Iraq'd

Over the last several days there's been quite a bit of troubling news coming out of Iraq, aside from the continued suicide bombings and general chaos. Actually, signs are pointing to a very challenging spring.

Today the second group of Awakening members, this time in Babil, have refused to work with American forces because for some odd reason they react badly to being bombed from the sky.

Citizen brigades in the province of Babil quit work after three members were killed by U.S. forces Friday, a local police spokesman said Saturday.

Another high-profile fatal incident occurred in the same province a little over two weeks ago. Nationwide in that time span, 19 citizen militia members have been killed and 12 wounded by U.S. forces, said the police spokesman, Capt. Muthanna Ahmed.

The action in Babil province follows a strike by citizen brigades members in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, that has gone on for more than a week. The citizen militias allege the local police chief leads a death squad and seek his removal, among other demands.

Also this past week, a leader in another powerful citizens militia warned that U.S. and Shiite-dominated Iraq forces should no longer interfere in its work, suggesting coordinated efforts against insurgents might be coming to an end.

This is beyond serious. The slight gains in security were already slipping away, but if the Sunni forces turn on the Americans, and if the Shiites in the south start turning on each other, and especially if Sadr stops the cease-fire, we're back to 2006 again, and we'll be at pre-surge levels as well. All of the other elements are there. Unemployment is still high, services are meager, Baghdad has sewage so thick so can see it from Google Earth, and the political situation, while buoyed slightly by the passage of three bills earlier in the week, is still fractured. The country's democratic structures are completely broken, as the Iraqis attempt to learn about the rule of law from the likes of George Bush and Michael Mukasey. An example of how this works is here.

In Mosul last March, the Provincial Reconstruction Team took me to a meeting of one of Iraq's new terrorism tribunals. Three judges were trucked up from Baghdad to preside over Baghdad-related terrorism cases -- all in Mosul, so the insurgents wouldn't, you know, kill the judges. Interesting idea, heavily billed as a rule-of-law achievement, but boring as hell to watch.

Then at the end, as people are milling about and chatting on their way out the door, one of the PRT officials tells a judge how important it is to stand up against terrorism and promote equality and fairness before an impartial system of law. The judge nods at the platitude. "Tell me," he says through a translator, "is it true that in America, Bush can fire prosecutors he doesn't like?"

Paying the Sunnis not to kill us was all that was working. And our persistent bombing campaigns, necessitated by the fact that we don't want casualty rates to go up again for naked political reasons, are squandering that.

The good news, of course, is that they baked a cake in honor of the surge in Baghdad.

Happy eatin'!