The two vehicles, a van and a minibus each packed with a ton of explosives, were not after soft targets—a market or a mosque. What they sought to blow up required somehow circumventing numerous checkpoints, a daytime ban on trucks and the heavy security that surrounds government ministries in Iraq. A difficult task even for people determined to die, but one the attackers managed to accomplish on Sunday morning, when they perpetrated the worst bomb attack in Iraq since 2007. By the time the smoke cleared three major government buildings were destroyed—housing the ministry of justice, the ministry of municipalities and public works and the Baghdad provincial council—155 people were dead and 700 were hospitalized around Baghdad.

The attacks come at a tense moment for Iraq, as the country’s political factions wrestle over an electoral law for the coming parliamentary elections, which are scheduled for January.

In a statement posted on a militant website, the Al Qaeda-affiliated group the Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility for the Sunday attacks and for two other bombings that took place in August and killed 100 people in the ministries of foreign affairs and finance.

The August attacks put Iraq and Syria at loggerheads and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki accused Damascus of “facilitating” the bombings. While the Syrian government denied playing any role in the bombings, the two countries recalled their ambassadors.
 
Unlike many previous suicide bombings in Iraq, which targeted civilians and seemed designed to enflame sectarian tensions, the two most recent rounds of attacks appear to be aimed directly at the state.

“They are not attacking Shia mosques. I don't think it is sectarian, they are a group of Baathists, to put it literally who will not be happy unless Saddam Hussein rises from the dead and takes over again," Lawrence Korb, political analyst at the Center for American Progress, said to Reuters.

Maliki's government has called for an international tribunal to investigate the allegations that Syria is harboring militants from both Al Qaeda in Iraq and former President Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

The request for an investigation into foreign interference in Iraq would also include Iran and other neighbors, but the Iraqi government says it is most interested in those directly responsible for the truck bombs, which are allegedly Baath Party members who took shelter in Syria.

Damascus, which is still on the US State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, is believed by US officials to have decreased the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq over the past two years,  but has been unwilling to completely crack down on anti-Iraqi government extremists, which provide the Syrian regime with leverage over its troubled neighbor.

"We are asking to extradite two Iraqis whom we believe are responsible for the attacks of August 19. They lived, worked, and operated in Syria, and this is a fact,” said Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who heads the commission investigating the attacks, at a press conference  He also stated that the Syrian government doesn’t want to cooperate, although the Iraqi government has evidence of Baathist activity in Syria.

The minister did not disclose the evidence, but Syria has a track record of refusing to hand over suspects wanted for attacks in Iraq. Allegedly, Al Qaeda operatives have formed an alliance with Baath Party extremists loyal to Saddam Hussein. Although the two have differing ideologies, Al Qaeda in Iraq is believed to have supplied the suicide bombers, while the Baathists provided the logistics.

But with opinion usually divided in Iraq, there of course dissenting voices, among them Sunni politicians, who say that Iraq’s largely Shia government finds it politically expedient to blame Baathists in Syria, when in fact Al Qaeda carried out the attacks on their own.

Zebari said that if the appointment of the special UN envoy did not move forward, Iraq was prepared to take the issue further by forcing a special meeting of the UN Security Council in which all the member states would have to make public statements about Iraq's claims.

Iraq is one of Syria's biggest export markets and Iraqi officials have not ruled out closing their borders to Syrian products. Such a move could also have  repercussions for the one million Iraqi refugees still living in Syria.

In the meantime, who is going to watch the border?

It is hard to imagine Iraq’s beleaguered security forces being able to control the long, porous border on their own.

“The security forces are performing their duty properly, but the borders are open, no appropriate measures are being taken there and also the political conflict is playing a role in this process," said Mohamed Karim, an Iraqi journalist.

With the deadline for the American troop withdrawal approaching -- the Pentagon has said it is committed to a drawdown plan that would reduce the 117,000 American troops currently in Iraq to 112,000 by the end of the year, with the pace to speed up after the 2010 Iraqi elections -- the bombings cast the preparedness of the Iraqi security forces to control the country in an uncertain light.

Moreover, as the second major attack on the Iraqi government in two months, the bombing constitute a major embarrassment for Maliki, who has built his reputation on his success in restoring law and order to Baghdad. A relative order that threatens to collapse.