The new government was seen as a threat by the guerrilla movement, which indulged in an orgy of bloodletting. On Friday, as April ended, guerrillas detonated four bombs in the relatively well-off and famously pious Sunni quarter of Azamiyah in the capital, killing 20. They also struck in Madaen, where they used the technique of setting an explosion to attract police and Iraqi army troops, and then detonating more bombs when the police and military arrived, killing 13. Altogether, guerrillas killed 50 and wounded 114. They struck again on Saturday, setting off five bombs in Baghdad that killed 11 and wounded 40. They also targeted a building belonging to the National Dialogue Council in a bid to make it stop negotiating with others.

On Sunday, the guerrillas set off five bombs in Baghdad, killing six and wounding 40. But they also attempted to demonstrate their range, striking at a funeral for a slain Kurdish official in the northern city of Telafar. They killed 30 and wounded 50, mainly northern Kurds. On Monday they were at it again, killing 29. Then after a lighter day on Tuesday, they hit Irbil. The constant violence, much of it targeting Shiites or Kurds, refuses to subside.

Frantic negotiations between Jaafari and the Sunni Arabs attempting to make a deal led to an expectation that when the smoke cleared on Tuesday, Jaafari would have a complete Cabinet and would have the Sunni Arabs aboard. Negotiations appear to have broken down, however, because the Sunnis presented as candidates persons who were too close to the Baath Party. Vice President al-Yawer sullenly boycotted the festivities, as did most other Sunni Arab movers and shakers. The Associated Press quoted Mishaan Juburi, a Sunni parliamentarian that many Shiites see as having been too close to Saddam in the old days. He said, "If al-Yawer [had] attended the ceremony, it would have been the end of him politically."

Iraq thus enters the new world of elected government with a great deal of suspicion being expressed about ethnicity. The new Shiite leadership was threatening to purge ex-Baathists from the military and intelligence fields. Sunni Arab leaders complained that the Shiites had not kept their promise to give the Sunni Arabs a position in the new government that was appropriate to them. Political scientist Nabil Muhammad Salim of Baghdad University told the Arabic press, "Jaafari demonstrated great flexibility in the negotiations, but his colleagues put enormous pressure on him." Likewise, he said, the Sunnis insisted on some names at a time when they should have shown more flexibility. (The Sunni Arabs are said to have put forward ex-Baath officers for several posts whom the Shiites found completely unacceptable.) The Arabic press reported that Jaafari called on those ex-Baathists whose hands were not stained with blood to express their contrition (for having been Baathists) and to begin a dialogue with the new government.

The most dramatic instance of Sunni-Shiite conflict this past week concerns the death of Baghdad University student Masar Sarhan. He joyously threw a party when Ibrahim Jaafari was sworn in as prime minister. A member of the Shiite Dawa Party, Sarhan was expressing his solidarity with his party, which had won the office of prime minister for the first time ever. He was gunned down by three assassins. In reaction, Shiite students rioted on Tuesday, attacking Sunni Arab students and professors, whom they blamed for Sarhan's death.

In the meantime, Sunni-Shiite violence continued in a number of hot spots. In the mixed neighborhood of Doura in southern Baghdad, guerrillas constantly target Shiites for killings. They especially go after Sayyids, or those who claim descent from the Prophet Muhammad. In Suwaira near Madaen, police pulled 40 bodies out of a river, most of them Shiite. Mourning family members blamed Sunni guerrillas for the deaths. Rumors had earlier circulated that Shiite hostages would be killed in Madaen, and many Iraqis were convinced that the bodies recovered were those of Shiite victims of Sunni barbarity. The new, Shiite governor of Najaf, challenged Sunni clerics to rein in their adherents and warned that if the provocations continued, Shiites would take the law into their own hands.

The entire Bush administration-driven political process since last November has worked at odds with its own goals. The U.S. military attack on Fallujah enraged most Sunni Arabs and spread the guerrilla war to previously quiet cities such as Mosul. As a result most Sunni Arabs were not able to vote or were too angry to do so. Sunnis ended up with only 17 seats in the 275-member Parliament. Attempts to put them in the new Cabinet have produced new wrangling and delays and bitterness. The Sunni question in Iraq is now on the front burner. Given all the explosives still missing in Iraq, that is a dangerous place for it to be.

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