The United States may have won the shooting war in Iraq, but it has failed to win peace. Nor has it succeeded in bringing democracy to that country which was one of its avowed aims in invading Iraq.

In fact Iraq has not seen a single day of peace since that day of March 2003 when the US-led coalition launched the invasion on it. Not a day passes without some incident of suicide bombing or some other form of deadly violence. The daily casualty figures in Iraq from such violence run into two and frequently three digits. According to reliable statistics over 600,000 Iraqis have been killed in four years of rampant violence and coalition troops' operations including aerial bombing on suspected strongholds of the insurgents. The casualty figures of the US and other troops also run in thousands now.

Despite all this bloodshed in the name of peace and democracy, the US-led coalition and the government installed under their umbrella have been unable to provide security to the Iraqi people. Even the heavily guarded Green Zone in Baghdad which is the headquarter of the US and other coalition forces and which also houses the Iraqi government, cannot be described as a completely safe place after the recent bomb incident in the parliament cafe.

Due to this miserable security situation, there cannot be any reconstruction and development activities in the country. The quality of life of ordinary Iraqis has been going from bad to worse; most people do not get even clean drinking water, the entire civic structure in the Iraqi cities is in tatters and unemployment rate has gone too high.

Confronted with this situation Iraqis have been leaving the country by the thousands every week in sheer hopelessness. Thousands of families have left the country during the last one year alone; a large number of them to Syria and Jordan; some have gone to other Arab countries and a few to the US and the EU countries. Todate, the unofficial estimates say more than 100,000 families have gone out of Iraq which is more than half a million people. More and more Iraqis are now heard commenting on the 'futility of the US adventure', some even saying they were better off under Saddam Hussein's regime than now.

In the US too people are getting fed up with the Iraq war. Opinion polls indicate that the American people now want to call it off. The Bush administration has been insisting that they must stay till they have achieved their objectives. But one thing is sure- the present policy has failed to deliver. The big question now is: what next in Iraq?

The military option having been used to the maximum possible extent and with very devastating effect for the Iraqis, it is now time for the US and its allies to think about other ways of solving the Iraqi tangle and restore peace in that country. The US has also used its tremendous diplomatic clout to enforce its agenda, but with only negative results. Perhaps what is needed is a grand reconciliation in Iraq in which all sections of the population are included, especially the numerically smaller but otherwise strong Sunni (ex-Baathist?) element.

According to informed circles the exclusion of this very element from the present Iraqi government, is responsible for the continuing insurgency and violence in the country and the ineffectiveness of the government. These circles believe that only a broad-based and truly representative government with all the stakeholders on board can restore peace in Iraq.

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