains wasteful and primitive, with a touch of the postmodern, a touch of the feudal and a heavy dose of tedious state bureaucracy that sucks up much of the country's resources and energy.

Analysts estimate that Iraq's gross domestic product grew from $20.5 billion in 2002 to $29.3 billion last year, and President Bush has touted the visible signs of economic vitality, such as consumer sales and private business start-ups. But analysts believe these stirrings have had a limited effect, thanks to a lack of basic infrastructure and decades of neglect.

Although American officials in Baghdad recently said Iraq's economy grew between 3% and 4% in 2005, one commercial service, the Economist Intelligence Unit, said Iraq's GDP fell 3% in 2005, though it predicted that it would rise in 2006.

"To be fundamentally optimistic would be to go too far," Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said of the Iraqi economy. "The economy is only changing very gradually. In 2005, Iraq was treading water, with a slight forward motion. 2006 will be largely the same; the insurgency will impede the recovery."

U.S. officials at a recent briefing in Baghdad said Iraq's December election of a four-year government would bring the stability necessary to improve economic conditions. More than $18 billion in U.S. funds have been allocated for relief and reconstruction.

On a recent helicopter tour of Baghdad, American officials pointed to a water treatment plant, the Baghdad International Airport terminal, the Ministry of Environment building, two electrical power plants as well as a police academy to show that U.S. reconstruction money was being put to good use.

Such showcase projects may please U.S. taxpayers, but they rarely mollify Iraqis. Americans and Iraqis use different measures in assessing Iraq's progress, with Americans praising big steps forward since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and Iraqis unable to forget the relatively good times of the late 1980s, before the Persian Gulf War and a dozen years of sanctions that destroyed Iraq's middle class and infrastructure.

Besides, many here and abroad say, such investments are sometimes wasted on Iraq's bloated public sector, which remains unreformed and stifles Iraq's commercial potential.

Beefed up under Saddam Hussein to mask joblessness, the public sector employs as much as half the country's working population. Since the invasion, government salaries have risen dramatically, further entrenching a culture in which Iraqis expect handsome paychecks for showing up for jobs that are essentially unnecessary.

For instance, all foreign visitors to Iraq, including businesspeople, must spend hours after arriving and before leaving Iraq checking in with the Interior Ministry's residency office, a Kafkaesque warren of hallways filled with idle functionaries doing little more than taking bribes for moving papers from office to office.

To Iraqis, the system is even more merciless, ignoring merit and rewarding connections. Hind Abdulmunim, a 26-year-old art school graduate, applied for a job as a teacher. Her application went nowhere until her mother, who knew somebody who knew somebody, intervened.

"I applied as everyone else does at the Ministry of Education, but as everybody knows, you need connections to get your work done in any office in Iraq," she said.

Endemic corruption and the constant threat of insurgent attacks have kept foreign investors away. A recent U.S. Senate report said that "corruption has not abated, and we should not expect that it will for some time."

On the bright side, PepsiCo has renewed a partnership with a Baghdad soft drink company it originally set up in 1990 but had to rescind because of sanctions.

But of the foreign banks licensed to open shop in Iraq, none has done so because of security worries.

The handful of Western businesspeople who do come to Iraq spend thousands of dollars to hire armored cars and helicopters to make the six-mile trip from the airport to Baghdad's business hub.

Nearly 300 non-Iraqi civilian contractors have been killed since May 2003, according to a Brookings study, and a recent U.S. government report concluded that 25 cents of every dollar spent on Iraq reconstruction goes toward security.

Many of Iraq's wealthiest citizens, terrified by the nation's security woes, have left the country.

"The money has been parked outside," said a Western official involved in economic matters in Iraq, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We talk to Iraqi businessmen abroad. They want the same things anybody wants. They want security. They even want better schools for their kids before they come back."

Agriculture, too, continues to struggle, caught between the inefficiency of the old regime's central planning and the as-yet-unrealized promise of a free-market economy.

As seen from a U.S. Army helicopter, the farmland bordering the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is reminiscent of California's San Joaquin Valley, tilled fields stretching for miles in every direction. But unlike American agribusiness, this is a land of mud hut villages and families in traditional tribal dress often working the fields with primitive tools.

Like all Iraqis, farmers suffer from a lack of electricity and a corrupt system of price supports and subsidies. Bribery is widespread, allowing rich landowners to sell poor quality crops at high prices, said Ali Abu Areef, 52, who works a 5-acre farm on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River near Najaf. Areef said he can earn only about $500 a year and is $8,000 in debt.

Farming, considered to be a noble calling in the United States and Europe, falls at the bottom end of Iraq's social order.

"We were treated unfairly during Saddam's time; we're treated unfairly now," said Areef, whose farm supports four wives and 28 other family members.

"Government support goes to the rich landowners," Areef said. "The others take what's left."

