Battleground Report

July 9, 2007 — -- A month ago, I left Baghdad for some time at home. Now that I am back, Iraq seems even worse than before I left.

The military cites statistics that the overall number of attacks are down. But then came that enormous truck bomb, killing 150 people in the small and normally peaceful town of Amerli Saturday. The country was shocked, the statistics meaningless in the face of such horror.

It is clear that the U.S. military is having some success in pacifying some parts of Iraq. Anbar Province to the west of Baghdad is much safer than it was six months ago, and the ongoing U.S. assault in Diyala Province to the north is driving extremists out of major population centers there as well.

But while the United States may be making advances on the ground in some areas, it risks losing the battle of perceptions overall.

When a truck bomb explodes in a market place and kills 150 innocent civilians, the message is: Danger can be anywhere, nowhere is safe.

Nor can Iraqis draw much solace from their own government, paralyzed and largely confined to the Green Zone, unable to provide security or basic services for everyday life in the country as a whole.

In Baghdad, the provision of electricity and drinking water has actually gotten worse.

Parliament is almost completely dysfunctional — 74 of the 275 members of parliament now boycott the sessions entirely, meaning that there is rarely a quorum in parliament to vote on any laws.

Iraq desperately needs to pass a new oil law that would guarantee a fair distribution of oil revenues between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. At the moment, Sunnis feel they are being denied their fair share of the national wealth. There is a draft law that has been prepared, but the parliament has not even begun to debate it.

Sunnis are so frustrated about being left out in the cold that they are threatening to file a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.