Baghdad, Iraq – U.S. and Iraqi officials have voiced cautious optimism that the 2-month-old security operation in Iraq might be working, but a suicide bombing at parliament and another that sent a Baghdad bridge crashing into the Tigris River delivered a powerful message that the American-led crackdown may be too late.
The attack inside Iraq’s parliament, which uses a Saddam Hussein-era convention center in the U.S.-guarded Green Zone, occurred despite hardened security in the compound since the beginning of the security drive against Baghdad’s violence.
Compounding the problems facing the U.S. and Iraqi security operation is al-Qaeda in Iraq, the most violent organization in the larger Sunni insurgency and the most difficult to defend against because it has an apparently full stable of suicide bombers. Such attacks, like the ones Thursday, can be nearly impossible to stop.
The symbolism of the parliament bombing in the Green Zone, especially because it is seen as a safe haven in an otherwise chaotic and extraordinarily dangerous city, was a public relations blow to the Bush administration’s bid to expand U.S. troop strength and keep the American force in Iraq.
President Bush and U.S. commanders in Iraq all say the American effort to restore calm to the capital and surrounding regions needs at least until the end of summer, but Thursday’s attacks and other evidence suggest the job could take much longer.
The parliament attack compounds other problems bedeviling Iraq.
The Bush administration has demanded that Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki meet a series of difficult legislative benchmarks to get the country on track, but none of them, especially passage of a law to share oil income throughout the country among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, is close to passing.
An attack like the one in parliament likely will throw the defiant lawmakers into further turmoil and make quick action on any disputed measure unlikely.
And beyond that, the parliament attack overshadowed the incredible bombing of one of Baghdad’s nine Tigris River bridges, an incident difficult to imagine even on a particularly violent day in the capital city.
The two attacks draw stark attention to the country’s deepening Sunni-Shiite divide. The bridge fell physically, but it also symbolizes how Baghdad’s once vibrant and mixed neighborhoods are becoming solely Sunni or Shiite, with the Tigris as the boundary between them.
