News from the Front

[Crazy Elf]

Sorry, I just call it like I see it. IED attacks go down when we talk to and enlist the aid of the local populace to police themselves. Tips have gone up. I can't point to specific instances yet, or possibly here. Events are too recent and we're still in the follow-up phase.

Okay, that all follows pretty much what I've been hearing. The US military changed tact over the last year or so in order to actually communicate with the local people. Let's face it, nobody wants bombs going off in their backyard, regardless of headwear.

Even so, AQI is unlikely to stop any time soon. It's a hydra, and always has been. The only fire that can be used to remove those heads is the removal of US forces. People may not want bombs blowing up in their backyards, but that doesn't mean that they want the US there, either.

The US is the lesser of two evils, but it's still perceived, from everything that I understand, as an evil. If AQI ever does move out, the Sunnis and Shi'a will be at the throat of the US again, and once they're gone at the throat of each other.

Do you honestly believe that such a country can be unified without having the borders changed?

Note also, Paladin, that I'm not attacking you, I'm just honestly interested in what you have to say and what you think about the situation. If I sound antagonistic, it's because it's in my nature to show the tell everyone that a coin on a table has a different picture on the other side. I feel it would be dishonest to both you and me if I were not to state as much.

[paladin2019]

I pretty much concur with most of what the elf just said.

Some points that have recently come to light...

Both Coalition Forces (CF) and AQI are perceived as outsiders. Among other ways AQI has tried to shed this stigma, besides the bvious "We're Muslims, too," is by attempting to marry locals. Not well received, very indicative of a desire to never leave. Take it for what it's worth.

Sunni/Shi'a rivalry? Saddam was able to keep it in check, to maintain an Iraqi identity (however shallow(?)), and to aspire to some of what we consider "good" western ideals (education, secularism, gender equality). He was also not the most benign of dictators. Is this what Iraq needs now, representative democracy later?

Yes, I think the country can be unified. <PC mode = off>The Iraqis just need to stop acting like selfish children, and I'm not sure when that's going to happen. Currently, Iraqi culture doesn't see anyone outside the family as worth sticking your neck out for. If change is worked within this system, maybe this loyalty to family can be expanded to all <Sect> is my family and then to all Iraqis are my family. But I'm pretty sure the change will be a generational one. The children may get it, given the right media spin and role models. This is what I see as the major stumbling block (and incidentally, the greatest reason for corruption) to Iraq regaining it's former stature; everyone is out to help his own family and damn anyone else.

<Steps down from the soapbox>

[Marius]

That's quite the discrepancy, and I for one am curious to see why Paladni's and Petraeus's views are so different.

As Paladin displayed they're really not so discrepant

. . .your views sound suspiciously like Bush's position, which is contradicted by the NIE, other reports from the front, and basically every other source I have access to.

. . . I'm not discounting what Paladin says. But I am saying that he's pretty much the *only* positive report I've recieved on the war, and that includes reports from other front-line soldiers.

Which is all odd, since I see what Paladin's been saying reported in big print on the front page of the NYTimes. Begging forgiveness for the ad hominem I'm prompted to wonder how exactly Cain selects what sources he accesses and recieves.

[Crazy Elf]

Both Coalition Forces (CF) and AQI are perceived as outsiders. Among other ways AQI has tried to shed this stigma, besides the bvious "We're Muslims, too," is by attempting to marry locals. Not well received, very indicative of a desire to never leave. Take it for what it's worth.

Interesting, and logical. Like I said, AQI is unlikely to lose any momentum while the US is around. They've had Iraq on the books for quite some time, as bin Ladin said that two of the major war-zones in the next 10 years would be Iraq and Afghanistan back in 1995-6. It doesn't surprise me that there would be some long term aspirations.

Sunni/Shi'a rivalry? Saddam was able to keep it in check, to maintain an Iraqi identity (however shallow(?)), and to aspire to some of what we consider "good" western ideals (education, secularism, gender equality). He was also not the most benign of dictators. Is this what Iraq needs now, representative democracy later?

