The News Americans Never See: Iraq is Near Collapse

The hype you hear from Washington via mainstream media is just propaganda these days. Iraq is near collapse. The federal government in fact only governs the US guarded and walled "green zone" and very little more.
Update: US Military says 3/4 of Baghdad out of control.
The Daily Star

Iraq's government has lost control of vast areas to powerful local factions and the country is on the verge of collapse and fragmentation, a leading British think tank said on Thursday.


Chatham House also said there was not one civil war in Iraq, but "several civil wars" between rival communities, and accused Iraq's main neighbors - Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey - of having reasons "for seeing the instability there continue."


[..]"It can be argued that Iraq is on the verge of being a failed state which faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation," the group's report said. "The Iraqi government is not able to exert authority evenly or effectively over the country. Across huge swathes of territory, it is largely irrelevant in terms of ordering social, economic and political life."


The report also said that a US-backed security crackdown in Baghdad launched in February has failed to reduce overall violence across the country, as insurgent groups have just shifted the focus of their activities outside the capital.


While cautioning that Iraq might not ultimately exist as a united entity, the 12-page report said a draft law to distribute Iraq's oil wealth equitably among Sunni Arabs, Shiites and ethnic Kurds was "the key to ensuring Iraq's survival."