Improvement in Iraq

[Lemur]

The news out of Iraq has been getting less bleak in the last couple of months, much to my surprise. What do Orgahs think? Has the Surge worked? Are the factions more or less slaughter-weary? Did losing Rumsfeld the micro-manager make room for a good soldier like Petraeus to do his thing?

Two questions, really: (1) What is causing the slowdown in chaos and carnage, and (2) can/will this be turned into an enduring peace?

Good article in The Economist this week, but I fear it may be for subscribers only, so I'm re-printing it below the tag.

Can a lull be turned into a real peace?

Dec 13th 2007 | BAGHDAD, BASRA AND FALLUJA
From The Economist print edition

The surge of American troops has dramatically reduced violence. But Iraq's politicians may still squander an obvious chance for reconciliation

AFTER more than three years as an interpreter for American troops in the city of Falluja, Dave (not his real name) recently had his hair cut for the first time by a local barber. Since then, several American marines based inside the city of some 300,000 people have also had their crew-cut domes locally shaved to a gleam. Six months ago they would have had their throats slit—and so, almost certainly, would the barber.

But times have changed dramatically. Once widely considered the most dangerous and xenophobic city in Iraq and one of the country's most resilient havens of al-Qaeda, Falluja is now enjoying a new, if tentative, peace. So, no less strikingly, is the whole of Anbar province, in which Falluja lies, and most of the Euphrates river valley. The Americans say that if you go north and north-west through Hit and Haditha and up to the border with Syria near the town of Qaim, it is clear that al-Qaeda has been chased out—with the co-operation of the local Sunnis and the tribal leaders. In those areas, which embrace the vast majority of Iraq's Sunni Arabs outside Baghdad, attacks against the American-led coalition forces have dropped more than tenfold compared with a year ago.

The peace in Falluja is fragile, as it is in the Sunni parts elsewhere. There is no knowing what would happen if the Americans left in a hurry. It is unclear whether al-Qaeda in Iraq (known in Western military circles as AQI) has been truly defeated or is biding its time. Nor is it certain that the local Sunni tribal leaders who have struck security deals with the Americans across Anbar province would, if the Americans left, make war or peace with the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad.

But however temporary it may prove to be, it is an extraordinary change. In the precinct of Nazal—one of Falluja's nine, each with a joint American-cum-Iraqi police station—locals watch warily as a dozen helmeted young American marines, their guns pointed at the ground, tramp slowly past, avoiding puddles of sewage and piles of rubbish (much favoured by insurgents as a place for planting roadside bombs), and smiling at the knots of ragged children who shout “Chocola, meester” and are sometimes given pencils instead.

After every ten steps or so, the marines swivel round and walk backwards, giving themselves a maximum field of vision. A couple of local Iraqi volunteers, clad in blue jeans and without helmets, accompany the patrol. Locals politely exchange salaams; veiled women with babes in arms retreat hastily behind high metal doors. But the marines say the mood has been transformed. No marine has been killed in Falluja since the summer's surge. The patrol stops from time to time as its leader, a fresh-faced corporal from Chicago, engages passers-by, via Dave, the newly coiffed interpreter from Baghdad, in amiably stilted badinage. A boy is asked about football. A shopkeeper talks about his oranges, and how business is only slowly improving. The Shia-led government in Baghdad, it is plainly believed, is loth to give much help to the Fallujans, with their reputation for Sunni extremism.

After the Americans' ten-day attack on Falluja in November 2004, much of the city was a mess of rubble; despite a spate of building that started in the summer, also thanks to the surge, the marks of destruction are still visible everywhere. At least 1,500 Islamist militants, most of them members of AQI, many of them foreign, were said to have been killed in the siege, but until this spring the city remained a smouldering hub of insurgency.

The turning point, apparently, was the al-Qaeda suicide-bombing of a policeman's funeral in May, when at least 27 locals were killed. Suddenly, it seems, the people began to react against al-Qaeda's excesses—the enforcement of strict dress codes, the banning of music, even (it is said) the cutting off of smokers' fingers—and were ready to endorse the local sheikhs' deals with the American army, even though it had pulverised their city.

Al-Qaeda on the defensive

Falluja is still not back to normal. A curfew remains in force. Just five entry points, guarded by American soldiers alongside Iraqi police, oversee access into the city. Each precinct is like a gated community. Every car must have an identity badge to be let in. Even so, a bombmaker occasionally gets through. “They're waiting and watching,” says an American lieutenant.

Moreover, the rest of Iraq, like Falluja, is still far more dangerous for Americans and other foreigners than it was in the first few months after the invasion of 2003, before the insurgency got going. The entire nerve-centre of the American administration, staffed by some 10,000 people, remains walled off in Baghdad's so-called “green zone”. Few foreign diplomats get out and about. Western journalists use a web of Iraqi reporters, but their movements are still restricted. Several of Baghdad's best-known streets remain off-limits to traffic.

However, it is clear that the al-Qaeda part of the insurgency, which is manned almost entirely by Iraqis though its suicide-bombers and its strategists may still be foreign, has been hard hit. Although in November more than 20 civilians were killed on an average day, mainly by sectarian violence, that is far less than the toll a year ago, when the discovery of as many as 100 corpses at dawn was not unusual. An independent website, icasualties.org, while admitting that Iraqi civilian deaths are hard to count, puts the figure of Iraqi security forces and civilians killed in November at around 560, compared with more than 3,000 last February. American military deaths since October are less than a third of the figure a year ago.

All the indicators suggest that violence has subsided sharply nearly everywhere, not just in Anbar, but also in Baghdad. The border crossing to Syria near Qaim has opened after several years' closure. The oil pipeline from Kirkuk, which goes north into Turkey and should carry more than a fifth of Iraq's oil exports, has been flowing almost without a break for the first time in years; in 2006, it was open for barely 40 days. “We are close to a sustainable level of violence,” says the overall commander of the American-led forces, General David Petraeus. He means that fears of a murderous sectarian meltdown have receded, though he gives constant warning that things could slip back again.

