MSNBC is reporting that “a principal architect of Iraq’s interim constitution, who resigned in August as one of the country’s top diplomats, has laid out a devastating critique of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the U.S. occupation, telling NBC News that, functionally, “there is no Iraqi government.”

[Feisal Amin] Istrabadi traced what he called the country’s “chaos and instability” in part to the U.S. insistence on holding elections in 2005, before Iraq had developed robust democratic institutions to buffer the influence of religious leaders.

“Both the Shia and the Sunnis were told if they didn’t vote for their respective parties, that would be a violation of their religious duties,” Istrabadi said.

The result was a government dominated by Shiite Islamist parties and a constitution rejected by Sunni ethnic groups. Shiite Islamist parties have blamed the Sunnis for refusing to engage in the political process.

“I think the question was: ‘Should elections have been held?’ And I think that there is only one answer to that question, and that’s absolutely not,” Istrabadi said.

Istrabadi’s comments come on the heals of a new report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction which concluded that U.S. attempts at political reconciliation, economic growth, and building an effective police force in Iraq “have failed to show significant progress.”

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