Iraq three years on: Don't look away

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And don't believe all that our leaders tell us about democracy. Three years after the toppling of Saddam, Iraq is a bloody mess. Yesterday 70 people were killed in an attack on a Baghdad mosque. Patrick Cockburn reports on three years of broken promises in a blighted land

A cruel and bloody civil war has started in Iraq, a country which Bush and Blair promised to free from fear and establish democracy. I have been visiting Iraq since 1978, but for the first time, I am becoming convinced that the country will not survive. Three suicide bombers disguised themselves as women yesterday and, with explosives hidden by long black cloaks, killed 79 people and wounded more than 160 when they blew themselves up in a Shia mosque in the capital. One bomber came through the women's security checkpoint at the Buratha mosque in northern Baghdad and detonated explosives just as worshippers were leaving at the end of Friday prayers. Two other bombers took advantage of the confusion to blow themselves up a few seconds later, killing the people who were trying to escape.

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I have been covering the war in Iraq ever since it began three years ago and I have never seen the situation so grim. I was in the northern city of Mosul last week protected by 3,000 Kurdish soldiers, but even so it was considered too dangerous to send out heavily armed patrols in day time. It is safer at night because of a curfew. In March alone the US military said 1,313 people were killed in sectarian attacks. Many bodies, buried or thrown in rivers, are never found. The real figure is probably twice as high. All over the country people are on the move as Sunnis and Shias flee each other's areas.

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George Bush and Tony Blair have for the past three years continually understated the gravity of what is taking place. It has been frustrating as a journalist to hear them claim that much of Iraq is peaceful when we could not prove them wrong without being killed or kidnapped. The capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the handover of sovereignty in 2004, the elections and new constitution in 2005 have all been oversold to the outside world as signs of progress. The formation of a national unity government is now being presented as an antidote to violence. "Terrorists love a vacuum," said the Defence Secretary, John Reid, citing his experience in Northern Ireland. But one Iraqi official remarked caustically that the three main communities - Sunni, Shia and Kurds - do not "hate each other because they do not have a government, but rather they do not have a government because they already hate each other".

The coalition of religious parties, the United Iraqi Alliance, won almost half of the seats in the 275-member parliament in the election on 15 December. They fear the US and Britain are trying to break up the Shia coalition and deny them the fruits of their victory. This is why they have resisted demands from Washington and London for Ibrahim al-Jaafari to stand down as Prime Minister. Even if a national unity government is formed it will control little outside the Green Zone. The army and police take their orders from leaders of their own communities. Three years ago, when the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled, Iraqis were promised their lives would get better. Instead, Iraq has become the most dangerous place in the world.


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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article356466.ece