IBS

AFP

UNTIL Iraq's economy recovers fully is there any chance of tackling its other woes? The prospects seem dim. Getting the economy in shape means, mostly, getting the oil industry back on its feet. Iraq has the world’s third-largest reserves but they are of little use as long as the crude remains mostly beneath the ground. The oil infrastructure is in parlous condition after 17 years of war and sanctions. Output remains well below the (depressed) pre-war peak of 2.5m barrels a day.

Producing more of the black stuff depends on investment by foreigners and locals, on getting effective security for oil workers, and on Iraq’s Shias, Sunnis and Kurds agreeing upon how to proceed. The last may be the most difficult. A tentative draft of an oil law was struck in February, but important details—notably the question of exactly how those revenues will be divided out and of how a national oil company may be formed—were not settled. On Tuesday July 3rd Iraq’s cabinet did pass an oil bill, sending it on to parliament for consideration next week. That is a tentative step forward, but the big issues remain unresolved.

The risk is that the bill will now get stuck. It is not clear that representatives of the northern autonomous province of Kurdistan have actually agreed to the law. In any case the Sunni parties and the block of Muqtada al-Sadr, an anti-American Shia cleric, are boycotting the parliament. Even if debate is possible, the best that may be expected is some sort of confusing compromise that leaves the door open for renewed arguments later, as happened with the unclear provisions for federalism in the Iraqi constitution.

In any case, parliament is bogged down with the need to pass other bills, one setting up provincial elections and another softening the de-Baathifcation law, which has left too many (mostly Sunnis) unable to work, and thus sympathetic to the insurgency.

Nor is Iraq’s legislative calendar the only important one. George Bush has asked for a review of his “surge” strategy in September. If it is remains unclear by then that the strategy has produced good results, the demands from American lawmakers for withdrawal from Iraq are likely to become more insistent. Mr Bush’s own party is growing unsettled by the continuing drumbeat of violence in Iraq. Last week the Republicans’ top foreign-policy man in the Senate, Richard Lugar, criticised the surge, saying that the risks of continuing the strategy outweigh the questionable, and distant, benefits. Other Republicans may be emboldened to join Mr Lugar (and the vast majority of Democrats) in calling for withdrawal.

The September deadline for results may seem artificial and unrealistic. The last troops of the surge were only fully deployed late last month. The new tactics promised in the surge—to stay and hold neighbourhoods, rather than to clear them and leave them—would by their nature take time to work. Proponents of giving the surge a chance have pointed to a fall in sectarian murders, and say that about half of Baghdad has now been made more secure. Elsewhere they point to Anbar province, a formerly violent insurgent stronghold where Sunni sheikhs have turned on al-Qaeda.

But the voices calling for American withdrawal will be boosted if there is little evidence that Iraq’s politicians are making progress in tackling awkward problems such as how to split the oil revenues. The Iraqi parliament has made some concessions—by agreeing to take just one month of holidays this summer, rather than two, it should have until the end of July to debate the various bills. Yet it seems unlikely that a complete resolution of the problem will be achieved by then.