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A suicide bomber having made his way through several layers of fortified security struck at the very institution that is expected to usher democracy in a nation yet to come to terms with the aftermath of a long drawn Iraqi dictatorship.
Three Members of Parliament along with 5 others killed and more than 20 injured in the suicide attack has shaken the foundations of the nascent democracy in war torn Iraq.
The message sent out is chilling
The US may be making a last ditch effort to provide security by sending more troops, but on the ground none can protect you from us. We have strike capability even within the most secure zones of Iraq.
The Green Zone area where the Iraqi parliament is located is among the most secure pieces of real estate in the land today. US security forces along with Iraqi forces man this zone.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's interim government has failed to restore order in Baghdad itself, let alone the countryside and the Iraqi parliament is yet to come up with a power sharing formula that could accommodate conflicting interests of the Sunnis, the Kurds and the Shi'ites.
Plucking out American style democracy and attempting to transplant it in the desert country is easier said than done. Four years down the road that President George Bush took to discipline an errant dictator Saddam Husain, and liberate a land ruled by the iron hand has only helped to create a lawless society.
Surely, America has condemned the daring attack. Senator John McCain, a 2008 republican presidential hopeful, is pragmatic when he considers that the suicide attack is aimed at hitting the morale of an emerging democracy and is not unexpected.
Insurgency may be rife in Iraq but fate of the implanted democracy wrests with the lawmakers in the US senate. No matter how vehemently the democrats oppose President Bush's intervention in Iraq, they realize the stakes are too high to be brushed under the carpet. The democrats have a myopic target of winning the 2008 US presidency election and president Bush's botched up foreign policy appears to be giving away the high office on a platter to his rival party.
In a region where monarchies have restricted the growth of democratic societies and powerful western democratic nations have conveniently overlooked the suppression of human freedom, so as to ensure 'oil' supplies, rooting a democracy in Iraq is bound to face utter resistance.
Iran, with its Islamic model of democracy that it founded after ousting an old established monarchy in 1979, is already in the eye of the storm since then. Not having found acceptance among other neighboring Islamic nations, Iran pursues a dubious nuclear program to firmly establish its sovereignty and claim its position in the region.
Unless the interests of the Sunnis, the Kurds and the Shi'ites are not reconciled and the neighboring countries are not restrained from interfering in the functioning of the shaky government, democracy is as good as doomed in Iraq. The beefed up security measures that the US plans to put in place have already been torn to the shreds by increasing number of suicide attacks as daring as the one that has hit at the heart of the sprouting democracy.