Meanwhile, the Shia heartlands around Karbala and Najaf have been quiet since a bloody bout of intra-Shia sectarian violence in Karbala in August. Since September, when the British left the centre of Basra, Iraq's second city, which is 95% Shia, violence there too has dipped very sharply—and the British, now encamped at an airport outside the city, are being fired on some ten times less than before.

The Kurds are also at peace, despite the hiccup in October and November, when the Turkish army threatened to invade in force in order to clobber the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a group of Turkish-Kurdish guerrillas who use a remote and rugged strip of Iraqi Kurdistan's borderland as a haven. The exception is the disputed city of Kirkuk, where ethno-sectarian violence, mainly between Kurds and Sunni Arabs, shows no sign of abating.

But a bitter battle is still being fought upstream along the Tigris river valley and its tributaries, up to Mosul and beyond. The mixed-sect province of Diyala is probably today's bloodiest cockpit, where the Americans and their allies in the Iraqi security forces are fighting an array of Islamist and nationalist insurgents with al-Qaeda again to the fore.

The surge is by no means the sole reason for Iraq's improved security. A truce was called in August by the biggest and perhaps bravest of the Shia militias, the Mahdi Army, better known to the American-led coalition by its Arabic acronym JAM (from Jaish al-Mahdi), whose gunmen are known as JAMsters. This in turn may have helped turn Sunnis against al-Qaeda; facing fewer attacks from the Shia militias, they had less cause to embrace a ruthless Sunni protector.

The Sunni awakening

But the biggest reason is probably the agreements that the Americans have struck in Anbar province with Sunni tribal leaders who have formed a group known as al-Sahwa (the Awakening). The Americans have armed some 65,000 Sunnis, with another 12,000 or so keen to sign up, in tribal battalions known in coalition-speak as “Concerned Local Citizens” (CLCs). These groups have also set up militias in some suburbs of Baghdad, mainly in the capital's west, where the Sunnis had hosted al-Qaeda with varying degrees of reluctance in the face of a sectarian onslaught. Some 12,000 Shia are also said to be poised to join CLC groups to co-operate with the Americans elsewhere.

The Americans are also freeing thousands of the 25,000-odd detainees they hold on suspicion of being insurgents (quite separately from the thousands more in Iraqi government custody). In the past few months some 3,000 have been let out, and imams have been helping to persuade those about to be freed to disavow AQI.

Yet another reason is what a senior British officer calls “a huge change in American behaviour” since the wily and thoughtful General Petraeus took up his post in January. Efforts to co-operate with local imams, to respect local culture, to hire more locals as interpreters and to increase the number of Arabic-speakers on American military and civilian staffs have borne fruit. It helps, too, that the American ambassador, Ryan Crocker, is an experienced Arabist who can also speak a bit of Farsi.

In Falluja, female officers are deployed to question and search women. American soldiers there almost never go into mosques. But befriending imams is now a priority. Earlier this week, one of Falluja's leading imams, Sheikh Nazar, who has been a critical ally against al-Qaeda, officiated at the opening of a revamped police station. “If we lose him, we lose the lot,” says a marine lieutenant.

It is plain that many of the CLC and tribal groups previously supported—indeed were part of—the national or “honourable” resistance to the occupation and have simply switched sides, seeing that, at any rate in the short run, the Americans could protect them against Shia militia depredations. But many insurgent groups apart from al-Qaeda are still fighting against the Americans and their allies. Some analysts have counted more than 75 of them. Certain prominent groups, such as the 1920 Revolutionary Brigades, named after an uprising soon after the British invented Iraq as a country, say they are simply waiting for the surge and the lull to end before erupting again. Others among these fractious bands are talking to the Americans, and may yet make peace.

A golden opportunity

What is clear, in any event, is that there is a gaping window of opportunity for economic, diplomatic and political progress. On the economic front, most development had been stymied by insecurity. Now projects are starting to go ahead. Electricity in Baghdad is on for up to 12 hours a day, against eight hours six months ago. Oil production, though still not at its pre-war level, has climbed from its trough of 1.75m barrels a day in January last year to more than 2.5m b/d today. Shops are reopening in many parts of Baghdad, and businessmen are hopeful, though foreign investors have yet to return.

On the diplomatic front there are hints of progress, too. American generals have cautiously noted an apparently greater readiness on the part of Syria to clamp down on al-Qaeda and the traffic of insurgents across its border. Iran, too, may be stanching the flow of weaponry to its Iraqi Shia militia friends. More broadly, there is a growing acceptance, both by Iraq's government and by the Americans, that political progress requires a regional framework in which Iraq's key neighbours—Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and Iran—can play a part. The United Nations is back in greater numbers, with a high-class envoy, Staffan de Mistura, ready to help, especially with tricky issues such as provincial polls and the question of Kirkuk.

So Iraq's politicians at last have a chance to use the breathing space provided by the surge and by the Awakening to accommodate each other. Several issues are ripe for resolution. An oil law, to divide revenue equitably while giving regions (especially the Kurdish one) some freedom to grant exploration and management contracts locally, has been in the offing for more than a year. A revised deBaathification law, to bring back officials from the Saddam Hussein era into public service, is under scrutiny, along with a pensions law to give such officials a better deal.

Perhaps most important, a provincial-elections law is under discussion. This could lead the way to new elections in the spring, enabling the newly “awakened” Sunnis of western and northern Iraq to empower themselves, especially in budget matters; last time round, in January 2005, they boycotted the elections. If they had real power in their provinces, they might drop their fierce opposition to devolution, which they have hitherto seen as a Western device to fragment their country.

Alas, there has so far been no sign that the government of Nuri al-Maliki is poised to grab this opportunity. Indeed, as an adviser to General Petraeus glumly describes it, “The politics is going nowhere.” The government still acts like a collection of competing fiefs, not a body that speaks with a national voice. Even among Shias, a paralysing factionalism has, if anything, got worse. The two principal Shia parties, Mr Maliki's Dawa and the better-organised Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), both fear the mass appeal of Muqtada al-Sadr, who has stayed out of government but often calls the shots on the streets.

