After two decades of rampant violence and political dysfunction following the American invasion, Iraq is at last showing signs of recovery. But corruption and misgovernment remain
Though politics is still messy and corrupt, with parliament and government subject to bitter horse-trading between parties in hock to sectarian militias, a measure of representative. The Shia majority, suppressed under the vicious Sunni-led dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, is sitting pretty, its leaders content to reap the rewards of power and patronage. The application of religious laws has softened. Unveiled women again walk the streets.
Yet the trauma of the past two decades cannot easily be wiped away. At least 270,000 Iraqis, more than half of them civilians, perished violently in that period, as well as 8,000-plus American service people and contractors, according to a monitoring project at Brown University in America.
Only the Kurds can claim a more or less unbroken period of progress and calm as a result of the American invasion. Protected initially by American force and by their own militias, their autonomous region has been far less affected by the violence that shattered the rest of the country. Their government in Erbil continued to function while the rest of Iraq fell into bloodshed and chaos.
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