A manner of choosing

With much fanfare about "the first democratically elected government in the history of Iraq," the administration of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari was sworn in on Tuesday. And everything about the event was unintentionally revealing.

- It took three months of wrangling, arguing, negotiating, pleading, and power plays to come up with an administration and even then several positions, including the defense and oil ministries and two deputy prime minister slots, were still vacant, occupied by "temporary" ministers.

- When it came time for the National Assembly to elect the government, only 185 of the 275 deputies were present. And five of them voted "no."

- The government of the "new, unified Iraq" was a desperate attempt at a careful and delicate balance among competing ethnic groups, each with their own interests and jealous of their position. And it failed.

Ghazi al-Yawer, Iraq's deputy president, himself a Sunni, said he was disappointed by the new Cabinet. "The number of ministries given to the Sunnis is not enough," he told reporters.

Others, including Jaafari, a Shiite, agree - and the importance of the point only emphasizes that

disputes between and within the parties representing the Shia, Kurdish and Sunni communities are unresolved. Mr Jaafari claimed that permanent ministers would be chosen in three or four days.

- Despite that assurance, at the swearing in it was seen that nothing had changed.

[F]ive ministries and two deputy prime minister posts were left unfilled, highlighting the severe difficulties faced in forming a united leadership. ...

[N]o permanent ministers were named to the oil, defense, electricity, industry or human rights portfolios.

Jaafari said the matter would be resolved in two or three days - five days after he said it would be resolved in three or four. Part of the conflict is that the Sunnis want the defense ministry but

Jaafari has so far rejected the candidates Sunni leaders have put forward, saying they all have ties that are too close to Saddam Hussein's old Sunni-dominated Baath party.

- Fittingly and revealingly, the ceremony took place inside the heavily-fortified Green Zone, the risk of such a ceremony being too great outside of it.

- Even at that, "many lawmakers skipped the ceremony," including Vice-President Yawer, evidence of the continuing friction.

"If al-Yawer attended the ceremony, it would have been the end of him politically," said Mishaan al-Jubouri, head of a disgruntled Sunni coalition that had hoped for more seats in Cabinet. "I entered the hall and went out again on purpose, just to show them that I am not agreeing with what is happening."

Parliament was described as "half empty."

Even at the moment of what was supposed to be the triumph of American intentions to "liberate" Iraq, there is as much evidence of continued ethnic strife as of progress toward a functioning democratic government. And it comes at a time when rising violence is sparking regional concern. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has

warned the violence was "not solely the concern of the Iraqis but ours as well." ...

Erdogan opened a meeting Saturday of foreign ministers from Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, expressing concern about Iraq's new government and fear that Iraq's violence could spread to the region.

"Iraq cannot be a place where one entity prevails over the others, nor can it be a place divided up as desired," Erdogan said in Istanbul. "Such attempts will meet the reaction of the countries of the region and the international community."

A particularly ominous reading of that statement is as a threat against too much autonomy for Kurds, a development Turkey fears could provoke resistance among its own repressed Kurdish population.

And it also comes at a time when

[s]enior [US] military strategists, speaking privately, also said they worry that insurgents are making inroads toward sparking a full-blown sectarian war and offered cautions about recent predictions that the United States could significantly reduce its forces from the current 142,000 within a year.

"One of the insurgency's strengths is its capacity to regenerate," said retired Army General John Keane, who returned recently from a fact-finding mission in Iraq. "We have killed thousands of them and detained even more, but they are still able to regenerate. They are still coming at us."

Remember when the insurgents were just "Baathist dead-enders?" Now it appears we are at a dead end - and the only end we can offer is death. We are not preventing sectarian violence, we are - at best - forestalling it after having by our invasion unleashed it. The blood is on our hands. "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up." (Hosea 8:7)

STDD/GTHO.