Worse, Mr Maliki is still failing to reach out effectively to the Sunnis. The main Sunni block in parliament, which had a clutch of ministries in the ruling coalition, continues to take no part in government. Relations worsened recently when a son of Adnan al-Dulaimi, a leader of the biggest Sunni block in parliament, was arrested with some 30 of his father's personal guards on suspicion of involvement in insurgent bombings. To cap it all, the Sunnis are sorely divided too—and not just over al-Qaeda. The main Sunni block in parliament is deeply wary of the Awakening in Anbar, which may displace it as the authentic voice of the Sunnis nationwide.

Mr Maliki himself sounds particularly hostile to the notion of the CLCs—the mainly Sunni tribal militias—being inducted into the security forces or civil service as part of the price of peace. The new Shia establishment hates the arming of the Sunni militias because it thinks they may one day turn their guns against the Shias.

The current edgy lull is due in large measure to a series of local deals cut between the American army (and the British army in Basra) and groups close to the insurgents, with the centrally run state thereby diminished. Indeed, it can be argued that such deals are eroding the state and its fragile institutions still more. But it may be the only way to go.

A tendency to disagree

The fundamental flaw in Iraqi politics persists. The new Shia order remains loth, after centuries of oppression, to give the Sunnis a decent slice of power; and the minority Sunnis seem unable to accept second place in a devolved state. Last week a deputy prime minister, a Sunni, denied that Shias outnumber Sunni Arabs.

In his memoir of service as a British diplomat, among other places in Baghdad in the 1960s, Sir Donald Hawley characterises the Iraqis thus:

[They] are a very talented, intellectual people and have no lack of experts on many subjects. They have a tendency, however, not to agree with one another and are no strangers to violence. Late at night after several strong whiskies, they could be very frank on many subjects, including themselves, and would sometimes grow quite maudlin. We are a very bad people and very difficult to govern. Did we not kill Ali [the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law, whom the Shias revere]? Did we not kill Hussain [his son]? Very few have successfully dominated us...Nuri Said [the pro-British prime minister, assassinated in 1958] too knew how to govern Iraq,” they would say. It is an Iraqi trait to admire strength and to respect it for the stability it can give.

Mr Maliki has a last chance to change things for the better. Iraq's battered people are yearning for their politicians to make up. But some things do not change.

[Ser Clegane]

Interesting article, Lemur.

Just a couple of days ago I read an article that had a similar tenor:
An Iraq Town Shrugs Off Terror

The following snippet hints at one answer to the first of your questions:

(1) What is causing the slowdown in chaos and carnage

"At some point, people simply had enough," Subhi says. The men in the town wanted a future for their families and decided the path to that future involved working with, rather than against, the Americans. Whereas before, people had been paralyzed with fear, they began informing US troops about insurgents' activities. Others would speak up if they saw suspicious-looking characters on the streets of Rawah.

People seem to realize that many of the insurgents in Iraq are not fighting for the people of Iraq but for their own cause. And not only seem people to realize that - they also start to act on this realization.

[Xiahou]

At the risk of speaking too soon, I'd say it's largely to do with Petraeus being a genius. He quite literally wrote the book on counter-insurgencies.

People seem to realize that many of the insurgents in Iraq are not fighting for the people of Iraq but for their own cause. And not only seem people to realize that - they also start to act on this realization.

That's a good start, but without the ability to capitalize on these sentiments, they wouldn't get us far. Originally, I was skeptical of a surge since it seemed just to be throwing more troops at the problem and only making more targets. However, as I read more of the specifics (as they were released to the public) about what was actually being done, I became more optimistic. So far, the results have been tough to argue with.

The only shame is that it took us this long to get to this point. I think if we had the right people in charge over there sooner, we'd be years ahead of the game.

[Vladimir]

Petraeus for president! Rumsfeld was the right guy for the wrong time but I did love his press conferences. Without Iraq he was the man, with Iraq Powell is.

I don't know if the surge is having any direct effect but the symbolism may be more important. Once the local tribal leaders knew that this isn't another Somalia they began to support us. We're the lesser of two evils and want to leave as soon as possible. Al-Queda and their ilk want to stay and assert their dominance. The locals may just be giving us what we want so we'll leave and they can resume their traditional roles. I can live with that as long as congress doesn't do to them what they did to South Vietnam in '75.

I want victory (as defined by long-term peace and prosperity) but I agree with your assessment of "less bleak".

[Rodion Romanovich]

I would say it's the change of strategy, along with battle-weariness, has made all the difference. That, and the change of goals that has come with the other changes. Finally some people with better knowledge have taken the control away from Bush and Rumsfeld.

It's too early to say if this will bring about a lasting improvement however. All that can be said for sure, is that it has increased the chances of establishing at least temporary peace, i.e. increased the chance of war victory, but that doesn't necessarily mean victory in the long-term struggle - whatever that is. With the change of goals in the war (to the better) it isn't entirely clear any more what the goal of the long-term struggle is. Hopefully it will have improved in a similar direction as the war strategy changed.

[Vladimir]

I would say it's the change of strategy, along with battle-weariness, has made all the difference. That, and the change of goals that has come with the other changes. Finally some people with better knowledge have taken the control away from Bush and Rumsfeld.

This is why I don't trust people when they speak against the war:

Battle weariness: Do you mean from our "broken" Army? Who is more weary, our soldiers on multiple deployments far from home or local belligerents? (that's not the correct use of the word but a good catch-all)

Change of goals: What was our original goal? What was it changed to?

People with "better knowledge": The president is still the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. General Petraeus serves at the pleasure of the president as do all commissioned officers. How do you think he received his command?

Nothing against you personally but I'm curious as to what you meant by that. This is the alcohol and rage filled Backroom after all.

[Lemur]

In fairness to Rodion, our President did say that if his party had not been clobbered in the '06 elections, he would not have asked Rumsfeld to resign. So in a sort of extremely indirect way, the course of the war was influenced more by the voters than ... oh, nevermind. It's not even worth trying to torture logic that far.

