Just got out the weekly meeting I attend with Prime Minister al-Maliki, Iraq's National Security Advisor al-Rubeiy, Ahmed Chalabi, a few other key Ministers within the Government of Iraq cabinet and Baghdad's provincial government leaders: the Governor, the Mayor of the City and the Provincial Council Chairman. The meeting focuses on the 'political and economic' effects of the Baghdad Security Plan, the joint operation to secure and stabilize Baghdad. Usually Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus sit in as well. They were out of town today, for obvious reasons; I can't speak for them but I would think that as violent as Iraq can be, they still might prefer to sit through this meeting than go through a grilling by Congress. Maliki was out this week as well and Rubeiy was flying through the agenda until Mayor Saber launched into a diatribe about the issue he feels most passionate about - all the illegal squatting going on in Baghdad's government-owned properties. It truly is a nasty problem; we've got people building artificial neighborhoods on vacant lots and then tapping into existing city services systems - systems that are already overtaxed and in need of serious upgrade and repair. And the Mayor made a very good point - this isn't really just an infrastructure problem, it's a political problem. Militia groups and criminals sometimes get into the act by forging false 'deeds' for the properties, colluding with corrupt or compromised officials within the government. They agreed to bring it up as an agenda topic for next week's session. I bring it up here because it's a good example, in perhaps a weird way, that there's been a lot of progress in the government I've been working with since 2005. I mapped this out with some colleagues a few weeks ago as a thought exercise; by listing out the major concerns we reported on over the past twelve months, we had before us what essentially was an inverted version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The issues that this government is able to focus on are far more complicated and abstract than the very basic concerns they struggled with just a few months ago. That's not to say that citizens here are not fighting a day-to-day struggle for survival - many certainly are - it's just that the level of discourse at meetings like this weekly session on the state of 'security' in Baghdad is truly at a different, and more advanced state than before. Maybe if you were transported over for an evening to sit through one of these things you might think I'm nuts - it often seems like nothing is ever decided, and the only solution the Prime Minister has for any problem is to form another special committee to look into it - but for a few of us who have been able to see this process over the span of a year or more it really is remarkable to see not where we are - but how far we've come.
