The Anbar Awakening

[Old and In the Way]

A friend sent me this clip and I think it's a great synopsis to understand what dynamics really changed the reduction of violence in Iraq. While McCain takes credit for the 'surge', it's apparent that tribal politics and the USD were the factors that really made the difference.


In today's excerpt--in Shiite-controlled Iraq, a key has been evolving U.S. relations with Sunnis, who are as yet not integrated into this Shiite control. As part of this, the U.S. has hired almost 100,000 Sunni militiamen, some with a history of killing Americans:

"Unexpectedly, the most important political development in Iraq during the first year of Petraeus's command--the change of heart by the Sunni tribes--took place in Anbar Province, a large area stretching to the west of Baghdad, which had been the site of some of the war's bloodiest fighting for three years after the invasion.

"In September, 2006, long before the surge had been decided upon, Sunni tribal sheikhs had approached U.S. Marine commanders and offered to switch sides--to align themselves with the United States against Iraq's Al Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militants. The sheikhs had grown weary of Al Qaeda's brutality, puritanism, and arrogance, and they resented its attempts to take control of tribal smuggling businesses. By the time Petraeus arrived, the Anbar Awakening, as it would become known, had started to spread. Petraeus and his commanders turned it into a national project; they spent millions of dollars of American funds and backed up the Sunni sheikhs with military operations against the tribes' enemies. Ultimately, during 2007 and 2008, the United States Army hired about a hundred thousand militiamen, known as Sons of Iraq, at three hundred dollars per month, to serve as neighborhood guards; the Army eventually expanded the program to include Shia militiamen. Most of these guardsmen were former insurgents, some with a history of killing Americans. To Petraeus and his advisers, however, the project presented a prime example of adaptive learning. 'Anbar, you could just feel it flipping,' Petraeus told me. 'Really, the early spring, the mid-spring of 2007, it just started to speed down the chain.' ...

"I joined Petraeus ... for a day of what Army officers call 'battlefield circulation,' a version of management-by-walking-around. ... Petraeus talked about the sectarian demographics in particular neighborhoods we passed. He pointed out the many concrete barriers, known as T-walls, that his forces had erected to separate Sunni areas from Shia ones, or to protect mixed districts from hostile outsiders. ...

"There remains a list of dangers that could reignite violence or even civil war in Iraq. Tens of thousands of Sunni Sons of Iraq must yet be transformed from militiamen into government servants in a Shia-dominated administration; so far, Maliki's government has been slow to accommodate these Sunni tribesmen. Earlier this year, when I spoke with Senator Joseph Biden about the surge, he emphasized the centrality of this challenge. Progress in Iraq will evaporate 'unless they figure out what to do about eighty thousand people in the Awakening,' he said. 'Guess what? They're awakened. . . . They want a piece of the action, and they're not getting any.' "

Steve Coll, "The General's Dilemma," The New Yorker, September 8, 2008, pp. 43-47

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. We paid them

That's what worked - the good old American dollar.

After all, that brilliant tactician, L. Paul Bremer, was the genius who decided to disband the Iraqi army right after we invaded.

Smart move. Put 400,000 Iraqis out of work. Really cool.

So, we started putting money in their pockets, and now it's called "the surge worked."

My ass, the "surge" worked.

The dollars worked.

[atreides1]

2. Here's the Problem

Sometime in the near future those payments will stop and the Shia controlled military and security forces are no longer going to accept recruits from the Sunni minority, and they've already started limiting the numbers.

When this occurs, the Triangle of Death will re-emerge once again and those Sunni tribes will start killing US and Iraqi military forces like they were doing before.

Then will McSame admit that it wasn't the surge in troops alone that resulted in less deaths?

No, he'll stick to the surge, just like those Vets for Freedom do.

[Old and In the Way]

3. There will be blood letting in Iraq if we stay or if we go.

Our presence delays the inevitable, but there's going to be a civil war with Iraqi Sunni's and Shiites acting as proxies for their principal sponsors, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The prize is control of those oil fields. Kurds will probably fight them both. What a mess. Too bad the neocons didn't consider this when they kicked the chair out from underneath the secular government.