Let's just agree that Rumsfeld was not the man for the job, and it looks as though Petraeus is.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Yes

[Devastatin Dave]

poor Liberals, so bent and invested on failure in Iraq that when there is good news they must strive to find the negative.

[KrooK]

Whatever happen there, Poles are soon get out of there :)
If our president will not agree on withdrawal before October 2008, Poles will withdraw at the end of this years. I don't think we have anything more to do there. If Iraqui army, after at least 5 years of training, can't cope with terrorists- maybe they simply like being killed.

[Vladimir]

In fairness to Rodion, our President did say that if his party had not been clobbered in the '06 elections, he would not have asked Rumsfeld to resign. So in a sort of extremely indirect way, the course of the war was influenced more by the voters than ... oh, nevermind. It's not even worth trying to torture logic that far.

Let's just agree that Rumsfeld was not the man for the job, and it looks as though Petraeus is.

Holy metal floor Batman! I agree.

But the twisting logic part comes in again because the two have completely different jobs. Who was the guy before? I can't spell his name.

[Lemur]

If you're asking who the commanders of the multinational force in Iraq were, previous to Petraeus there was George Casey. Before him there was Ricardo Sanchez. Not to get totally derailed.

[Xiahou]

Let's not forget the civilian side. Bremer was apparently completely incompetent from what I've heard. The results of his "rule" also speak for themselves. Apparently, his predecessor, Garner, was ousted because he was resisting de-Baathification. I think hindsight may have shown Garner to be correct.

[Lord Winter]

I'm curious about the Iraqis taking control of southern Iraq. If they can handle that things are looking preaty positive for the U.S. not to say that it will be easay from here but theres hope.

I see two major questions rasied by this: 1. Does this change how long we stay even though our millitary is tiered out and the war is plunging us into even more debt. Do we mobilize more to try to finish the job right. (raising taxes, draft ect ect...)

2. Was the media coverage faulty in only emphizing the bad in the months that the surge started going into action? Any baisis.

Another question will this have a big difference in bushes aproval ratings?

I'm honestly not sure that staying in Iraq past '08 is a good idea. We're already in massive amounts of death and maybe we should take this chance to settle the war on merely okay terms that we can live with.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Part A of Rumsfeld's plan was genius. Minimal loss of life taking over a massive country with expediency.

Part B started to become a quagmire. Rumsfeld did not plan it well it seems. Hopefully, after an extended slowdown and a number of failures, Plan B can get under way and finish the genius of the war in Iraq.

I believe, so long as this current pattern is playing out, that history will judge the war in Iraq very favorably. This will ESPECIALLY be the case if we can do a phase out within the next 2 years and cradle the new Iraq to sovereignty.

[Xiahou]

Part A of Rumsfeld's plan was genius. Minimal loss of life taking over a massive country with expediency.

Part B started to become a quagmire. Rumsfeld did not plan it well it seems. Hopefully, after an extended slowdown and a number of failures, Plan B can get under way and finish the genius of the war in Iraq.

I think Part B was another case of the perfect being the enemy of the good. Unattainable goals were set, and when they failed chaos ensued. I think now, perhaps, they're being much more realistic about what kind of government/society Iraq will become.

I believe, so long as this current pattern is playing out, that history will judge the war in Iraq very favorably. This will ESPECIALLY be the case if we can do a phase out within the next 2 years and cradle the new Iraq to sovereignty.

No way will we be out in 2yrs. I think we'll be in Iraq for the foreseeable future- hopefully in drastically reduced numbers though.

[Geoffrey S]

I think it's a healthy development that there's far less talk on schedules for withdrawal. You can't schedule that kind of stuff, purely meant for votes. At the moment there seems to be rather less combat; it gets interesting when the conditions are created to actually improve the daily lives of Iraqi (infrastructure, stable, government, economy,...), which is more where I'd place criteria for success. It'd be interesting to know what those plans are, but I guess it's risky to raise false hopes. Guess the standard mod phrase 'When It's Done' applies here too.

[IrishArmenian]

poor Liberals, so bent and invested on failure in Iraq that when there is good news they must strive to find the negative.

You mean American definition for liberals, yes? If so:
I agree with Dave! Why must we put a price on the lives of people? I mean they're only human.
This is good news, however the U.S. seems torn. With the upcoming elections, this new found "sucess" has a high risk of being crushed, by either side, in a number of ways.
I think the cooperation is due to the Iraqi people's battle weariness, what with the contractors, who are moral rolls of the dice and the fanatics, the real U.S. soldiers are their only protection and way out of the constant conflict.

[Myrddraal]

What do you guys think of the recent withdrawral from Basra?

I hope that's not too off topic...

[PanzerJaeger]

Petraeus for president! Rumsfeld was the right guy for the wrong time but I did love his press conferences. Without Iraq he was the man, with Iraq Powell is.

Ya, poor guy is going to be judged harshly. He was brought in to modernize the Cold War military complex, which he had some success at. I did love his press conferences...

He kind of reminds me of David Schwimmer in Band of Brothers..

[Brenus]

"He kind of reminds me of David Schwimmer in Band of Brothers.." Because he didn't know to read a map, or because he fall in all ambushes?

[JR-]

Petraeus for president! Rumsfeld was the right guy for the wrong time but I did love his press conferences. Without Iraq he was the man, with Iraq Powell is.

Powell would have fought another Desert Storm 1, i.e. a slow methodical bombardment designed to grind down defences, followed by a (relatively) slow advance using conventional ground warfare.

How is this better than using a lightning blitz to cause the immediate collapse of all organised resistance?

Rumsfelds war was brilliant, his 'peace' was the disaster.

BOT: I am delighted with what is this positive trend in iraq news, i read the derspiegal article a day or two back.

Back in Jan 2003 i guessed that:
> the war would be over in at most a month.
> iraq would be chaotic for five years
> iraq would be 'normal' in 10 - 15 years.
I may not have been too far off the mark.

[Odin]

The news out of Iraq has been getting less bleak in the last couple of months, much to my surprise. What do Orgahs think? Has the Surge worked? Are the factions more or less slaughter-weary? Did losing Rumsfeld the micro-manager make room for a good soldier like Petraeus to do his thing?

