Peter Beaumont: It's far too early to cut and run

There are two paradigms for interpreting the success of the Iraq project. Confronted with a vigorous but limited Sunni insurgency, bolstered by al Qaeda atrocities, you put the totals of American and British dead - going on 3000 and 100 respectively - and then try to extract a meaning for those lost lives.

In this equation, no progress on the security front equals wasted lives.

Its ultimate logic is withdrawal.

But there is a second paradigm. This demands that the headline violence is stripped out and that Iraq's progress is counted not by the bodies of foreign soldiers or of Iraqis, but by how much democracy has begun to take root. The answer to the question of whether troops should remain should not be calculated by the scale of their losses, but by whether they are doing any good.

It is now redundant to argue whether the invasion was right or wrong.

Instead, having brought down Saddam, there is an obligation to try to establish a largely stable Iraq. I say "largely" because I am a realist and Iraq's history is permeated with everyday violence. I do not believe Iraq's problems will be solved in two decades, let alone two years.

But abandoning a failed state in the throes of a violent struggle between Shia and Sunni has consequences for the whole region, and a civil war risks sucking in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan and Syria. Which leaves the basic questions: what has been achieved, and what reasonably can be done?

The answer is to be found in Iraq's two competing political trajectories: the rival indicators employed by both the unalloyed optimists on Iraq and catastrophists.

Iraq's elections last January saw widespread participation and, as the high levels of registration in Sunni areas for the constitutional referendum have shown, could have engaged Sunnis in an electoral process, if not for the boycott. The continuing social and political engagement of police, hospital staff, professors and lawyers - despite the threat of assassination - also suggests a huge untapped potential in Iraqi society.

But the emerging politics have largely been sectarian, factional and violent, more concerned with grabbing and holding power at city, provincial and national level. Political assassination is common; torture widespread; legal due process is a sham, and much of the police and Army have been infiltrated by rival militias. Two years of building democracy has had little effect in moving beyond factional politics. They have also resulted in a troubling conundrum amid the likely rejection of the Shia-inspired new constitution by three Sunni-dominated provinces.

The dilemma is whether to push ahead with more of the same in the hope of reaching a tipping point, or whether stepping back from the political process would be more useful. It is at this point that the two paradigms overlap - not through al Qaeda's violence, but through an exit strategy built on long-term support and matched with a staged withdrawal depending on political and security development. This process recognises that while a wider Sunni insurgency and its ambitions must be recognised, al Qaeda in Iraq is a noisy distraction that will wither.

Already there are signs that at least some in Iraq's new leadership recognise that the future of their new state depends on their efforts. A government-led commission is drawing up security and political conditions for a phased withdrawal of multi-national forces with the British and US ambassadors. The commission is expected to produce a plan in the next couple of months for most foreign troops to leave.

Meanwhile, former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a politically secular Shia, is calling for a different forum for meetings between opposing sectarian groups. Allawi has told the Arab media that a No vote on the constitution may even remove a stumbling block to the emergence of a more inclusive and moderate bloc in December's elections.

This is a risky, long-term strategy. None of it may work. Civil war may engulf Iraq with all its pain and regional destabilisation. But it is not inevitable, and it is far too early to cut and run.

* Peter Beaumont has reported widely from Iraq since the invasion and is an opponent of the war.