Six months ago, as the number of guerrilla attacks and suicide bombings increased, an Iraqi friend in business in Baghdad used to comfort himself by saying: 'The Americans cannot afford to fail in Iraq.' But as the country gets closer to civil war his confidence has ebbed away. Nearly two hundred Shiites were killed by suicide bombers in and around the holy shrines in Karbala and Khadamiyah in Baghdad on 2 March. A month earlier, there had been an attack on Kurdish leaders and their followers at a festival in Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan: one hundred had died. Each atrocity outdoes its predecessor. In January it had been the turn of the 31 workers killed as they queued to enter the main US headquarters in Baghdad.

LRB 18 March 2004 | PDF Download