Yes to all the questions asked. Xiahou is right, patraeus is a smart guy. The question now becomes can the calming effect last with draw downs of troops? Thats the 64 million dollar questions as just under the radar you have the Brits leaving Basra and there is rumblings of inter shia power struggles going on.

I think the surge has worked, but like classic Bush admin policy on Iraq how is it that we get to the next level? Yet again it all seems to be predicated on progress from the iraqi's politically and thats a mistake.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Battle weariness: Do you mean from our "broken" Army? Who is more weary, our soldiers on multiple deployments far from home or local belligerents? (that's not the correct use of the word but a good catch-all)

The opponents you're fighting are more wearied because of high casualties, little achievements, long period of suffering for their own civilians who therefore despise them more than anyone offering to truly help the civilians (Petraeus' changes have been directed towards achieving this), and a number of other things.

Change of goals: What was our original goal? What was it changed to?

For starters, the fact that Bush's cowboy rhetorics have now been replaced by an attitude more directed at trying to understand the region in which the conflict is being fought. Commanders more directed at blindly occupying all regions without a plan for trying to win the battle rather than directed at gaining the strongest sympathy among the regular civilians, have now been replaced by more capable commanders with reverse priorities in that aspect - a dramatic change in goals.

The new commanders are commanders try to identify friends and neutrals, and are directed at getting an end to the fighting. The previous commanders seemed more directed at trying to get as many frags as possible among people who hold guns, regardless of whether this would be achieved through the strategy of trying to make as many unarmed as possible take up weapons. The new commanders are commanders who trust that if the civilians in Iraq are offered safety and guarantees, most of them will like it. Commanders who realize that the Iraqis are humans, and that cooperating with the majority of them is better than trying to get enemies with as many as possible, or to destabilize the region. The old strategy, the strategy of Rumsfeld, seemed to rather have the goal of trying a naive divide et impera by getting the smaller factions to fight each others as much as possible, and destabilize the region as much as possible. This change in attitude from sabotage to cooperation is dramatic. Let's hope that this is indeed a change of goals and not just a temporary change in strategy, and that Rumsfeld's sabotage and destruction attitude won't come back.

People with "better knowledge": The president is still the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. General Petraeus serves at the pleasure of the president as do all commissioned officers. How do you think he received his command?

Bush has apparently felt pressured to hand over command from the previous commanders, who fought in a way corresponding to Bush's cowboy rhetorics, to people who know their stuff. People that hold the same opinions as most people who criticised Bush's behavior in the war up till around 1 year ago. This probably means there has been a weakening of Bush's internal circle of advisors, or - even better - that Bush has realized his shortcomings and failures and tried to correct them. Regardless of which, it's a great victory for the majority of the American people who have criticised the senseless madness that the war was before Petraeus' command begun. It is also a great victory for the liberals that as soon as the strategy they proposed was put into use, the war went through a massive turning point.

[Vladimir]

Again you have proven you have little understanding of the conflict. Your second point can't be defended and is actually the British method of stability operations.

The commanders in Iraq are the same commanders you criticize. What you mean to say is that a new strategy is being executed by them.

The "liberals" offered no strategic insight. "Stop the war" is their rallying cry. "Bush lied, people died" was a common one as well.

When writing something pay careful attention to the repetition of certain words. The use of words like "I" as well as someone's name used repetitively reveal a certain detachment from one's surroundings.

[Rodion Romanovich]

The commanders in Iraq are the same commanders you criticize. What you mean to say is that a new strategy is being executed by them.

No, the command structure has changed. Maybe you've not heard of Petraeus?

The "liberals" offered no strategic insight. "Stop the war" is their rallying cry. "Bush lied, people died" was a common one as well.

The liberals explained that one has to pay attention to the structure of the local population and having insight into their reasons for fighting in order to stop their fighting. They also criticised the fact that the casus belli Bush claimed officially was neither a casus belli nor true (the claim that Saddam had WMDs). The republicans were the ones who screamed "let's screw precision in who we strike, we don't want to waste expensive missiles on hitting a camel's ***" and a cry for crusade and "kill those muslims". We all know how successful that strategy was.

When writing something pay careful attention to the repetition of certain words. The use of words like "I" as well as someone's name used repetitively reveal a certain detachment from one's surroundings.

You know that is funny, because the word "I" doesn't even occur once in my post above.

[Tribesman]

At the risk of speaking too soon, I'd say it's largely to do with Petraeus being a genius.

genius ?
How about it might be something more like him not being a complete imbecile rather than him being a genius

But hey its good news , less people are being shot dead this year than last year (though more are dead through bombings) , if they can keep it up next year maybe they can bring the killings below 2005 levels and then perhaps below the 2004 levels .

What do you guys think of the recent withdrawral from Basra?

Why ask us , why not ask the military commander who has taken over or the police chief .

[Crazed Rabbit]

poor Liberals, so bent and invested on failure in Iraq that when there is good news they must strive to find the negative.

On the front page of today's local paper was a story on how troops are, on average, gaining 10 pounds on deployment in Iraq.

Oh well. Now that we've found the right commander, let's load the old save from January '03 and replace Rumsfeld and the other top guys with Petraeus and the other current commanders.

Seriously, on the Powell vs Rumsfeld, I get the impression Powell would have planned for a massive garrison force in Iraq, not the small force designed to blitz the enemies.

CR

[Pannonian]

On the front page of today's local paper was a story on how troops are, on average, gaining 10 pounds on deployment in Iraq.

Oh well. Now that we've found the right commander, let's load the old save from January '03 and replace Rumsfeld and the other top guys with Petraeus and the other current commanders.

Seriously, on the Powell vs Rumsfeld, I get the impression Powell would have planned for a massive garrison force in Iraq, not the small force designed to blitz the enemies.

CR

If Schwarzkopf under Powell was any guide, he would have first done a hell of a lot of diplomatic groundwork before moving on to anything military, then used the influence the military projected to accrue further diplomatic and political gains, until the point where the stated political goals had been met, or as near as practically possible.

