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The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, said the country had tread close to "the edge of the abyss" but now was making progress on political reforms needed to help mend sectarian and ethnic rifts that have pushed the country to the brink of civil war. Crocker cited what he said was Iraqi political progress toward agreements on constitutional reforms, the sharing of oil revenue and allowing former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath political party to take government and other public jobs.
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Contrary to Crocker's assessment, some critics say that political progress has been too slow, while military counterinsurgency strategies have achieved mixed results, reducing some kinds of sectarian violence -- such as killings by death squads -- but having little impact on others, such as large suicide bombings typically carried out by the group al-Qaeda in Iraq or affiliated Sunni alliances.

A report released Thursday by Chatham House, a foreign policy research center in Britain, challenged the notion that violence in Iraq has subsided since the buildup of U.S. troops, saying, for instance, that car bombings had not diminished and arguing that radical groups were simply lying low.

"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 report said.

Crocker, in remarks to a group of reporters carried by the Reuters news service, said it would be "a terrible mistake" to conclude that, because al-Qaeda in Iraq was still able to mount suicide attacks, the U.S. strategy "isn't working, it isn't going to work and we just all need to pull stakes."

"If I had to evaluate today, and looking purely at the security situation, as devastating as the al-Qaeda-led chain of suicide vehicle attacks is, that does not in my mind suggest the failing of the state or of society," he said, according to Reuters.