Here’s a New York Times article on what has happened in Iraq since the provincial elections last January.
Since Kenneth has been living in Hilla for the last year, I found this description sobering:
Babil’s provincial capital, Hilla, is a dilapidated city near the ruins of Babylon, the city that nearly 4,000 years ago produced one of civilization’s first written legal and administrative codes.
Today, sewage flows into the Euphrates there. Hilla’s streets are potholed and littered with garbage. Of the 42 textile factories that operated here in 2005, only 2 remain open, said Amir Mahmoud Chabok, chairman of the Iraqi Federation of Industries in Babil. Agribusinesses struggle with declining fuel subsidies, rising rents and sporadic electricity.
“The people of Hilla expect better services,” said Karim Fakhri Helal, a dean at Babil University. “They expect electricity. They expect jobs.”
He complained that Babil’s new council had instead been preoccupied with consolidating power and dividing the spoils.
Even more ominous for provincial governments is Iraq’s financial crisis. Babil’s budget this year has been slashed to $135 million from $258 million last year. And the payment of budget funds is late, hindering the new council’s work before it even begins.
When Babil’s new council met for the first time on Sunday — three days behind the deadline — its 30 members celebrated the peaceful transfer of authority from the old council elected in Iraq’s first provincial elections in 2005 to the new one.
The tensions that dominate Iraq’s political life quickly surfaced. A man stood and denounced one council member’s reference to the violence that has consumed the country since 2003 as “a side effect” of democracy.
Another council member, Fawziya Hassan Kadum, demanded the release of prisoners, including her husband, arrested by American and Iraqi forces in 2007. “Release our sons!” she shouted. “Release our daughters!” The audience applauded.
The new council’s first order of business — electing a chairman and a governor — remained unresolved, however, as national leaders representing Mr. Maliki’s Dawa Party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the Shiite cleric in exile Moktada al-Sadr bargained in Baghdad that night.
“We are not as progressive a democracy in experience as Sweden or the United States,” Mr. Bekari said. “Everything has to be settled in Baghdad, not in the provinces.”
A presentation about the council’s new powers by an American nongovernmental organization, the Research Triangle Institute, was drowned out by lawmakers milling about. They adjourned after lunch without a vote.
Read the whole article.
