Bleak View

Dexter Filkins has a bleak assessment of the state of Iraq, three years into the occupation, here in Saturday's New York Times. While the constitutional convention debates large issues and small:

Out on the streets, meanwhile, a new bit of Arabic slang has slipped into the chatter of ordinary Iraqis: "allas," a word that denotes an Iraqi who leads a group of killers to their victim, usually for a price. The allas typically points out the Shiites living in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods for the gunmen who are hunting them. He usually wears a mask.

Iraq seems to have already shattered into a maze of feudal microstates.

But in this third summer of war, the American project in Iraq has never seemed so wilted and sapped of life. It's not just the guerrillas, who are churning away at their relentless pace, attacking American forces about 65 times a day. It is most everything else, too.

Baghdad seems a city transported from the Middle Ages: a scattering of high-walled fortresses, each protected by a group of armed men. The area between the forts is a lawless no man's land, menaced by bandits and brigands. With the daytime temperatures here hovering at around 115 degrees, the electricity in much of the city flows for only about four hours a day.

The latest version of the official plan for success is that the Iraqi police and army will eventually be able to keep order. Maybe so, but what kind of order?

Filkin's story has vignettes personal and public that shed some grim light. A public one:

One night last month, according to the locals, the Iraqi police and army surrounded the Sunni neighborhood of Sababkar in north Baghdad, and pulled 11 young men from their beds.

Their bodies were found the next day with bullet holes in their temples. The cheeks of some of the men had been punctured by electric drills. One man had been burned by acid. The police denied that they had been involved.

The whole article is a gripping read, and there is little here to suggest hope - but not quite nothing. The story of a Sunni dentist who continues to seek a constitution of national reconciliation despite the relatives killed by Shia and Americans, 70 raids on his home by American soldiers, and assasination threats by all sides is an example of the ability of the human spirit to flower in the most unlikely places.

I'm afraid though, that his sacrifice, and that of the thousands of dead and wounded Americans, is very likely to be in vain. George Bush, an man who never apologizes and never explains, has a lot to answer for.