Image by a62a68
The "surge" worked, mainly, not because of more troops, but because of more money and weapons. The Sunnis needed money and guns to fight their insurgency. They got those, in part, from Al-Q’aeda in Iraq, but by the time of the surge, AQ had overstepped itself and tried to get control. It started assassinating Sunni leaders and it engaged in very indiscriminate killing, which the Sunnis didn’t like. along with engaging in some violations of the norms of war as the Sunnis saw it.
Into this steps the US and says, "we can give you money and weapons, and all you have to do is take out the AQ people who are trying to get control of you by assassinating your leaders." This then was the "Awakening"—guns and money for dealing with AQ, and for peace afterwards.
Since the endgame in Iraq was about who would control Iraq after the US left, which was indicated by the fact that Iraqi government forces were under heavier attack than the Americans (who were attacked just enough to keep the cost high), the Sunnis said "sure." By accepting the money and arms they got to build up to be in a better position when the Americans left—either for negotiation, or for war.
But the Shia central government is aware of this, and in the past few months, they’ve started arresting and assassinating Sunni leaders, in preparation for when the Americans leave. Remember, the Shia government forces aren’t that impressive. Their last independent major operation was in Basra against the Sadrists, and until American forces intervened and Iranians played diplomat, they were losing.
So, Maliki is trying to get his licks in and weaken or break the Sunnis before the Americans leave.
As a result you’re seeing a spike in attacks because, strangely enough, the Sunni Awakening leaders don’t want to be arrested or killed. You aren’t seeing all-out warfare yet because the Sunnis know the US will step in; the US is helping Maliki with his crackdown, and the Sunnis want to save their forces for the real showdown over who controls Iraq after the US leaves, or perhaps more accurately, who gets how much of the oil revenues.
Iraq is not stable. The problems in Iraq were papered over with money. But now that the money is going away, and Maliki is violating the terms of the American brokered truce, the papered-over problems are re-emerging.
Endnote: In addition to the Awakening, the Sadrists standing down, the completion of ethnic cleansing in Baghdad, Iranian intervention, and the British withdrawal from Basra all contributed. But in terms of the Sunnis, money and guns for peace was the primary consideration.
Related posts:
Spotlight
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About Firedoglake
Advanced search
No one could have anticipated …
So after we take out the Sunni strongman named Saddam Hussein and bring “democracy” to Irag; with over 4.2K US soldiers killed and tens of thousands US soldiers injured and 100s of thousands of Iraqis dead and injured, we will be most likely leaving a Shiite strongman in charge.
Ho-kay.
Patrick Cockburn disagrees with you about Maliki. Sez he’s very much in control and that the new forces are pretty well trained. Toward the end of this interview.
Iran won.
Seems so to me eChan. What a waste of American treasure and I mean our soldiers not the money although that could have funded health care for all.
No one’s really challenged them in a while. But he may be right, we’ll see. I have a fair bit of respect for Cockburn.
We ain’t seen nuttin yet. Wait until the Afghan surge and drone attacks in Pakistan further destabilize that region.
Cockburn still is sticking with the story that Maliki has to kick the U.S. out according to the SOFA, otherwise lose all internal support. The U.S. generals, however, pooh pooh the SOFA. I don’t know what to believe, but don’t underestimate the U.S. if it decides to stay.
It’s really up to Obama in the end, if he’s willing to make the decision. Either way. But if he stays and Maliki asks him to go, it will be a real mess and Iraq will eat his presidency (assuming AfPak doesn’t, which it likely will, anyway.)
please excuse the early ot, but ralphbon has an urgent diary for anyone who cares about single payer and is willing to make a phone call: Call Senate Finance Committee Members Today and Protest Absence of Single-Payer Advocates on Healthcare Roundtables
last time this happened, last minute protests made the difference, let’s see if it can be done again.
Is this a surprise to you?
The endgame had two options:
1. The US is greeted as liberators, flowers strewn at our feet and all the cheep petrol and falafile our hears could desire for generations to come.
2. A strongarm tyrant who is more sympatheic to our need for petrol and falafil than the last guy – or at least a little more afraid of us.
My working hypothesis is that Obama’s being rolled by the generals. Not only is he green, and therefore unable to have any strong opinions of his own, his general nature seems to be to side with the powers-that-be. So I wouldn’t look for any leadership from Obama.
Egypt slaughtered 300,000 pigs thinking they were spreading swine flu, or something.
There are almost no endgame scenarios that do not include a major civil war. The miracle will be keeping it from spreading into a theater-wide religious war. I am pessimistic.
I thought the civil war was over, the Sunnis lost, ethnic cleansing separated the sects. Yes, the U.S. has armed some Sunnis, but are they really strong enough to overcome the Iraqi army? It’s up to several hundred thousand.
So a Sunni insurgency seems more likely that another full bore civil war.
Obama is not a bold leader.
His decisions on Iraq will be based on U.S. politics.
But all paths lead to this: an Iraq under strong Iranian influence.
