Iraqis celebrate US exit, but worry over the future

BAGHDAD (AP):

Even as Iraqis celebrated the departure of the last American troops yesterday, the dangers left behind after nearly nine years of war were on full display.

Politicians feuded along the country's potentially explosive sectarian lines and the drumbeat of deadly violence went on.

The last US convoy rumbled out of Iraq across the border into Kuwait around sunrise under a shroud of secrecy to prevent attacks on the departing troops.

When news reached a waking Iraqi public, there was joy at the end of a presence that many Iraqis resented as a foreign occupation.

In the northern city of Mosul, pastry shop owner Muhannad Adnan said he had a swell of orders for cakes - up to 110 from the usual 70 or so a day - as families threw parties at home. Some asked him to ice the cakes with inscriptions of "congratula-tions for the end of occupation," he said.

But the happiness was shot through with worries over the future.

"Nobody here wants occupation. This withdrawal marks a new stage in Iraq's history," said Karim al-Rubaie, a Shi'ite shop owner in the southern city of Basra. But, he said, "the politicians who are running this country are just a group of thieves."

"These politicians will lead the country into sedition and civil war. Iraq now is like a weak prey among neighbouring beasts."

Yesterday morning, a bomb hidden under a pile of trash exploded on a street of spare car-parts stores in a mainly Shi'ite district of eastern Baghdad, killing two people and wounding four others. It was the latest in the near daily shootings and bombings - low-level but still deadly - that continue to bleed the country and that many fear will increase with the Americans gone.

Violence is far lower than it was at the worst of the Iraq War, in 2006 and 2007, when Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias preyed on Iraqis around the country in a vicious sectarian conflict that nearly turned into complete civil war.

But those armed groups still remain, and there are deep concerns whether Iraqi security forces are capable of keeping them in check without the help of US troops.

Unhealed bitterness

Equally worrying, the resentments and bitterness between the Shiite majority and Sunni minority in this country of 31 million remain unhealed.

The fear is that without the hand of American forces, the fragile attempts to get the two sides to work together could collapse and even turn to greater violence.

In an escalation of the rivalry, the main Sunni-backed political bloc on Sunday announced it was boycotting parliament to protest what they called Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's attempts to monopolise govern-ment positions - particularly those overseeing the powerful security forces.

The bloc has complained of security forces' recent arrests of Sunnis that it says are "unjustified".

Sunnis have long feared domination by the country's Shi'ites, who vaulted to power after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein at the hands of the Americans. The rivalry was exacerbated by the years of sectarian killing.