Can self-rule bring security?

For the past month almost everyone associated with the US-led occupation of Iraq has been focused on the June 30 handover. Town-hall meetings are held across Iraq explaining the interim government's powers and Coalition Provisional Authority staffers scuttle about the fortified Green Zone, preparing to hand over their jobs to State Department officials, planning vacations, and looking for new jobs.

But for most Iraqis the changing of the political guard comes down to one question: Will greater sovereignty mean more security? "This could be a big improvement if we really do get sovereignty and the power on our own to deal with the terrorists,'' says Sheikh Mohammed Bakar al-Suhel, chairman of the Baghdad City Council. "But we're going to have to see."

The preturnover signs are not encouraging. Thursday, there was more evidence that insurgents have regrouped and are intensifying their attacks. At least 66 Iraqis and three US soldiers were killed in attacks in six Iraqi cities, in an arc of violence stretching from Baghdad in the center of the country to the northern city of Mosul, 300 miles away.

A group led by Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has links to Al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement on an Islamist Website. The violence primarily targeted Iraqis who the US hope will take a broader and more vigorous security role after the handover.

In the increasingly unstable northern city of Mosul, coordinated car bombs hit two Iraqi police stations, a police academy and a local hospital, killing at least 44; car bombs also hit police stations in the Sunni triangle town of Ramadi; in Baquba, government buildings were attacked and two US soldiers were killed in firefights with insurgents; and in Baghdad, a bomb at a checkpoint killed three Iraqi soldiers and one US soldier.

Thursday, the CPA relinquished control of the last 11 of 25 ministries, which now oversee more than 1 million government workers.

Iraqis, both officials and average citizens, say the most important dividend of any handover would be greater security, both from the insurgency but also from a crime wave that began soon after Baghdad fell last year. Iraqi police, facing insurgents and well-organized and armed criminal gangs, have been reluctant to do much more than direct traffic until now.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a former exile with close ties to both the CIA and former Baath generals, has promised a tough line against crime and the insurgency, mooting a declaration of martial law after he takes power. "Our No. 1 priority is security,'' says Imad al-Shibib, an Iraqi military officer who fled into exile in 1990 and now heads the political bureau of Mr. Allawi's party, the Iraqi National Accord. "We have people who know how to handle this."

For now, US forces will run most anti-insurgent operations. "I don't think that July 1st is a particularly significant date [for] coalition military operations,'' said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a coalition military spokesman. Military operations are not going to change dramatically "the way it is dramatically changing politically on the first day of July.... I think all of us understand that it will be some time before those Iraqi security forces can take on the burden and the responsibility."

Evidence of that has been the failure of a US experiment in the Sunni Triangle town of Fallujah, where an Iraqi brigade was put in charge after an April offensive against insurgents there left hundreds of residents dead and severely undercut Iraqi tolerance for the occupation.

US soldiers say the so-called Fallujah Brigade has done little to root out insurgents there, particularly the foreign fighters close to Zarqawi that the US alleges have been using the town as a base for attacks across the country. The Korean translator Kim Sun-Il was kidnapped and later beheaded near Fallujah by men who claimed to be with Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad Group. Reuters reported Thursday that men in the Baquba attack wore headbands identifying them as members of the Tawhid and Jihad battalion.

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