Meantime, more billions of dollars down the drain.
How long is it till the 2012 elections? Are there any good contenders? (Didn’t think so.)
No, it is the al-Hakim’s who are driving this not al-Maliki.
The Kurds have wanted a Kurdistan since at least the end of the Ottoman Empire. The Kurds span Eastern Turkey, Northern Iraq and Western Iran. And probably whatever is to the north of that arc.
Peace? Oh right. Only when they all have some outsider (with little or no money) at which to point a gun…
How do the al-Hakims differ from Maliki and why are they attacking the Sunnis? (Sorry, but I am not up to speed on the different groups within Iraq. I’ve read some reports that deal with that subject, but I’ve not spent enough time to really learn it.)
Agreed. Further: I look for a tenuous support for the Sunnis (as counterintuitive as it seems) from the Kurds, in order to tie down as many Iranian assets as possible, in helping Maliki deal with the insurgency. This makes it easier fir the Kurds to declare independence, having to fight just the Turks instead of Turks, Iranians, and Iraqis.
YMMV.
Good to see you. Ian!
A few hundred thousand reliable people?
Peace to you and yours Mohammed ibn Laith.
Thank you for your diary yesterday reminding us of the Press Freedom Day. In our cocoons, we do tend to forget those who give their lives trying to bring information to the world.
Your guess is as good as mine. I’m just repeating what I heard.
The al-Hakims control ISCI – what used to be called SCIRI. ISCI controls the interior and defense ministries. Those are the two ministries running the anti-Sahwa campaigns.
I’m glad you asked that question! I thought I was the only one who didn’t know…
Thanks. What is their objective? Weakening the Sunnis? Is Maliki looking the other way, or does he think that such goings on will weaken the possibility of national unity after the U.S. leaves?
Thanks for the correction.
Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Their aim is the same as it always was to create a statelet which they will dominate in the south.
Thanks again.
Maliki is trying to ally with all the nationalist groups before the confrontation with the Kurds.
Peace to you also. Should you see the person who signs themselves as “cinnamonape” online would you be kind enough to tell them that I left a reply with links to resources for:
on that posting. We use versions of the linked resources ourselves.
So, does he have no effective control over defense and interior? If that’s true, then it seems to me he’s got a real problem. (understatement)
Which side will start the confrontation with the Kurds? I thought they were, for the moment, OK in their current situation, its being the best they can hope for. Does Maliki et al want to challenge their semi-autonomy, or do the Kurds want more? Or it this over Kirkuk and its oil?
It is over Kirkuk, Mosul, and the disputed areas. I think the Kurds will start the fighting. Some would argue they already have started it in Mosul and its hinterland. I do not agree I think what we are seeing there is skirmishing before the main fighting begins.
Edit: in response to eCAHNomics May 4th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
He has partial control. His control is better at defense than at interior. This is why he is creating forces which report to him.
Yep! Iraq is the New Iran! All the rage today. Spit.
Shortly after the U.S. invasion, I read that the Kurds were moving back into Kirkuk and dispossessing the Sunnis that Saddam had used to dispossess them. Do you have any idea how much the composition of the population has changed?
No, and nobody else does either. This is why the forthcoming census is so important. My guess would be that Arabs, Christians, and Turkmen still outweigh the Kurds in Kirkuk. But perhaps not by much.
Wow. I didn’t realize there was to be a census. I missed that entirely. If it can be done even close to accurately (what do you think?) it will add a great deal of information to the situation. Here’s an article I came across on the subject.
Oh the census is of considerable interest in Irak, not least because of Kirkuk. For which the only figures that everyone agrees on are 50 years old. We have opened a topic for postings on it here:
gorillasguides/tag/census/
At present all the postings are in Arabic but I expect that Englsih postings will come as the deadline draws near.
This article: الجهاز المركزي للاحصاء يواجه عددا من المشاكل
Describes one of the main problems faced by the pilot census which is the lack of maps of the towns and villages. They are hopeful they can overcome the problems but warn that if they cannot it will impact severely the main census in October.
I find how you have expressed this interesting. How has Maliki violated “the American brokered truce”? What truce are you talking about? In Irak it is seen that it is the Americans who are doing the violating and that is of their SOFA.
thank you, Mohammed Ibn Laith, for your comments and discussion.
Peace to you, and thank you for your courtesy. It is late here and I am tired, I will wish you farewell until the next time.
Well, my Arabic isn’t what it should be (that is, it doesn’t exist), but now that I’m aware of the census, I’ll keep my eyes open for any information on it. Is the article I linked, saying that 250,000 schoolteachers will conduct it, and that it is in October, and that they won’t ask Sunni/Shia, accurate?
My college major was chemistry, and when I switched fields to economics, I relied heavily on data, stemming from my science background. So the Iraqi census will be very good information for me. I’d imagine it will be essential for Iraq.
And very controversial too.
