March 20th 2006, was the third anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. While much of the world marked the anniversary with protests against the continuing occupation, there was little notice in Iraq itself, where conditions for ordinary Iraqis is growing worse by the day. The American led interim government spent over $20bn, yet left Iraqis with less electricity, less clean water and even worse hospitals than under Saddam.

Riverbend from "Baghdad Burning" writes:
Three years and the electricity is worse than ever. The security situation has gone from bad to worse. The country feels like it’s on the brink of chaos once more- but a pre-planned, pre-fabricated chaos being led by religious militias and zealots.
...
I’m sitting here trying to think what makes this year, 2006, so much worse than 2005 or 2004. It’s not the outward differences- things such as electricity, water, dilapidated buildings, broken streets and ugly concrete security walls. Those things are disturbing, but they are fixable. Iraqis have proved again and again that countries can be rebuilt. No- it’s not the obvious that fills us with foreboding.
The real fear is the mentality of so many people lately- the rift that seems to have worked it’s way through the very heart of the country, dividing people. It’s disheartening to talk to acquaintances- sophisticated, civilized people- and hear how Sunnis are like this, and Shia are like that… To watch people pick up their things to move to “Sunni neighborhoods” or “Shia neighborhoods”. How did this happen?

On March 9th, Iraq’s government engaged in a mass hanging of 13 prisoners. The executions were videotaped, which underscores the aim of using them as a means of state intimidation. Kidnappings and sectarian killings plague most of the country and there are signs that some of the death squads engaged in killings are tied to the ruling SCIRI party. Thousands of Sunni and Shiite families are fleeing their homes and moving to areas where their respective sects are in majority. Former interim Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi reports that "[t]here are no institutions that could protect people, there are definitely ethnic cleansing happening and taking place here and there in the country, so this is in fact a level of a civil war."

The main Shia religious leader Ayatola Sistani has come out openly for the execution of gay Iraqis (reports 1 | 2 | 3). Kurds who on March 16 protested corruption in the management of the memorial for victims of Halabja may also face the death penalty. Students are accusing police of excessive force during a protest about the lack of services at Koya University, in northern Iraq. Security forces quickly surrounded the protesters, shooting in the air to disperse them. Some students were beaten with rifle butts and electric-shock sticks, according to organisers of the demonstration and video footage taken by participants.

The US and its allies in Iraq are holding more than 14,000 civilian prisoners—in some cases for years—without charges or trials, while torture and abuse in detention camps are now worse than when the horrors of Abu Ghraib were exposed nearly two years ago. US troops are also alleged to have engaged in execution of civilians; the U.S. military is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations that marines shot and killed 15 civilians, including seven women and three children, in the Iraqi town of Haditha last November in an apparent act of revenge for the death of a U.S. soldier by a roadside bomb

Top Ten Catastrophes of the Third Year of American Iraq | Sectarian Internal Migration Plagues Iraq | In memory of those who have died in Iraq | 3 Years After U.S. Invasion Two Wounded Iraqi Children and Their Fathers Tell Their Story | A Family In Baghdad:Iraq is ruined… | IRAQ: the tortured years 2003-2006