Mr Jaafari must give 24 hours' advance warning to his security detail if he leaves the Green Zone to visit President Talabani, whose heavily defended house is just five minutes' drive away. "Every year it is getting worse." Government leaders frequently travel to Washington and London to give a rosy picture of Iraq slowly emerging from the present bloody chaos. Living behind the walls of the Green Zone, protected by US troops and foreign security companies, they seldom have little idea themselves of life in Iraq. Even prostitutes from Baghdad have migrated to Sulaymaniyah on the grounds that the capital is too dangerous to work in.

For all the billions of dollars supposedly spent on reconstruction in the rest of Iraq there are very few building sites to be seen outside the three Kurdish provinces where businessmen throng the hotels. There is a mood of nervy self-confidence that just for once the Kurds may be on the winning side.Few other Iraqis share their optimism. "The Iraqis are suffering from corruption, terrorism and occupation," says the veteran opposition leader Mahmoud Othman. Abu Mazen, a lawyer in Baghdad, said: "I believe that all kinds of crime nowadays in Iraq are the result of unemployment so that people who have no job are forced to become criminals." The only part of Iraq that is prospering is Kurdistan, because it has security. The allocation of ministerial posts in the Iraqi government was decided after long negotiations between the parties Mr Jaafari cannot fire ministers His authority is limited.

Jobs in every ministry are the preserve of the party that runs it. The interior ministry was taken over by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq when the government was formed and they are not going to give it up There is a great sump of misery in Iraq. And until the lives of people in general improve the political crisis will not end. Given such deprivation and corruption, why should soldiers fight for the government, particularly if they only joined the army or police for a job? Poverty fuels the insurgency.