Even in the U.S., there is great controversy over the census that occurs every 10 years. FYI, it involves the greater statistical accuracy of surverys as compared to a complete count. (I use statistics, but I am not a statistician. However, I’m familiar enough with the field to understand why there are so many more errors in a “complete count” than in a well defined statistical sample.
The crux is the undercount in poor areas, where families may be reluctant to answer the survey for a whole variety of reasons. So a statistician studying the areas in question can design a sample that will be more accurate than a response to a census. (Done by mail with telephone follow up.)
The U.S. census is used for the allocation of the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The one location that loses the most with the current method is, of course, NYC, where I live. I know a NYC Corporate Council (i.e., the chief lawyer for the city) who litigated it before the U.S. Supreme Court twice, losing both times. It looks like Obama’s administration may go for the sampling method this time, and the Republicans have their knickers in a twist.
As an experiment, I did not answer the 2000 census, either in my city apartment, or my country house. I still had a land line telephone in both places (now I have only a cell phone, and those numbers are not listed). I never recieved a follow-up by mail or by phone for my non-responses, illustrating only one of the many foibles of censuses.
Thought you might be interested in a bit of information from me, since you’ve been so generous in providing information to me.
Not to mention caving to the likes of Citi and BoA.
However the Sunnis will have the support of the Saudis, both financial and fighters. Among the latter will likely be al Qaeda affiliates, and the Sunnis will be in no position to decline their services.
I am astonished if anyone is, in fact, truly surprised to discover that getting down and flailing about in a quagmire just makes it more of a quagmire.
Anyone that looks at Iraq’s history can see that it has always been a fantasy, never a real country. For the Ottoman Turks, it was an administrative area that grouped together a bunch of territorial and ethnic anomalies that did not fit anywhere else. After World War I, the British found it convenient to invent a country called Iraq, so that they could set up Sharif Hussein and his sons as king of something after they and the French betrayed him and denied him his planned pan-Arab nation capitaled at Damascus (st the same time as they reneged on promises of a Jewish homeland). The pro-Nazi Arab fascists that became the Baath movement found Iraq no less convenient. To emulate right-wing European nationalism they needed a nation–especially after the movement split and other factions grabbed Lebanon and Syria. All of these historical fantasies were more plausible than the Bushista variant that first saw Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a defender of Western values and then as a sort of Middle-Eastern West Germany waiting to emerge from the ashes of its Baatho-Nazi past. But, nonetheless, they were all fantasies.
Outside of a few cafes and political party halls, Iraq is at least four countries, none of which has clean boundaries: Kurdistan in the north, Sunni Arab Iraq in the west, and Shiite Arab Iraq in the south east. Scattered across it, with no territory of its own, is an ancient Chaldean Christian nation that everyone persecutes.
Someday, maybe the locals will figure out a way to build themselves a real nation. But I doubt it. Partition will probably happen, but will not bring stability. Turkey will not tolerate an independent Kurdistan for ideological reasons. Shiite Arabs will not long tolerate Persian rulers, even if they do share a religion. Iranians are probably no happier about Kurdistan than Turks.
So, in short, its a mess. We need to get out now. No good can come of our involvement now, just as none has come of it up until now.
Al Sadr is a loose cannon, and commands LOTS of followers.
The Kurds are still in the game.
The Sunni/Baathists are all OVER the game.
Ethnic cleansing has only barely begun, and there will be a huge civil war when we leave.
It was inevitable the day we went in. And lots of progressives have predicted the end game.
My only question left is what Obama will do as we draw down and it all goes to hell in Iraq.
Will he continue to get out?
Or will he resurge?
If he resurges, it’s a one term presidency, and as said above already likely is given Af/Pak operations.
A great opportunity will be squandered and wasted unless Obama discovers his inner FDR, for the home front and the foreign front . . .
Bingo. Thanks for the reminder. Spot on true.
The Shia, under al Hakim and SIIC, want control. They face al Maliki, another Shia, al Sadr, another Shia, the various Sunni factions, various warlords in general, the Kurds . . .
But they Iran’s full support, whereas al Maliki does not.
Civil war, with SIIC the real likely winner of all the marbles when it’s over.
ISCI or SIIC? Now ‘I’m’ confused . . . thanks for your comments, BTW.
Your insights are more detailed than I can find on most of the Antiwar or prog sites that focus on ME Affiars/Asian Affairs, thanks for the inside info . . . greatly appreciated . . . .
Do you have any thoughts as to how the USA will respond in the next 6-12 months to changes on the ground in Iraq?
And what role do you see Israel playing, as this all comes to a head? Will they strike Iraq, as well as Iran, if they can?
Great history, much of which I didn’t know . . . provides a MUCH clearer picture of the clusterphook that was, is, and will be.
As you posit, we have NO business there, despite the natural resources issues . . . it has only drained us, and will continue to do so.
Well, there IS that war profiteering benefit our banking and financial community is tied to vis a vis the war machine and Pentagon . . . but for Joe and Jane America? Not so much benefit.