Any gains in suppressing violence in Iraq have yet to be matched by the political progress necessary to make those changes lasting, writes Juan Cole in Salon.

Iraq remains home to one of the most violent civil conflicts in the world

Iraqi government statistics show that deaths attributable to political violence in the past three months have averaged 700 per month.

The high level of violence and political problems mean that Iraq is still failing as a state, says Prof. Cole, and in danger of collapsing.

Shiites in Parliament have angrily stymied a Bush administration-backed measure to soften the ban on former Baath party members from working in government.

On the other side, bodyguards of one Sunni leader in Parliament, Adnan Dulaimi, were recently discovered to have been handling explosives.

Making reconciliation even more complicated, Sunnis themselves are splitting into factions, Newsweek reported this week