The war is essentially over, and the reconstruction effort is beginning in fits and starts. It is early days yet, but there were some early indications this week that this grand project could go rather badly.

Umm Qasr, right on the Kuwaiti border, was the first town to be “liberated” and declared safe for humanitarian and development workers, and so is seen as a test case for the rest of the country. That test case is not going so well, with the population refusing to accept the leaders blessed by the US and the military government having trouble with basic things like paying government employees, which they thought would be a simple matter, because they never consulted anybody who had ever had to do such things before.

Further, it seems the Mr. Powell had been right after all about the lack of little Jeffersonian democrats in Iraq. According to the Washington Post:

As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq's future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites' organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country.
…
As the administration plotted to overthrow Hussein's government, U.S. officials said this week, it failed to fully appreciate the force of Shiite aspirations and is now concerned that those sentiments could coalesce into a fundamentalist government. Some administration officials were dazzled by Ahmed Chalabi, the prominent Iraqi exile who is a Shiite and an advocate of a secular democracy. Others were more focused on the overriding goal of defeating Hussein and paid little attention to the dynamics of religion and politics in the region.

“It is a complex equation, and the U.S. government is ill-equipped to figure out how this is going to shake out,” a State Department official said. “I don't think anyone took a step backward and asked, ‘What are we looking for?’ The focus was on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.”

Shia clerics in Iran are urging Shia in Iraq to seize power in Iraqi cities in the wake of the fall of the Baath Party, prompting The Donald to clarify that the Iraqis can have any kind of government they want, so long as it is not a kind that the United States does not like.

One of the post-war period’s few pleasant surprises has been the apparent commitment from Turkey not to invade northern Iraq to counter Kurdish gains in the region. The bad news is that it now seems they have been smuggling guns, grenades, and night-vision goggles to ethnic Turkmens in Kirkuk, and probably elsewhere. It seems nobody can be cool without night-vision goggles anymore.

In another Lebanonesque turn of events, guns are now available in Iraq at rock-bottom prices, so you can equip your very own ethnic, sectarian, or political militia for a very reasonable price. But I suggest you get them now; demand may be rising soon.