Turbulent and perhaps deadly times ahead

EVEN by the turbulent standards of Middle Eastern political life, members of Iraq’s new sovereign government will have an unenviable in-tray when they arrive at their desks.

First, and by no means least, will be the task of persuading people that they should be doing the job at all. A large proportion of Iraqis, if not the majority, still feel that the new administration is little other than a reshuffle of the old coalition-appointed governing council, whose members were widely denounced as US stooges. The fact that the new incumbents are still unelected appointees gives them scarcely more credibility, and any unpopular decision they make will have its legitimacy questioned. To make matters even harder, they will for the first time have to rely on consent rather than force.

The over-riding issue remains the same as it has been since Saddam fell last year - security. While pressure is growing daily for the 150,000 coalition troops to pull out as soon as possible, the outbreak of insurgency in the last two months has demonstrated that the fledgling new police force of 70,000 is still woefully unprepared to maintain law and order alone. The new challenge will be demonstrating some degree of Iraqi control of coalition troops, in particular over major operations. The recent US siege of Fallujah, for example, where up to 600 Iraqis are believed to have died, robbed the old governing council of any credibility it had after it failed to intervene. Should such a showdown loom again - perhaps this time with American troops held hostage in a city - the new government’s reputation would probably rest on dissuading US forces from a repeat of the same tactics.

Proper security is a key part of goal number two - revitalising the economy. Much of the gains made by the lifting of sanctions are currently being wiped out by the difficulty of doing business in such a dangerous environment. All but the most intrepid foreign investors have been scared off at present, and over the last two months Iraqi companies have once again found it impossible to import goods on credit. Should things gradually return to normal, trade and foreign ministers will have the Herculean task of persuading the world that Iraq is a safe place to work again. A return to stability, however, will bring its own unique challenges: nobody has paid taxes, water or electricity bills in more than a year. Getting them to do so again for a government with only a limited track record will not be easy.

Otherwise, the main role of the new politicians will be in supervising the $18 billion US-funded reconstruction efforts, and practising how to run the country’s different government ministries. Western advisers will still be in place, but ministers will now be able to hire and fire them. For the first time, they will also be able to spend public money without seeking a final signature from Coalition administrators.

Other key matters, such as Iraq’s permanent constitution, the status of religion and minorities, the future of the oil industry and relations with neighbouring countries, will not be on the agenda. As a caretaker government, the idea of the new authority is essentially to keep things running until January, when polls for the country’s first-ever democratically elected assembly will be held.

Perhaps the most important task of the new government will not be one of political survival, but physical survival. Two members of Iraq’s old governing council died in assassinations. Within hours of the appointments of the new president and prime minister, political pundits on Arab TV were already speculating about who might replace them if they were killed.