As dust settles the spectre of violence returns

The security situation in Iraq is indisputably good. Violence is down. The parliament has passed both a law to hold a census for the first time in more than three decades and a provincial election law that would allow the ballot to be held in all but one province by the end of January. It is clear progress.

But if you look harder – even at the passage of the election law – it is possible to make out paths leading to more violence and failure to rebuild a broken country.

From the US military's standpoint, elections are a good thing, a chance to sort out the division of power peacefully. Elections would allow a number of groups now excluded from the political mix to have a place at the table. Chief among them are representatives of tribal Sunnis and impoverished Shi'ites.

But that in turn means that groups currently in power are likely to lose ground. And in Iraq, a country that has settled its differences more often with guns than words, people are used to fighting to keep their power, not using the art of persuasion.

Saddam Hussein famously executed potential rivals after a 1979 meeting of the Ba'ath Party. Earlier in Iraq's 20th century history, at least four successive coups deposed one leader after another; the new leader would use executions and arrests to suppress any opposition.

The favoured American democratic model – majority rule balanced by minority rights and the rule of law – keeps running foul of reality in Iraq. The underlying problem is that there has yet to be an overall political deal, acceptable to all sides, that distributes power among Iraq's competing interests.

"From now on, violence will follow the politics," said a senior western official following the pre-election manoeuvring.

Across Iraq, potentially lethal rivalries threaten to play out as elections approach, but also after they are over, when there are new winners and losers. Elections heighten the likelihood of increased numbers of assassination attempts, arrests of those viewed as "enemies" of the central or local government and intimidation of political rivals who threaten the status quo.

While overall violence against civilians is down, members of some political factions, from those affiliated with the Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to the Sunni-dominated Awakening Councils, can tick off lists of people they believe were killed for political reasons.

US military leaders disagree among themselves about whether the assassinations are increasing or whether some of the killings are merely criminal acts. But they are "watching the numbers closely," said a military official who attends briefings on attacks.

In the north, the Kurds are battling for hegemony in areas that lie along the border of their semi-autonomous region. They are competing with Turkmens and Sunni Arabs who claim primacy of ownership to some of the same territory, particularly the city of Kirkuk and its surrounding province. Politicians have tried repeatedly since 2003 to reach a deal to resolve the disputes. But each effort has foundered on Kurdish ambitions to expand the Kurdistan region.

For much of the past five years the situation was tense but did not explode into ethnic violence. That changed in the past six months as attacks began on the party headquarters of different groups.

Then in August, Kurdish soldiers in Kirkuk opened fire on Turkmens after a suicide bomb. The ensuing riot killed dozens. The violence spread. In early September in Khanaqin, a predominantly Kurdish city that lies in neighbouring Diyala Province, Iraqi army tanks faced off against Kurdish pesh merga, the Kurdistan security forces.

In the Shi'ite south of the country there is a struggle for power between the main parties: the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the Dawa Party, led by Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki. The two, previously partners in the government, are now fighting over turf, jobs and a vision for the country.

Maliki's party holds the levers of power in Baghdad and is eager to expand its power and influence over jobs at the provincial level by gaining control of matters such as the hiring and firing of local police chiefs.

The Supreme Council, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, has long wanted a more federalist model, with much of the power in the hands of local governors and councils. The Supreme Council controls at least four southern provinces and is also powerful in Baghdad.

"The central government is being extended at the expense of the local government in the provinces, and we think that's illegal," said Hadi al-Ameri, a member of parliament from the Supreme Council and head of the Badr Organisation, its former armed wing. "We have a federal government with local government in the regions, and there is restricted authority for the central government; for instance they want to appoint and remove police commanders," he said.

For Badr, which has made a point of installing police commanders in several key provinces, such government involvement would mean the Supreme Council would lose sole control over police and related security force jobs.

This could turn out to be just bickering between two political parties, but it could also balloon into something lethal.

Recently, Maliki's party, which has the support of the army but no militia of its own, has again been reaching out to Shi'ites aligned with Sadr, the anti-American cleric, some of whose followers are armed.

The Supreme Council is similarly able to muster gunmen; some members are in the police or the army. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that assassinations have already become quite common in several southern provinces, most notably Hilla, where many Sadrists have been detained or killed outright.

In Anbar province, which encompasses a large area of western Iraq, an intra-Sunni dynamic is playing out in which the Iraqi Islamic Party, which now holds power in the provincial council, is worried that the newly created Awakening Councils, backed by the US military, will oust them.

The Awakening Councils, which are credited with helping to oust al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia from large areas of western and north-central Iraq, as well as Baghdad, believe it is time for them to wield power in politics as they do on the ground.

Since a number of the councils' members are former insurgents or were once supportive of the insurgency, however, the government is suspicious of them.

In recent months the Iraqi army has begun to arrest some of the leaders, especially in Anbar. But Awakening members are armed and unlikely to tolerate efforts to muzzle them. That is truer now than ever, with the US military clearly on course to withdraw first from Iraqi streets and then from the country.

As the dust settles the future will be up for grabs.

US kills 'senior Baghdad bomber'

The US military said yesterday it had killed a senior leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq suspected of masterminding one of the deadliest bombings in Baghdad as well as recent attacks and the 2006 videotaped execution of a kidnapped Russian official.

American troops also killed his wife after a fire fight as they tried to capture him on Friday in the northern neighbourhood of Azamiyah in Baghdad.

Mahir Ahmad Mahmud al-Zubaydi, also known as Abu Assad or Abu Rami, allegedly directed the insurgent cell believed to have been responsible for car bomb and suicide attacks on Thursday. Hospital officials have said around two dozen people were killed in Thursday's attacks targeting two Shi'ite mosques in Baghdad.

Zubaydi was thought to have been behind several car bombings and mortar attacks in Baghdad in 2006 and 2007, including a series of blasts that killed more than 200 people on November 23, 2006.

US military spokesman Rear Admiral Patrick Driscoll said: "His removal from the network will send shockwaves through Baghdad's terrorist bombing networks."

• Two US Black Hawk helicopters crashed while attempting to land at an American combat outpost in northern Baghdad yesterday.

One Iraqi soldier was killed and two American and two Iraqi soldiers were injured, said military spokesman Lieutenant Patrick Evans. It is believed the aircraft collided as the result of a mechanical failure.