Much of the work is still done by sharecroppers such as Kashash Yassin Mashhadi, 85, who lives with his two wives and eight children in Umm al Shabab, 10 miles east of Najaf. The house and land are owned by two men, one the brother of a Najaf city council member.

Mashhadi takes a percentage of the proceeds from the dates, rice and wheat he grows. He irrigates with water pumped directly from the Euphrates using the same gasoline motor that generates electricity for his brick house.

"We also drink from that water because there have never been any water projects in the village," he said.

Signs of vitality do appear in Iraq's private sector. Ambitious Iraqis cluster around places like Sanaa Street, Iraq's high-tech capital, where boys push wooden wheelbarrows full of the latest laptop computers and printers.

The Nabaa Group, one of the largest firms on the strip, recently unveiled a gleaming three-story shop with a sleek glass facade.

"We're hoping that, for once, the private sector will have the priority in Iraq," said Ali Mizban Sulayman, a director of the firm, which in 2004 had $15 million in revenue. "In contrast to government jobs, the people who work here love their jobs."

But Iraq's lack of business tools means that places like Sanaa Street emerge as little more than tiny, colorful wonders. A report issued last month by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee quotes U.S. diplomats and Iraqi business leaders as saying that lack of security and a lack of basic mercantile infrastructure "are preventing the economy from taking off."

This infrastructure includes not only power and communications but reliable transportation, the basic laws regulating business, and a free-market system that would privatize the government-owned sector and end subsidies.

The business sector is hobbled, the congressional report said, by the fact that 90% of assets are held in two state-owned banks that are unable to transfer funds electronically.

And Sanaa Street is not immune to the country's incessant violence and lawlessness. Six months ago, Roget Nasser, an employee in one of the computer firms here, was shot dead in broad daylight as he resisted a kidnapping attempt.

"We heard yelling and gunfire," said Sarmad Mahmoud Ismail, Nasser's co-worker. "We saw him lying on the street in a pool of blood 10 meters from the shop."

Still, Sulayman, the Nabaa Group director, says business has skyrocketed since the fall of Hussein and the lifting of many of the previous regime's restrictions. "Before, if I wanted to sell a scanner, I had to get government approval," he said.

Rather than creative policies, experts say much of the country's economic growth so far can be attributed to removing such Hussein-era impediments.

"When you open up the borders, pump in billions from outside and lift international sanctions, it's going to generate growth," said Frederick Barton, a former official of USAID and the United Nations who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Now that the post-invasion boom has subsided, the challenge is to figure out a way to overcome Iraq's corruption and spend the country's 2 million or so barrels a day worth of oil revenue in a way that bolsters the country's stability instead of lavishing it on public-sector salaries.

Oil revenue accounts for 98% of Iraq's export earnings and pays for at least 90% of the government's $21-billion budget, according to official and independent estimates. But insurgent attacks on oil infrastructure have cost the country billions of dollars in lost revenue during a time when world petroleum prices have soared, Iraqi officials say.

"The big question for the year will be: How is oil going to be shared," Brookings' O'Hanlon said, "and what will it do for political cohesion of the state?"

(Daragahi and Smith reported from Baghdad and Richter from Washington. Times staff writers Maggie Farley in New York and Saif Rasheed in Baghdad and special correspondent Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf contributed to this report.)


5. From Prof Juan Cole's blog (whom the Bush administration should be reading): Guerrillas Target Police all over Iraq with 13 Car Bombs on New Year's Day: Over 2 Dozen Casualties

Al-Sharq al-Awsat [Ar.]: Baghdad rang in the New Year with a sting of 8 coordinated car bombs that left at least 24 persons injured. A further five car bombs were detonated in Kirkuk, Tikrit and Miqdadiyah. Other violence killed at least 13. Wire services did not report any fatalities in the 8 Baghdad car bombings,, but al-Sharq al-Awsat says that it was told by Iraqi security sources that at least 10 persons were killed. The bombs targeted police patrols in the districts of Baghdad al-Jadidah, al-Mashtal, Adhamiyah, Karradah, and Baladiyyat. A police source told SA that the first bomb went off in Karrada, and that most of the victims were Iraqi police, with great damaged done to cars and buildings in the vicinity. Subsequent explosins followed in the other districts. At least two car bombs were discovered and disarmed before they could go off. One hit a popular restaurant and wounded at least six.

AFP reports other violence:
"The day’s worst bloodshed came in eastern Baghdad, where police said gunmen killed five people at a butcher shop and a bomb killed two police officers at a gas station. Two more Iraqis were slain and five wounded by gunfire at a Sunni mosque in southern Baghdad, while a Shiite sheik was fatally shot at a market in the same part of the city. In the northern city of Mosul, about a dozen gunmen attacked a police checkpoint, killing a bystander and wounding three policemen, police said."

