Democracy can wait

In ten months’ time, according to America’s timetable for the handover of power, Iraqis will be going to the polls. Men and women with large rosettes and wide grins will be walking the streets, kissing babies and expounding on their plans for schools and hospitals. Thereafter, the members for Baghdad South and Basra Central will engage in raucous but civilised debate over the sale of council allotments and the merits of congestion charging.

At present, sadly, these visions of democratic bliss are a remote prospect. What seems more likely is a continuation of the present style of political debate, as typified by last week’s events in Fallujah when four American civilian contractors were brutally ambushed and murdered by Sunni insurgents before their bodies were burned, hung from a bridge and beaten with shoes. The attack coincides with a rise in activity by Shia militias, who have occupied slum districts in Baghdad and seized the governor’s residence in Basra.