It was a brave boast by Iraq’s new oil minister, Thamir Ghadbhan, that he planned to increase oil exports to two million barrels a day. Almost as he spoke, Iraqi oil production came to a virtual halt with yet another destructive attack on the export line to Turkey in northern Iraq. The extent of the challenge was made considerably worse when the chief of pipeline security in northern Iraq, Ghazi Talabani, was slain in a hail of bullets.
As the hour approaches when Iraqis take the vital first step in reclaiming their sovereignty and establishing a representative government, attacks are intensifying. No longer are the prime targets the Coalition forces but the Iraqis themselves. Whatever their claims to the contrary, those who are behind this daily catalog of murder and destruction cannot have the interests of the Iraqi people at heart.
That the Americans vastly underestimated the task of securing the peace after their overthrow of Saddam is now admitted, even by them. After 18 months of occupation, militants still seem able to strike with impunity when and where they want. The greatest death toll among them has been self-inflicted by those who have driven vehicles loaded with explosives into crowds.
Gone it seems are the days when the Coalition could boast of the capture of the remaining fugitive figures of the Baathist regime. Gone too is talk of sealing Iraq’s borders to stop more foreign fighters from infiltrating to join their fellow terrorists. As Washington prepares to cede control of the divided country, the security situation seems an ever-higher mountain for the new Iraqi government to scale.
Iraq’s own security forces remain only partially trained and equipped. Their ranks will hopefully have been swelled by former members of the private armies that were disbanded at the beginning of this month. But there remain too many armed groups on the scene, including the gunmen of Moqtada Sadr’s Mehdi Army. That Sadr has agreed that this militia should be withdrawn from Najaf and nearby Kufa is only a small victory. These people remain a threat to stability.
There is also the possibility that these attacks are taking a sinister new turn. The murdered Ghazi Talabani was a cousin of the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani. His murder may have been designed to provoke Kurdish fury. If they can cause angry confrontation between different Iraqi communities that have come together to form the interim government, they will have added a new and deadly ingredient to the pot of evil.
Iraqis must stick to their dreams of unity and peace. For them to break ranks now will give those who want anarchy a significant victory and cause them to redouble their campaign of destruction. All members of the community must come together to root them out, not as one interest group against another but as Iraqi resolved to defend their new freedoms against those who wish to plunge them back into a nightmare of dictatorship and repression.
