IRAQ. Patrick Cockburn

fanfare, sent 700 soldiers to Diyala to restore government authority. It fought a ferocious battle with insurgents in which it lost two armoured "Stryker" vehicles. But, as so often in Iraq, in the eyes of Iraqis the presence or absence of American forces does not make as much difference to who holds power locally as the US military command would like to believe. Supposedly they are supporting 20,000 Iraqi security forces, but earlier this year it was announced that 1,500 local police were to be fired for not opposing the insurgents. At one embarrassing moment US and Iraqi military commanders were claiming at a video-link press conference that they had a firm grip on the situation in Baquba when insurgents burst into the mayor's office, kidnapped him and blew it up.

      Power in Diyala is fragmented. As in the rest of Iraq it is difficult to know who is in charge. The Iraqi government, whose ministers issue optimistic statements about the improving state of their country when on visits to London or Washington, carries surprisingly little weight outside the Green Zone in Baghdad. Often its interventions do nothing but harm. For instance the main source of employment in Khanaqin is the large border crossing from Iran at Monzariyah. Cross-border traffic provided 1,000 jobs. But the government has closed the crossing point and the road that used to be crowded with trucks a few months ago is now empty. No rations, on which 60 per cent of Iraqis depend, have been delivered in Diyala for seven months. Those delivering them say it is too dangerous to do so since the drivers of trucks containing the rations are often deemed to be collaborators by insurgents and shot to death. In Mr Salaman's village of Kanaan, five men were burnt to death for guarding two petrol stations.

      A difficulty in explaining Iraq to the outside world is that since 2003 the US and British governments have produced a series of spurious turning points. There was the capture of Sad-dam Hussein in December 2003, the supposed hand back of sovereignty in June 2004, the two elections and the new constitution in 2005 and - recently - the military "surge" into Baghdad. In all cases the benefits of these events were invented or exaggerated.

      After Sunni fundamentalists blew up the golden-domed Shia al-Askari shrine in Samarra in February last year, central Iraq was torn apart by sectarian fighting. Baghdad broke up into a dozen hostile cities, Sunni and Shia, which fired mortars at each other. Government ministries, if controlled by different communities, fought each other. The Shia-controlled Interior Ministry kidnapped 150 people from the Sunni-held Higher Education Ministry and killed many of them. For a brief moment last November, after the mid-term elections in the US and the Baker-Hamilton report, it seemed that the US was going to start negotiations with its myriad enemies in around Iraq. But in the event President Bush refused to admit failure. Some 21,500 troop reinforcements are being sent to Baghdad and Anbar province to the west. So far there is little sign that the "surge" will really change the course of the war. Diyala, its once-prosperous villages now becoming heavily armed Sunni or Shia fortresses, is a symbol of the failure of the occupation that began four years ago. From an early moment it was evident that only the Kurds in Iraq fully supported the US and British presence.

      The invasion four years ago failed. It overthrew Saddam but did nothing more. It destabilised the Middle East. It tore apart Iraq. It was meant to show the world that the US was the world's only superpower that could do what it wanted. In fact it demonstrated that the US was weaker than the world supposed. The longer the US refuses to admit failure the longer the war will go on.

      Thursday, 12 April 2007

UNDER SIEGE

      "If you go in the streets by yourself, you'll be dead in 15 minutes," says Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of Mosul, the second largest Iraqi city. An able, confident man, he speaks from experience, having survived more assassination attempts than almost any political leader in Iraq. The one-hour car journey to Goran's office from the Kurdish capital, Arbil, underlines the dangers. He has sent guards, many of them his relatives, to pick me up from my hotel. They travel in slightly battered civilian cars, chosen to blend in with the rest of the traffic, wear civilian jackets and T-shirts, and keep their weapons concealed.

      We drive at great speed across the Greater Zaab river, swollen with flood water, into the province of Nineveh, of which the ancient city of Mosul is the capital. The majority of its 1.8 million people are Sunni Arabs and one third are Kurds, along with 25,000 Christians. Arabs and Kurds have been fighting for control of the city for four years. Every day brings its harvest of dead. "Five Kurds were killed here yesterday," says one of the guards dolefully.

      The weapon of choice in Mosul these days is the vehicle-borne suicide bomb. We pass the headquarters of the PUK, one of the two main Kurdish parties, where 19 people were killed by just such a bomb last year. I can see where a second suicide driver targeted another PUK branch office close to the light blue dome of a mosque in March, killing a further three people and wounding 20.

      The city is not as obviously dangerous as Baghdad, where whole districts are intermittently controlled by Sunni insurgents or Shia militiamen. At a quick glance there even appear to be reasons for optimism in Mosul, since there are plenty of relaxed-looking policemen patrolling in their blue and white cars and directing traffic.

      But such signs are misleading as an indication of uncontested government authority. In Mosul, the police are mostly Arab, while the two Iraqi army divisions are largely Kurdish. Out of 20,000 police, Goran believes that half belong to or sympathise with the Sunni resistance. When Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death last November, one policeman stuck a picture of the former leader on his windscreen by way of protest. We drive quickly through the crumbling walls of ancient Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire, and past a large mound, beneath which is the tomb of Jonah, who, having survived his unfortunate experience with the whale, was buried here. Traffic is lighter than I remember during my visit last year. This is good news from the point of view of safety, because we are unlikely to get caught in a traffic jam, where other drivers have time to notice that I am obviously a foreigner and that the guards are wearing civilian shirts but camouflage trousers.

      Unfortunately, the reason why there are so few vehicles on the streets turns out to be bad news for the people of Mosul and Nineveh province. Syria has suspended supplies of fuel. As a result, the province is getting only 10 per cent of its overall fuel needs and 4 per cent of its normal supply of petrol. Food rations are no longer being delivered. Water and sewage, as well as hospitals, are affected.

      We finally speed into Goran's heavily fortified headquarters, a former Baath party centre on the left bank of Tigris river taken over by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, of which he is head in Mosul. Its elaborate defences, high concrete walls and watchtowers, would do credit to a castle in a particularly disturbed part of medieval Europe. The sentries indicate to cars on a nearby roundabout that they are getting too close to the headquarters by firing bursts from their automatic rifles into the air.

      Goran, though deputy governor, is a Kurd and more powerful than the Arab governor. He is very different from those politicians in Baghdad who never leave the Green Zone except to make numerous foreign trips, during which they exude ill-informed optimism about security. He has a clear vision of the strengths and weaknesses of the government's position in Mosul. He points out that, unlike Baghdad and the provinces of central Iraq, insurgents do not permanently control any single area. His claim that government security forces have arrested many "terrorists" is confirmed by other security sources.

      The difference between Mosul and Baghdad is that in Mosul the government can at least rely on the Kurdish community as supporters. In the capital, government has nobody on whose loyalty it can wholly depend. On 23 March, the deputy prime minister, Salam al-Zubaie, was badly injured by a bomber who got near him with the connivance of his own bodyguards. The government's only response was to consider hiring another, non-Iraqi, security company.

      Goran admits that the insurgents have a sort of "shadow" government in Mosul that competes with the real government. "There are eyes everywhere knowing what you do," he says. They visit hairdressers and beauty salons to make sure they give only "Islamic" haircuts. Many Kurds are fleeing the city because of assassinations and intimidation. Some 70,000 have already left. Kurdish students at Mosul university, one of the largest and previously among the most distinguished in Iraq, dare not stay.

      Aside from wholly Kurdish units, the Iraqi government's own security forces are thoroughly infiltrated. This