Blast shatters Green Zone aura of safety

An apparent suicide bombing in the tightly guarded parliament building that killed two Sunni Arab legislators and six other people here Thursday struck at the heart of Iraq’s struggling democracy and the U.S. security plan that is trying to bolster it.

The attack in the parliament’s cafeteria, which also injured 23 people, highlighted what many have described as serious gaps in security around the building where legislators have been working to form a consensus to bring peace to Iraq.

The early-afternoon bombing also delivered a harsh reminder that there are few corners of safety anywhere in Baghdad, even in the Green Zone, home to U.S. officials, contractors and the Iraqi government.

Hours earlier, a suicide bomber blew up his truck on the Sarafiya Bridge, about four miles from the Green Zone, sending a section of it into the Tigris River. Several cars tumbled into the water, and at least 10 people died.

A U.S. military spokesman, Navy Lt. Matthew Breedlove, said there were signs that the parliament attack was the work of someone wearing a “suicide belt.” He did not elaborate, but witness accounts supported that scenario.

“Now even this place isn’t safe anymore. What are we supposed to do?” said one survivor, who had been sitting in the cafeteria. He and a colleague were in shock as they picked human remains off their pinstriped blazers. Neither was injured, but both were covered in blood and dust.

Others, who blame the squabbling lawmakers for the country’s lack of security, directed their anger at the apparent targets. “Let them taste what we eat every day,” said one engineer, who asked not to be named.

President Bush condemned the killings, saying, “It is in our interest to help this young democracy be in a position so it can sustain itself and govern itself and defend itself against these extremists and radicals.”

Members of parliament had finished a morning session and were having lunch when the explosion occurred in the first-floor cafeteria, collapsing part of the ceiling and filling the room and hallways with blinding smoke.

People tripped over the cafe’s upended metal chairs as they raced to get outside. Television footage showed one man being pushed outside in a yellow chair, his body slumped and unmoving.

An Iraqi security official who asked not to be named said suspicion centered on a woman who passed through the parliament’s security screening without being searched. The official said he had complained several times that there was no X-ray machine at the building’s rear entrance and that “guns and C-4 explosive” could pass through undetected.

Some legislators complained that the guards did not adequately search members of parliament and their security entourages, and rumors swirled Thursday that a legislator or bodyguard could have smuggled in the explosives.

The U.S. military said it found two satchel bombs in the cafeteria after the explosion. On March 31, two suicide vests were found inside the Green Zone, and at least two car bombs were defused there in 2006. Mortar rounds and rockets frequently land inside the fortified area, and a U.S. soldier and an American contractor were killed last month in such an attack.

Faltering security effort

The bombings came just before the United States and Iraq entered the third month of a security plan that will deploy tens of thousands of additional troops in Baghdad and surrounding areas, and in troubled provinces such as Al Anbar. The effort has failed to quell the suicide bombings and attacks on public areas that are considered hallmarks of Sunni Arab insurgents.

The United Nations’ special representative in Baghdad, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, said the attacks represented assaults on the symbols of Iraq’s “proud history,” a reference to the 70-year-old bridge, and the “hope for its future,” a reference to the post-Saddam Hussein government.

Elected in December 2005, the national legislature was the key institution in the Bush administration’s plan to reconcile Iraq’s ethnic and religious groups. But the 275-member body has been hobbled by those same divisions.

Members meet in the former Convention Center, a drab concrete structure built by Hussein for an Arab League summit. A fountain outside is empty except for a few inches of stagnant black water at the bottom, visited occasionally by birds or a wayward cat.

Visitors enter through glass doors into a cavernous unfurnished room reminiscent of a bus station. A stairway leads to the rooms where lawmakers conduct business, voting by holding up their hands as they sit in tattered seats. Friezes from Hussein’s era hang beside posters painted by American children.

It was here that U.S. officials envisioned democracy taking root. Instead, during overheated sessions with air conditioning often as scarce as civility, politicians resorted to name-calling and traded accusations of corruption and murder.

Lawmakers were supposed to hammer out a new constitution that would incorporate disaffected Sunni Arab elements who feel underrepresented in the new Shiite Muslim-dominated legislature. But Shiite and ethnic Kurd factions continue to hold the upper hand in the parliament, and Sunni insurgent groups issue death threats to Sunnis who participate.

As bloodshed has continued, the chambers often have been half-empty.

The fall session began with Speaker Mahmoud Mashadani, a Sunni Arab, addressing row after row of empty chairs. A third of the members had not returned from a monthlong recess.

Then 36 lawmakers loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr walked out of parliament and boycotted the government to protest a meeting between Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and President Bush in Jordan.

From November until January, the legislature could not muster a quorum.

Meanwhile, outside the Green Zone, Iraqis have become embittered by legislators’ three-day workweek, $5,000 monthly salary, and $7,000 allowance for drivers, guards and other staffers. The average monthly salary for a civil servant in Iraq is about $200.

The clearest sign of the governing body’s ills has been its failure to pass benchmark laws that the United States has been demanding as a measure of progress that could lead to a withdrawal of U.S. troops. These include a law to allow former members of Hussein’s Baath Party to hold government jobs and receive their pensions, and another that would ensure fair distribution of Iraq’s oil revenue.

The parliament also has failed to resolve the issue of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, whose residents are due to vote this year on whether to join the autonomous northern region of Kurdistan, a move opposed by the city’s Arabs and ethnic Turkmens and the neighboring nations of Turkey and Iran.

‘Too many spoilers’

Joost Hiltermann, a Middle East expert with the International Crisis Group in Amman, Jordan, said his group had grown so pessimistic that it had recommended that the United Nations and Iraq’s six neighbors impose solutions to the issues that have stymied legislators.

“There are too many spoilers inside the country,” he said.

Wayne White, a policy expert at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said the cafeteria attack showed how deeply insurgents and their sympathizers had infiltrated even the upper reaches of Iraqi government.

The legislature is dominated by “militia-connected parliamentarians, does not include enough Sunnis, and beyond that isn’t broadly reflective of even the Shiite community,” he said.

Still, many Iraqis interviewed said the attack was a blow to freedom.

“Whether you agree or not with what it is doing, the parliament came from free elections. I want liberty for Iraq,” said political analyst Khaled Jurabi.

Hadi Amiri, a Shiite Muslim lawmaker, said the attack showed that the government had become careless with its own security. After a bomb exploded in a lawmaker’s motorcade near the parliament building in November, legislators pushed for everyone entering the building to be patted down by security guards. “But some lawmakers are not taking so much care,” he said on Al Arabiya TV. “Some of those who are searching are being lax with the parliament members.”

chris.kraul@latimes.com

susman@latimes.com

Times staff writers Louise Roug in Beirut and Said Rifai, Suhail Ahmad, Saif Hameed and Raheem Salman in Baghdad contributed to this report.