Summaries here and here and here.

“Handed over” — except when it’s not.

“Today the governor of Maysan province and the Iraqi security forces take on responsibility for the security of its people,” said Major General Jonathan Shaw, commander of British forces in Iraq.

“In the event of a crisis situation in Maysan, God forbid that this should happen, we will retain the capability to intervene, but only at the behest of the democratic government of Iraq,” he added. Article

Meanwhile, chaos abides…

On the day that Britain handed over the security of the southern Maysan province to Iraqi forces, a series of bombs killed nearly 200 people in Baghdad. A roadside bomb and a mortar attack elsewhere in the city killed no one, but gunmen shot dead the guard for the Speaker of parliament. The bodies of another 25 people, shot dead, were also found on the capital’s streets.

This is more than a single, terrible day in Baghdad. Iraq, as a country and a society, is falling apart.…

[snip]

But the heart of the problem is political and is still unaddressed. As Robert Gates, the US Secretary of Defence, said yesterday in Cairo, one answer must come from Iraq’s neighbours, Syria, Jordan and Iran. But the better answers must come from Iraq’s Government, which itself fractured this week and which has failed to fulfil any important promise.

Yesterday’s bombs were targeted at mainly Shia districts. The assumption must be that they were planted by Sunni militants, in the sectarian conflict that is rapidly splitting the capital, as well as the country.

[snip]

This week, al-Maliki and the US tried to put the best face on the move by six ministers loyal to the anti-US Shia cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr to quit the Cabinet in protest at the failure to set an exit date for foreign forces. It would be easier without them, al-Maliki’s people said. But his new vow to get US forces out by the year end was surely a sop to this most divisive faction. He was also quiet when prodded by the US to include more Sunnis in the Cabinet.

More widely, his camp has not set up a promised committee to consider taking account of Sunni concerns in the Constitution. Nothing has come of al-Maliki’s declaration of a programme for national reconciliation. His promises to reverse de-Baathification, which expelled Sunnis from administrative and executive positions, also seem to have foundered. Nor have the Shias in the Cabinet spent much money in Sunni areas. The Cabinet will only next week present to parliament a long-promised law to spell out the regional division of the oil wealth. Article

Absent political reconciliation and recognized authority (all yet missing or tenuous) and until security can be guaranteed, it’s going through the motions to rush to meet an imposed deadline. In short, how can it, if passed unchanged at all, be enforceable by other than (and questionable even so) occupation repression?

Iraqi cabinet will present an oil law to parliament next week that aims to lure billions of dollars in foreign investment, the country’s oil minister said on Wednesday.

“It will be ready next week to be presented to parliament,” Hussain al-Shahristani told reporters in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

He said that all political blocs in the Iraqi parliament had agreed to try to pass the law before the end of May. [Just in time for the end of May “Iraq Oil, Gas, Petrochemical & Electricity Summit” being sponsored by Chevron. — voxd]

About 60 Iraqi parliamentarians and experts began a meeting in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday to discuss the war-torn country’s oil law that will give its regions the right to negotiate with global firms on developing oilfields. Article