After all this, I'm still wondering how long it will be before the US can leave Iraq to effectively fend for itself against its neighbours, which is the most important goal of all. At the moment, Iraq is effectively a US colony, independent from its neighbours only for as long as US troops protect its independence. If the US garrison goes, how long before Iran, Turkey, Saudi and the rest move in? Turkey are already losing their patience with the north, and once one of them has shown it's safe to intrude on Iraqi affairs, the others won't dare to not interfere. In short, how is the progress on effective Iraqi sovereignty?

[Lemur]

A little on-the-ground reporting and speculation ...

In a Force for Iraqi Calm, Seeds of Conflict

By ALISSA J. RUBIN and DAMIEN CAVE

BAGHDAD — The thin teenage boy rushed up to the patrol of American soldiers walking through Dora, a shrapnel-scarred neighborhood of the capital, and lifted his shirt to show them a mass of red welts across his back.

He said he was a member of a local Sunni “Awakening” group, paid by the American military to patrol the district, but he said it was another Awakening group that beat him. “They took me while I was working,” he said, “and broke my badge and said, ‘You are from Al Qaeda.’”

The soldiers were unsure of what to do. The Awakening groups in just their area of southern Baghdad could not seem to get along: they fought over turf and, it turned out in this case, one group had warned the other that its members should not pay rent to Shiite “dogs.”

The Awakening movement, a predominantly Sunni Arab force recruited to fight Sunni Islamic extremists like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, has become a great success story after its spread from Sunni tribes in Anbar Province to become an ad-hoc armed force of 65,000 to 80,000 across the country in less than a year. A linchpin of the American strategy to pacify Iraq, the movement has been widely credited with turning around the violence-scarred areas where the Sunni insurgency has been based.

But the beating that day was a stark example of how rivalries and sectarianism are still undermining the Americans’ plans. And in particular, the Awakening’s rapid expansion — the Americans say the force could reach 100,000 — is creating new concerns.

How, when thousands are joining each month, can spies and extremists be reliably weeded out? How can the men’s loyalty be maintained, given their tribal and sectarian ties, and in many cases their insurgent pasts? And crucially, how can the movement be sustained once the Americans turn over control to a Shiite-dominated government that has been wary, and sometimes hostile, toward the groups?

Despite the successes of the movement, including the members’ ability to provide valuable intelligence and give rebuilding efforts a new chance in war-shattered communities, the American military acknowledges that it is also a high-risk proposition. It is an experiment in counterinsurgency warfare that could contain the seeds of a civil war — in which, if the worst fears come true, the United States would have helped organize some of the Sunni forces arrayed against the central government on which so many American lives and dollars have been spent.

In interviews with Awakening groups in 10 locations — four interviewed during a week in Anbar, and six groups in and around Baghdad interviewed over several days — it was evident that the groups were improving security in their areas. But it is also clear that there is little loyalty, in either direction, between the Sunni groups and the Shiites who run the government.

The Americans are haunted by the possibility that Iraq could go the way of Afghanistan, where Americans initially bought the loyalty of tribal leaders only to have some of them gravitate back to the Taliban when the money stopped.

Col. Martin Stanton, chief of reconciliation and engagement for the Multinational Corps-Iraq, said the military had no illusions about the Awakening members’ former lives or the reasons for what appeared to be their change of heart.

“These weren’t people who were struck by a lightning bolt or saw a burning bush and came over to this side of the Lord,” Colonel Stanton said. “These were people who last year were being hammered from two different directions: by Al Qaeda and by us. It was probably a distasteful choice to make back then because, after all, they viewed us as invaders, and they probably still do, but it was a survival choice and they made it.”

Though the Americans obtain biometric data on every Awakening group member to try to screen out known insurgents, the government and many Shiite citizens say they fear that the movement has spread so quickly that it is impossible to keep track of who has signed up for it. And while government officials are somewhat willing to accept the tribal character of the Awakening groups in Anbar Province, they are leery of the new ones in and around Baghdad, which have more Baathists from the era of Saddam Hussein in their leadership and are active in more mixed neighborhoods.

“Many people believe this will end with tens of thousands of armed people, primarily Sunnis, and this will excite the Shiite militias to grow and in the end it will grow into a civil war,” said Safa Hussein, the deputy national security adviser and a point man on the Awakening program for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

Still, the government has made only the most halting steps toward rapprochement with the Awakening groups, even those who have been fighting insurgents for months in their neighborhoods.

And for the Americans who helped create and nurture the movement, the initial excitement has been tempered by the challenge of managing a huge, and growing, force where many of the men have shadowy pasts.

“It’s the case with any franchise organization,” said Maj. Gen. John R. Allen, the deputy commander in Anbar Province. “Sooner or later you lose control over the standards.”

Anbar Province

In the summer of 2005, the Abu Mahals needed help. A tribe of notorious smugglers by the Syrian border, they were being pushed out of their own area by a competing tribe that had struck a deal with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown extremist group that American intelligence officials say is led by foreigners.

Some of the tribe’s men had been insurgents, killers of American marines, but the border was an out-of-control no man’s land. So when the tribe proposed an alliance, the Americans decided to give it a try. Weapons and training flowed to the tribe, the extremists were pushed back on their heels — and the Awakening was born.

Nearly two years later, after several important tribes around Ramadi joined, the Awakening movement in Anbar has grown to adolescence, acting at once capable and delinquent.

New offices are opening all over the province, marking their presence with yellow satin flags, armed guards and sheiks aiming to start a national political party.

Legitimacy has come with formal employment. Sheiks who signed up early on gave the Americans names of people they wanted hired as police officers, and the provincial force now numbers 24,000, up from 5,200 in June 2006. That is still short of the Marines’ demand for 30,000, but the government has also agreed to a jobs program for 6,000 civil servants.

Attacks in the province, meanwhile, are at roughly a tenth of what they were last year, according to military figures. And in cities like Ramadi that were once largely beyond American control, construction clatter and the slosh of wet concrete has replaced the snap of gunfire.

