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Published on Tuesday, 20 June 2006 14:44
A leaked cable from the US
embassy in Baghdad signed by the ambassador paints a
grim picture of Iraq as a country disintegrating in
which the real rul ers are the militias, and the
central government counts for nothing. The cable, signed
by the US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and sent to the
State Department in Washington on 6 June, is wholly at
odds with the optimistic account of developments given
by President George Bush and Tony Blair in their recent
visits to Iraq.
Iraqis employed by the US embassy
live in fear that other Iraqis will find out who they
are working for. \"We have begun shredding documents
printed out that show local staff surnames,\" the cable
says. \"In March a few staff approached us to ask what
provisions would we make for them if we
evacuate.\"
The US and Britain have said they
would withdraw their troops as the security situation
improved, though the embassy memo suggests that it was,
in fact, deteriorating. Britain said yesterday that it
was to pull out 170 soldiers from Muthana province in
southern Iraq when the Iraqi government took over
security there next month.
There are chilling
details about why, even in the heavily fortified Green
Zone, Iraqis employed by the US embassy are frightened.
\"In April, employees began reporting change in
demeanour of guards at the Green Zone checkpoints,\"
the memo says. \"They seemed to be more militia-like.
In some cases seemingly taunting.\"
The
vulnerability of the US position in Baghdad is so great
that the Iraqi military units guarding the perimeter of
the Green Zone, the heart of US power in Iraq, are now
considered untrustworthy.
An Iraqi employee asked
if she could have credentials saying she was a
journalist. This was because the Iraqi soldiers would
hold up \"her embassy badge and proclaim loudly to
nearby passers-by \'Embassy\' as she entered. Such
information is a death sentence if overheard by the
wrong people.\"
The memo, leaked to
The
Washington Post, gives a vivid and detailed account
of the limited authority of the US and the Iraqi
government in Baghdad. Entitled \"Snapshots from the
Office: Public Affairs Staff Show Strains of Social
Discord\" it is one of the most revealing documents
ever made public, in this case involuntarily, by US
authorities in Iraq. Based on the experiences of the
nine-member Iraq staff of the public affairs press
office in the US embassy, the cable portrays a society
in a state of collapse.
As Islamic militancy
increases, women find it increasingly dangerous not to
wear a veil in Sunni and Shia neighbourhoods. One was
warned not to drive a car. Others were told to cover
their faces and to stop using mobile phones. Threats
against women who do not accept this second class status
have escalated in the last two months. It has also
become dangerous for men to wear shorts or jeans in
public or for children to play outside wearing
shorts.
As temperatures reach 46C (115F)
\"employees all confirm that by the last week of May,
they were getting one hour of power for every six hours
without.\" One area called Bab al Mu\'atham in
central Baghdad has received no electric power for more
than a month. But a building where a new minister lived
started to receive power 24-hours a day as soon as he
was appointed.
The cable admits that the
unpopularity of the American presence in Iraq is the
reason why Iraqis working for the US dare not reveal the
identity of their employer even to family. One Sunni
Arab woman who was sent for training in the US told her
family she was in Jordan.
The embassy reports
increased sectarian tensions between Iraqi members of
its staff. A Shia woman said she could no longer watch
the television news with her Sunni mother because her
mother blamed the Shia government for everything that
went wrong.
The government of Nouri al-Maliki,
greeted with such acclaim by the US and Britain, has
little impact on ordinary Iraqis because real power lies
with militias and local power brokers. It is they who
barricade the streets at night and ward off outsiders.
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