Increasingly, U.N. Is Needed

The car bombing Friday that killed scores of Iraqi worshipers, including a prominent cleric, should push the United States to move as fast as possible to share military and political power with other countries under the United Nations banner. U.S. efforts to restore security are at the gate of failure.

The U.S. and its coalition partner, Britain, have responsibility for Iraq as the occupying power. But the United Nations told U.S. officials to keep their forces away from U.N. headquarters in Baghdad before the Aug. 19 bombing that killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. diplomat in Iraq, and more than a dozen others. Also, coalition forces did not provide security at Najaf’s Imam Ali Mosque, where Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Hakim was killed Friday. The reason they gave: respect for Muslim sensibilities. Yet after the U.N. and mosque bombings, Iraqis blamed the U.S. for a lack of security.

The mosque attack demonstrates the complexities facing occupiers of a region rife with historic conflicts. Opponents of this war had warned of the danger of Iraq splitting into the Kurdish north, Shiite south and Sunni middle, as other groups sought vengeance against the Sunni minority for its oppressive rule under Saddam Hussein. Concern had grown recently about foreign fighters infiltrating Iraq, possibly some of them extremist Wahhabi Muslims. Now the tensions among Iraqi Shiite factions make the situation even more difficult. Hakim, exiled for years in Iran and a favorite of Shiite rulers there, sometimes called for an Islamic Iraq, disconcerting Washington and secular Iraqis. But he cooperated with occupation forces, and his family and organization are represented on the U.S.-appointed temporary governing council.

Bringing in help from nations with large Muslim populations like India, Pakistan and Turkey will not impose harmony or guarantee greater cooperation; their presence, however, could diminish resentment and anger at Western, non-Muslim occupiers. The death tolls have increased with each bombing -- Aug. 7 at the Jordanian Embassy, Aug. 19 at the U.N. headquarters and Friday at the mosque. Aid agencies have withdrawn workers as chaos threatens to become anarchy. Yielding some political authority to the U.N. can speed the transition to an Iraq governed by Iraqis. Getting more troops from other nations, with the U.S. in command, can improve security and make it easier to fully restore electricity and oil pumping. Instability has long threatened the Mideast; an Iraqi civil war would be grave. Arab nations need to preach calm to fellow Sunnis; Iran should send the same message to Shiites so Hakim is the last cleric made a martyr.