Violence

Iraq is entering its seventh year since the U.S. invasion. Many things have changed in that time period, from the chaos that followed the collapse of the state after Saddam was overthrown, to the civil war that erupted, to the Surge. At the end of 2009 three Iraq analysts, Sam Parker of the United States Institute for Peace, Michael Hanna of the Century Foundation, and Reidar Visser of the Norwegian Institute of International Relations, wrote pieces speculating on what lay ahead for Iraq.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) released its latest human rights report for Iraq covering the first half of 2009. The U.N. noted the decrease in violence in Iraq, but that there were still deaths everyday in the country. More importantly, it recorded continued institutional abuses in the justice system, and reminders of the old regime.

Every time there is a massive, headline-grabbing bombing in Iraq, it sets off a wave of reports and commentaries in the West about how the security situation in the country is getting worse. The most recent such attack was on December 8, 2009 when four targets in Baghdad were assaulted resulting in 127 deaths and 448 wounded.

The December 8, 2009 bombings have led to a wave of accusations amongst Iraqi politicians. First members of parliament demanded that the Interior, Defense, and National Security ministers, the head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, the chief of the Baghdad Operations Command, along with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appear before them for questioning over the lapses in security that have led to the attacks.

The security situation in Iraq was a little different in November 2009. Unlike previous months, Baghdad province was not the deadliest place in the country. Rather Ninewa, largely driven by events in the provincial capital Mosul, had the most deaths for the month. Last month Ninewa had 61 attacks resulting in 41 dead and 80 wounded, compared to 59 attacks in Baghdad, 38 deaths, and 165 wounded. Around 90% of the violence in Ninewa occurred in Mosul.

Terrorists again struck downtown Baghdad on December 8, 2009.

On October 1, 2009 Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki officially announced his State of Law list that would compete in the 2010 parliamentary elections.

Since April 2009 monthly death counts for Iraq have fluctuated up and down. October was no different as it was higher than the previous month. Iraq’s ministries for example, reported 410 deaths in October, compared to 203 in September and 456 in August.

Despite the recent October 2009 Baghdad bombing, and the previous one in August, attacks in Iraq are at their lowest level since the 2003 invasion. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction recorded drops in weekly attacks in eleven of Iraq’s eighteen provinces from May to October 2009.

The day after the October 25, 2009 bombings of the Justice Ministry and provincial council buildings in Baghdad, the U.S. military praised how the government was handling the situation compared to the August 2009 attacks. After that event, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki started a major diplomatic row with Syria, blaming Baathists there for masterminding the bombing.