The extensive attacks on the Iraqi police at the beginning of the year are intended by the guerrillas to make the police timid. If you think about it, the Iraqi police are probably the last best hope for any effective counter-insurgency. They know Arabic, they know the families and the neighborhoods, they probably have an idea when something fishy is going on. The guerrillas know that they absolutely must neutralize the police and make them afraid to cooperate with the Americans or to come aggressively after the guerrillas themselves.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that an ongoing electricity crisis has left the Baghdad capital in complete darkness for many hours a day. A protest against a tripling of gasoline prices turned violent in Kirkuk, with police killing 4 protesters (they accused the demonstrators of having turned to arson).

A major refinery went back online, but a pipeline was bombed early Sunday.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, leader of the Shiite Dawa Party, met Sunday with Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani in an attempt to hammer out a coalition government, according to Aljazeera [Ar.]. Jaafari said later at a joint news conference that the two had agreed in principle on the desirability of a government of national unity. Jaafari said that he wished to exclude no one in principle, but the question is what parties would get which ministries, and nothing could be decided until the final election returnes were announced.

Jaafari's statement that no one had been excluded appears to be a demurral from the Muqtada al-Sadr position that Iyad Allawi's list cannot serve in the national unity government. Reidar Vissar argues that the Sadrists are very important within the United Iraqi Alliance this time around (a tip of the hat to Helena Cobban at JustWorldNews-- and thanks for her generous sentiments, which are reciprocated.) I'm not sure, though, that he is right about SCIRI being weaker. The list ran 30 Sadrists, 30 SCIRI candidates, and 30 from both branches of the Dawa Party, among others. Since these big parties would have been top loaded on the lists, and since the coalition probably got around 130 seats, then all three parties should be seated in rough parity. Vissar finds that more Sadrists were returned in the deep south. But my guess is that SCIRI candidates were top loaded in places like Najaf, Karbala and Baghdad.

Barzani also announced that he would meet Monday with a delegation from the Sunni fundamentalist National Accord Front. Adnan Dulaimi and Tariq Hashimi of the NAF arrived in Irbil Sunday. Dulaimi is now saying that he will not boycott parliament if he cannot get the outcome altered (he maintains that the elections were crooked), but would rather work to change the constitution (he opposes loose federalism).

The NYT says that the Lincoln Group, with a big Pentagon propaganda contract in Iraq, paid a few Sunni clerics to give pro-American sermons. This tactic is not a new thing, and the British used to do this sort of thing in their empire (which had a lot of Muslim subjects) all the time. The problem is that Muslims do have pretty good bullshit detectors, and they decry "American Islam." All the Lincoln project did was to make it harder for genuine Sunni reformers to get a hearing; if they don't adopt a hard line, they will be assumed to be on the take.

The Washington Post reports that the $18 billion voted by the US Congress for Iraqi reconstruction is mostly committed or spent, with large amounts diverted to security, prisons and trials. The administration does not intend to ask for any more. I'd say this is a good bellwether of administration intentions. If the US were staying in Iraq in a big way, and still hoping to make a significant place for the multinationals there, it would have to bite the bullet and continue to try to do reconstruction. If the Bush administration is throwing in the towel, then whether Iraqis have enough electricity really isn't its problem any more.

The political and propaganda effectiveness of the guerrilla movement is demonstrated in the article. Apparently, the US has been deprived of any credit for any of its good works in Iraq (70% of Iraqis don't even know about them), and has been deprived of the good will that might have come from getting the services functioning and the oil flowing freely.

There is an error in the WaPo article, which quotes Iraqi oil production as 2 billion barrels a day a day. That should be 2 million, and will no doubt be corrected on the web. But that still isn't right. They weren't able to do more than an average of 1.8 million in 2005, last I knew, and in December it was less. 200,000 barrels of petroleum a day is significant enough so that it can't just be rounded up.

Simon Jenkins also thinks it is all over but the shouting. He is a veteran reporter and has his eyes open, and his pessimism is well earned. The only demurral I would enter is that the US military is not actually bottled up on those 100 bases in the way that he implies-- they are out in Baghdad, Ramadi and Mosul, etc. and come back into places they have left, like Najaf, when called by local security forces. But he is right anyway that they don't continuously control much actual territory in the Sunni Arab provinces (and certainly not after sundown).

US air raids in Iraq have gone from 25 a month last summer to 125 in November and perhaps 150 in December. Air strikes are fairly useless as tools of counter-insurgency, and the innocent civilians they kill probably create new guerrillas from among their relatives, so this change seems an ominous sort of flailing about as the US prepares to withdraw the troops it put in before the elections.

More items from al-Sharq al-Awsat: The people of Basra are upset about the conditions for prisoners in British jails. Complaints of relatives have impelled the provincial governing council to begin setting up a meeting of tribal sheikhs and Muslim clergy to discuss what can be done.

The Shiite Pious Endowments Board condemned the murder of a family of 9 Shiites, including women and children, near Latifiyah south of Baghdad late last week, as a form of ethnic cleansing. The family appears to have been warned to leave their neighborhood by Sunni Arab guerrillas. The incident has produced rage throughout the Shiite south.