Note To My Successor

Most of the chairs at the Prime Minister's table are empty now, and the long cloth is littered with the remains of a large early-evening repast: half-eaten bowls of lamb and okra, traces of hummus, a dented mound of rice. As he stirs three small, white tablets of artificial sweetener into a tear-shaped glass of tea, Ibrahim al-Jaafari describes the scolding he gave the Minister of the Interior that morning. A U.S. raid the day before had found evidence that Iraqi police were torturing detainees at a secret prison in Baghdad. Soon after he was told about it, al-Jaafari announced he was launching a full investigation. But even he has no illusions about how much control he actually has over his Cabinet. He didn't really make the appointments, he notes. Instead, the political parties "divided the government in shares," like warlords divvying up fiefdoms. "When [the Prime Minister] is responsible for forming the ministries," he told TIME wistfully, revealing the weakness of his position, "his ability to control them will be better." He wasn't really referring to himself in the third person. He is unlikely to be the Prime Minister for much longer.

Al-Jaafari has been Prime Minister for just about eight months, and a new government is expected to be elected on Dec. 15. But his experience is both a harbinger of and a template for the travails of Iraq, as well as a once and future job description for how to deal with fractiousness and tumult. The elections are unlikely to provide any party with a governing majority, forcing contending groups to compromise once more and produce the kind of jigsaw Cabinet that has proved not to work so far. The new Prime Minister is likely to discover that he must act as al-Jaafari has: as a mediator and patchwork maker. Some analysts, attempting political clairvoyance, have said that the lack of a strong leader may then tempt one faction or another to stage a coup d'état.

What is certain is that the next head of government will inherit rampant corruption, stagnant oil exports, a crumbling infrastructure, deadly insurgencies (on Friday and Saturday alone, five suicide bombings killed more than 120 people), an Iraqi army riddled with factional militiamen and a police force suspected of conniving in sectarian violence. A case in point is last week's discovery by U.S. forces of 173 prisoners at an Interior Ministry bunker. The majority of them were believed to be Sunni and several reportedly showed signs of torture or starvation. It has only increased the public perception that the Interior Ministry, which runs the police, is under the sway of a powerful Shi'ite faction. The head of the Interior Ministry is Bayan Jabr, a man reportedly with ties to the pro-Iranian Badr Corps, the military wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Although al-Jaafari berated him after the discovery was made public, Jabr was apportioned his ministry by political agreement, and al-Jaafari, who is also Shi'ite but of another party, can do nothing to get rid of him. Jabr has denied allegations that militiamen have been using the Iraqi police to launch a campaign of terrorism against Sunnis. "I swear on the name of God," Abu Rasul al-Shebani, spokesman for the Badr Corps, told TIME, "nobody in the Badr Corps is in the Ministry of the Interior."