Security worsens in Baghdad despite U.S. claims of improvement

 

By Fatih Abdulsalam

 

Azzaman, January 10, 2008

 

The security situation in Baghdad is deteriorating very quickly. Of course this bit of information no longer has any meaning for Iraqis as it has become an integral part of Iraq’s media discourse in the years since U.S. invasion of 2003.

 

But it assumes a special significance right now since it comes in the aftermath of the empty official statements made recently with regard to security conditions in Iraq and particularly Baghdad.

 

The synchronized bombing of churches in three major cities in the country – Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk – and the ostensible surge in bomb attacks targeting U.S.-supported Arab Sunni militias, government targets and U.S. Marines are indications of worsening security conditions despite Iraqi government’s efforts to present a different picture.

 

The upsurge in insecurity is a natural outcome of the drastic failure to lead in a country whose ruling political factions are the ones to blame. They are the ones who shoulder the responsibility for the deterioration in security.

 

Following a short ‘lull’, the current deterioration is extremely dangerous as it comes in on the heels of false statements and lies of gains in security. There were obvious signals that conditions would aggravate but the authorities ignored all of them.

 

They were childishly happy with their patchwork, thinking it could resist the collapse of their rickety security infrastructure. The structure of security in Iraq is falling because its foundations were built on sand or probably it had no foundations at all.

 

This is the real picture of conditions in the country outside the rotten official chambers which contain nothing but lies and slogans.