But as the movement has spread east through Anbar, two responses have emerged: an intense pride in the hard-fought peace, and a sometimes violent scramble for rewards, credit and power.

The fall brought a major setback. In September, a suicide bomber killed Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, also known as Abu Risha, the Awakening’s charismatic leader, only days after he had met with President Bush. And while his brother Ahmed has stepped forward, American commanders say he has yet to unify the groups under a nationalist banner.

With Abu Risha gone, “it’s not quite as clear it’s a patriotic movement,” General Allen said.

The Americans, meanwhile, are handing out hundreds of million of dollars in aid and reconstruction funds — $223 million to Ramadi and its surrounding areas alone since February. As a result, a dizzying number of sheiks have stepped forward in recent months claiming to be important leaders who fought Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and now deserve money, water plants, new schools and hundreds of jobs for their relatives.

Just to keep track, many American company commanders now travel with thick packets of pictures identifying what one marine described as Anbar’s competing teams: “fake sheiks, little sheiks and big sheiks.”

The Americans, having embraced tribalism to pacify the area, are now having to deal with its consequences. The tribes of Anbar are ancient and secular — many predate Islam — but old rivalries and suspicions have not been erased by steady salaries.

In Ramadi, the provincial capital, the American military set up the police stations to be run and staffed by members of the neighborhoods’ dominant tribe. Though unified against Islamic insurgents, two of the police stations were involved in a shootout with each other a few weeks ago. And loyalty to sheiks sometimes trumps loyalty to the law, allowing tribal leaders to commandeer members of the police or army to give them personal protection.

On one recent afternoon, Second Lt. Stephen Lind, a member of a Marine company patrolling south Ramadi, discovered a handful of armed Iraqi soldiers standing guard outside a sheik’s spacious home — defying a rule that bans the Iraqi Army from the city.

“What are you doing here?” Lieutenant Lind asked one of the men.

They had arrived a day after the sheik had an argument with the local police commander.

“The sheik told us to come,” the man said. As he spoke, a pickup truck filled with a half-dozen others drove out of the compound, and a glance inside showed several more, milling about, their red berets and weapons clearly visible.

Neither the Iraqis nor Lieutenant Lind expressed surprise. “He has a lot of power,” Lieutenant Lind said, walking back to a joint security station a few blocks away. “That’s how the city rolls right now.”

American commanders later sought to play down the significance of the sheik’s use of the army, noting that he was an assassination target, and that the troops stayed for only about 36 hours. Col. John Charlton, commander of the First Brigade Combat Team, Third Infantry Division, which oversees Ramadi and its surrounding area, also said there were plans to start moving policemen to new stations to dilute the tribal concentrations — a proposal that some local sheiks said they would be likely to resist.

The standoff, though, underscored the Awakening’s long-term challenge. The American military has empowered a group of unelected leaders and is now involved in the difficult task of integrating them into a democratic system new to them, to create bonds with a Shiite-led government they do not respect or acknowledge as legitimate.

The Marines have already begun to draw down troop numbers in the province. But with the clock ticking, it remains unclear what the Awakening will become and whether the tribes will stick together or segregate. Nor is it clear whether Iraq’s government will ever meet the tribes’ demands, which range from the simple (more electricity, water and jobs) to the extreme (a wildly disproportionate share of the seats in the Parliament).

In interviews with more than a dozen sheiks in the province, along with police officers, local leaders and imams, not one expressed any trust in the government of Prime Minister Maliki. “They are working only for the Shiites,” said Mahmoud Abed Shabeeb, who acknowledged that 130 members of his tribe were policemen, paid by the Shiite-led Interior Ministry in Baghdad. “Everyone knows that.”

Baghdad

Only a few months ago, the Sunni neighborhood of Fadhil was virtually a no man’s land, shelled relentlessly by Shiite militias, its walls gouged with shrapnel and its streets pooled with sewage because city workers were afraid to enter. Now the neighborhood seems to be waking after a long sleep. Several teahouses reopened in December after being shuttered for months, and old men sat outside on wooden boxes, apparently no longer afraid of neighborhood militants or attacks by outsiders.

The newfound confidence is attributable in large measure to the Fadhil Awakening Council, formed just four weeks ago. Wearing red-checked kaffiyehs and black leather jackets with guns jutting out underneath, the Awakening guards patrol the neighborhood with a casually menacing air.

They are led by Adel Mashadani, a burly former member of Saddam Hussein’s Special Republican Guard, unabashed about his former insurgent ties. He boasts that he turned the “National Iraqi Resistance Council of Iraq into the Fadhil Awakening Council.”

While Mr. Mashadani is ready to look past his former enmity to work with the Americans, he draws the line at any partnership with the central government. He characterizes Shiite officials as pawns of Iran and Shiite death squads, a common view among Sunni Arabs in both Baghdad and Anbar.

“We want to work for the Americans, not the government,” he said. “It is as clear as the sun: the Iranians have dominated the ministries, the whole government. These guys are a bunch of conspirators who belong to Iran.”

That mistrust is pervasive, and it clouds the future of the nascent Awakening movement in Baghdad and its surrounding province. It has grown like wildfire since June, with 43,000 guards in at least 17 neighborhoods as of Dec. 10, according to the American military. And interviews in four areas of Baghdad suggest that there is more deeply held antipathy there between the government and the Awakening groups than in Anbar.

The Baghdad groups are less bound by tribal affiliation than the Anbar groups, relying instead on neighborhood pride and trust born of shared disdain for the Iraqi government. Many of the Baghdad members were Baathists and served in the security forces under the Hussein government.

In turn, the Iraqi government worries that Shiites living in mixed neighborhoods could become victims if Awakening group members were to return to violence.

“Some have agendas beyond their neighborhoods and they try to use their positions in the Awakening to promote other agendas,” said Mr. Hussein, the deputy national security adviser.

American commanders say they believe they have been able to weed out most of those who were operatives for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and they discount the Iraqi government’s worries about a conspiracy among Awakening groups.

