The sectarian violence in Iraq is increasing more and more:
Two bombs killed 22 people in northern Iraq on Friday as the government tried to tamp down violence and head off civil war a day after Sunni-Arab insurgents killed 215 people in an attack on Baghdad’s Sadr City slum that intensified Shiite anger at the United States.
The blasts in Tal Afar, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, involved explosives hidden in a parked car and in a suicide belt worn by a pedestrian that detonated simultaneously outside a car dealership at 11 a.m., said police Brig. Khalaf al-Jubouri. He said the casualties — 22 dead, 26 wounded — were expected to rise.
In Baghdad, followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr threatened to boycott parliament and the Cabinet if Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki meets with President Bush in Jordan next week, a member of parliament said. Bush and al-Maliki were scheduled to meet Wednesday and Thursday in Amman.
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Legislator Qusai Abdul-Wahab, an al-Sadr follower, said in a statement that U.S. forces were to blame for Thursday’s bombings in Sadr City that killed 215 people and wounded 257 because they failed to provide security. The attack was the deadliest of the war so far.
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The U.N. said Wednesday that 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the most in any month since the war began 44 months ago, and a figure certain to be eclipsed in November. The U.N. said citizens were fleeing the country at a pace of 100,000 each month, and that at least 1.6 million Iraqis have left since the war began in March 2003.
The first responsibility of any government towards its people, is to provide security. In essence, I would say, a government can only be regarded legitimate, when it is able to do so. When the government fails in this, people will try to take care of themselves. This is what we see happening in Iraq: Iraqis are turning to ‘militias’ for their protection.
Nowadays some people seem to think that all it should take for a government to be considered ‘legitimate’ is that it is democratically elected. This is a reasoning I cannot agree with: yes it is an important requirement, but providing security is possibly just as important.
This does not mean that the Iraqi government should have dealt with the sectarian violence within two weeks time. However, there should be signs of gradual and systematical improvement. Is this the case with Iraq and can one possibly demand of Iraqis to recognize the authority of the government if the answer to the first question is ‘no’?
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