Old, new and violent

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE if the designation of a new prime minister in Iraq had ushered in a lull in the violence directed at the Iraqi citizens who are trying to stabilize their country three years after the U.S. invasion. Instead, Jawad Maliki must try to form a consensus government and tame sectarian passions against the backdrop of a chain reaction of remote-control car bombs Monday in Baghdad that killed at least 14 people and wounded dozens more.

That doesn’t mean that the long-stalled formation of a national unity government is doomed or that new security measures to which Maliki has supposedly committed himself will fail. In Iraq -- as in Israel, Lebanon and even Northern Ireland -- violence can flare when political progress seems most auspicious. Terrorism is sometimes a reaction to political progress, not a sign of deadlock.

Disheartening as Monday’s violence was, it cannot obscure the fact that Iraqi self-government, frustratingly mocked by sectarian discord, seems to be back on track.

That said, the renewed effort to form a broad-based government in Baghdad is a case of better (very) late than never. The nation held parliamentary elections in December. For four months, negotiations among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions failed to produce a unity government despite insistent and often unsubtle pressure from the United States. (That pressure came, ironically, from a U.S. president who disdained “nation-building” during his 2000 campaign for election.)

Not only must Maliki create a consensus government by artfully doling out Cabinet portfolios to Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish representatives, he also must make good on his assurances to the U.S. that he will rein in sectarian militias. Unfortunately, like his predecessor and Shiite soul mate, Ibrahim Jafari, the new prime minister seems to believe that these private armies can be tamed by incorporating them in a national security force rather than disarming them. Almost all the evidence indicates otherwise.

Perhaps Maliki can succeed where Jafari failed. At stake are not only self-government and a cessation of civil strife for long-suffering Iraqis, but also President Bush’s confident predictions that the introduction of democratic structures to Iraq would bring both freedom and peace -- paving the way for an honorable exit for U.S. troops.

Monday’s violence doesn’t mean such a scenario is impossible. But it was a bleak reminder of how difficult it will be for the United States, or its president, to truthfully declare “mission accomplished.”