“They look at the aggregate number here, 65,000, and they say, ‘Oh, that’s the size of an army corps, that’s 65,000 armed Sunnis just ready to leap on us,’” Colonel Stanton said. But, he added, they do not all work together that closely.

Neighborhoods with hard-liners, like Fadhil, leave the Iraqi government with questions, though, not least of all because the leaders there freely say that they meet with other Awakening leaders to share ideas. Some leaders in Anbar also say they are actively encouraging growth across the capital.

In southern Baghdad, where the Awakening started several months earlier, American troops are pouring money and resources into neglected, battle-scarred Sunni neighborhoods like Dora.

The First Squadron of the Fourth Cavalry has been based in Dora since May, establishing Awakening groups — which are often called sahwas, after the Arabic word for awakening — and embarking on a frenzy of rebuilding. The squadron has spent $4.3 million during that time, much of it on electricity projects and trash removal, and it plans to spend $2.1 million more.

Lt. Col. James Crider, the squadron’s commander, helped organize the Awakening groups in eastern Dora, now employing 300 guards, the vast majority Sunnis. The Americans manage them closely, breaking them into three groups that monitor the area’s three subdivisions. The soldiers also run patrols 24 hours a day, to head off violence, oversee the rebuilding and monitor the Awakening groups.

It is clear that, for now at least, the American military has won the groups’ allegiance. American troop deaths in Baghdad Province have plummeted to 14 this November, from 59 last December, and have been occurring at an even lower rate this month.

In Dora, the squadron was last attacked on Sept. 9, when a soldier was killed by a grenade. (In the four and a half months before that, the squadron lost eight men.) The last killing of an Iraqi in the neighborhood was on Oct. 18.

A contractor hired by the American military is rebuilding sewage pipes on one of Dora’s main shopping streets, and young women roll strollers into a newly refurbished health clinic.

But it is far from clear whether that peace will last when the Americans begin transferring authority to the Iraqis. Clashes have already broken out in some places between the groups and Iraqi security forces, with two policemen killed last week near the northern city of Baiji.

Saleh Kashgul Saleh, a former colonel in Mr. Hussein’s feared Mukhabarat intelligence service and one of the leaders of the Awakening in Dora, suggested that some of the men in the movement would return to the insurgency if the government did not accept them into the security forces.

“We have a lot of unemployment, and anyone, if he doesn’t have a job, takes even a job where he does bad things to provide for his family,” Mr. Saleh said. “They need to hurry about this.”

The government also needs to demonstrate some interest in improving basic living conditions in Sunni-dominated areas, otherwise people will lose faith that the government cares about them, he said.

“We ask the government for help, for electricity, for any services, but they do not even meet with us,” he said. “The only government that has cleaned anything in our area is Captain Cook, he is our government.” He was referring to Capt. Nicholas Cook, the commander of the American cavalry troop that patrols his subdivision of Dora.

Colonel Crider said he had even had trouble getting Iraqi government officials to visit Dora to assess its needs.

Shiites, however, see the Awakening groups as wolves in sheep’s clothing. “It’s my personal belief that before they were ‘the Awakening’ they were Al Qaeda,” said Moad Muaed Qassim Mohammed, a young police captain for the national police unit that patrols Dora. The national police has been widely criticized for cruelty to Sunnis.

“I have pictures of some of them. They were wanted men,” he said. “I deal with Colonel Crider. I trust him and I don’t trust anyone else. I don’t think the Awakening men should join the Iraqi police. It would be no better than putting Al Qaeda informants into the police.”

Looking Ahead

The Iraqi government and the American military appear to be on different timetables. While government officials have agreed in principle to add thousands to the security forces, their opposition to the movement has recently grown more vocal. On Saturday, Iraq’s Defense and Interior Ministries held a joint news conference at which they declared that Iraq would not tolerate the groups’ becoming a “third force” alongside the army and the police.

Despite the government’s promises, hardly any Awakening members outside Anbar have actually been moved off the American payroll and into Iraqi government jobs.

Of the 43,000 new Awakening members in Baghdad Province, for example, only about 1,700, in the suburban community of Abu Ghraib, have gotten jobs in the Iraqi police.

Many of the rest have applied for police jobs but for now are financed entirely by the Americans. The Awakening members are paid about $300 a month — considerably less than the salaries of police officers or soldiers.

Meanwhile, the American military is planning to begin withdrawing units this summer.

“Once we get past the summer, we’re not going to have enough people on the ground to administer the contracts,” Colonel Stanton said. “So between the time we draw down and now, we have to find something else for these guys to do.”

That, he said, is where Iraq’s government must step in.

The military proposes that the government hire 20,000 to 25,000 to serve as police officers in their own neighborhoods. To help the rest of the Awakening members, the American military is considering creating a program modeled on the 1930s civilian job corps that employed people during the Depression, said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking American commander in Iraq. The members would help deliver basic services or make repairs locally.

But there are kinks to be worked out. “We don’t want to create a parallel government,” General Odierno said.

And at the same time, the long-term prospects for the corps is in doubt, because most Iraqi ministries are already overstaffed. The Awakening is still growing, especially in northern areas of the country, where Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is regrouping. Colonel Stanton said the military aimed to keep the total number of Awakening members below 100,000, at the request of the Iraqi government.

Government officials said they planned to hire some Awakening members in the security forces. But, the officials added, they are worried that there are so many people seeking police jobs that the government will be unable to hire them all.

“We would have tens of thousands of people hired to do some security jobs,” said Mr. Hussein, the deputy national security adviser, referring to the men the Americans have hired. “And we do not have enough space in the security ministries to absorb them.”

“And after being paid for a period, it will create a security problem if we fire them all at once,” he added.

Hanging over everything is the government’s deep unease over the background of many Awakening members. Mr. Hussein said that the government believed that almost half of the 65,000 who were already on the American payroll were involved in the insurgency in some way. And he said that intelligence sources had reported contact between the leadership of some of the Awakening groups and the former Baathist insurgency outside the country.

“Will they go back to being insurgents?” he said. “Will they be dangerous? We don’t know yet.”

Stephen Farrell contributed reporting from Baghdad, Saab al-Bor and Iskandariya.