A new Pentagon report holds out little hope for quick action by Iraqi legislators on two crucial laws that might help break the back of the Sunni insurgency.
One law would guarantee Sunni Muslims a cut of oil revenues, the country’s main source of wealth.
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The other would authorize new local elections that could help Sunnis gain more political power. To protest their lack of clout, Sunnis largely sat out the first round of provincial elections. Tribal leaders are now telling Sunnis to vote in the next ones.
But a Pentagon report, “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,” states that the Iraq legislature is not likely to take up the election law until this fall. Sunni, Kurdish and majority Shiite lawmakers have not been able to agree on the boundaries for election districts, despite strong pressure from Washington to make a deal.
The report, released this week, said such a law “could result in a more responsive, representative government that could assume more responsibility for delivering services to local constituencies.”
The Pentagon is similarly doubtful about the prospects of the hydrocarbon law. It says the law “has the potential to promote political unity by enabling all Iraqis to benefit from the nation’s hydrocarbon resources.”
But the Pentagon says the draft still lacks two of the most important elements: a formula for national revenue sharing and decisions on who controls which oil fields.
Assessing the four-month-old troop reinforcement plan to secure Baghdad, the report said sectarian killings dropped from 1,400 in January to 450 in April. But violence increased in other parts of Iraq as al Qaeda terrorists and insurgents carried their attacks away from the capital.
“The aggregate level of violence in Iraq remained relatively unchanged,” the Pentagon said. “Terrorist attacks increased” outside Baghdad.
The seizures of large arms caches increased from 320 in January to nearly 700 in April.
Overall, the Pentagon said, it cannot yet judge the new U.S. strategy, with the last of five new combat brigades just arriving in the capital. “It is too early to assess the impact of the new approach,” the Pentagon said.
Democratic leaders on Wednesday declared the surge a failure.
