The myth of the U.S. troop surge in Iraq (ethnic cleansing = "collateral damage")

[Hannah Bell]

The Obama administration is using the "success" of the troop surge in Iraq as an argument for a similar surge in Afghanistan. But violence in Iraq declined in 2007 not because of the U.S. troop surge.... The primary factor responsible for the decline in violence in Iraq was the culmination of the sectarian cleansing of Sunnis - principally in Baghdad, formerly a thoroughly mixed ethnic city since the advent of the republic in 1958 and through Saddam Hussein's rule - by the newly empowered Shia majority in their drive to national pre-eminence.

The details of our argument are outlined in two reports available online: "Baghdad Night" (UCLA) and "Baghdad Divided" (ISN). The former uses light emissions at night by neighborhood, before, during and after the surge to track the effects of the violence in the capital and to make its case. It was the predominantly Sunni areas that were overwhelmingly most likely to darken; the Sunnis were either killed or ejected and shut off the lights in the process. The latter report contains maps chronicling the sectarian cleansing of Baghdad and its consequent division. (Maps developed by Dr. Michael Izady for Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) Gulf/2000 Project).

To begin, the sectarian cleansing of Sunnis peaked well before (December 2006-January 2007) the full onset of surge operations in mid June 2007 - as shown by data provided by the US Department of Defense, particularly the report issued by Gen. James Jones in September 2007, now President Barack Obama's national security adviser. Our light signatures and sectarian maps corroborate the effective partitioning of Baghdad by February-March 2007.

With much of the Sunni population left fleeing toward Anbar province, Syria and Jordan, and the remainder holed up in the last Sunni stronghold neighborhoods in western Baghdad and parts of Adhamiyya in eastern Baghdad, the impetus for the bloodletting waned. The Shia had won, hands down, and the fight was over...

http://socialistworker.org/blog/critical-reading/2010/06/13/myth-us-troop-surge-iraq

[Sonney2020]

1. K& R

[jaxx]

2. The surge worked because the Sunni were paid to stop

fighting us.

[Hydra]

3. The "surge" was the biggest scam imaginable

And the fact that people think it "worked" will probably be forever touted as a reason for escalation.

[PacerLJ35]

4. Most of the Sunnis I know that had left Baghdad early on had moved back by last year

Things have stabilized quite a bit. There are a lot of factors on why, but the surge was among the reasons.