Well he did manage to keep it in check by gassing people. I'm not sure that the US has the same capacity to force compliance, thankfully. Hell, after removing the Sunni political hegemony, it's pretty clear that a democracy would be most unkind to the traditional Western ideals. The Shi'a aren't so fond of them, and they are the majority.

The moves that are required to force compliance are very drastic indeed. I should hope that other methods are looked at before attempts to force the hands of the locals are made.

Yes, I think the country can be unified. <PC mode = off>The Iraqis just need to stop acting like selfish children, and I'm not sure when that's going to happen. Currently, Iraqi culture doesn't see anyone outside the family as worth sticking your neck out for. If change is worked within this system, maybe this loyalty to family can be expanded to all <Sect> is my family and then to all Iraqis are my family. But I'm pretty sure the change will be a generational one. The children may get it, given the right media spin and role models. This is what I see as the major stumbling block (and incidentally, the greatest reason for corruption) to Iraq regaining it's former stature; everyone is out to help his own family and damn anyone else.

<Steps down from the soapbox>

Well, if the children are the issue, there are bigger issues on the plate to deal with first. After Paul Bremer removed anyone that had been part of the Ba'ath Party from public office, many schools shut down as the principals of the schools had to be Ba'ath Party members in order to hold such a position. Shi'a or Kurd principals would be put in instead, and they'd get death threats and not rock up to their new positions. As such, you had a whole bunch of youth no longer going to school who were very angry. Add to that the disbanding of the Iraqi army, which left 400,000 soldiers out of work and angry with previous military training, and you get one hell of an explosion. Ex-military guys with skill and anger, and youths with anger looking for skills.

If the goal is to win back the next generation, it will probably have to be the generation after this one.

[paladin2019]

And from the mouth of the 12 year old from Iowa comes wisdom </sarcasm>

Seriously, yeah, Elf, you've about got the gist of the problem. While I don't share your pessimism about AQI, they are only a symptom. They will be removed as a major player eventually, I think to be relegated to something like a very unpopular IRA. It's the rest of the home grown militias who will continue to be a problem. But they can't just be disarmed and disbanded because they are the reason AQI willbe marginalized.

So I see the goal to be focusing the militias on AQI and into as many joint-sect (sectual ? ) operations as possible. Maybe forcing them to bleed with each other, rather than bleed each other, will help foster an expansion of their sense of family.

We're workin' on it.

[3278]

..

[Marius]

Let's just see how much Elf agrees with U.S. conservative columnists.

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.
-- Caesar

It took political Washington a good six months to catch up to the fact that something significant was happening in Iraq's Anbar province, where the former-insurgent Sunni tribes switched sides and joined the fight against al-Qaeda. Not surprisingly, Washington has not yet caught up to the next reality: Iraq is being partitioned -- and, like everything else in Iraq today, it is happening from the ground up.

1. The Sunni provinces. The essence of our deal with the Anbar tribes and those in Diyala, Salahuddin and elsewhere is this: You end the insurgency and drive out al-Qaeda, and we assist you in arming and policing yourselves. We'd like you to have an official relationship with the Maliki government, but we're not waiting on Baghdad.

2. The Shiite south. This week the British pulled out of Basra, retired to their air base and essentially left the southern Shiites to their own devices -- meaning domination by the Shiite militias now fighting each other for control.

3. The Kurdish north. Kurdistan has been independent in all but name for a decade and a half.

Baghdad and its immediate surroundings have not yet been defined. Despite some ethnic cleansing, the capital's future is uncertain. It is predominantly Shiite, but with a checkerboard of Sunni neighborhoods. The U.S. troop surge is attempting to stabilize the city with, again, local autonomy and policing.

This radically decentralized rule is partition in embryo. It is by no means final. But the outlines are there.

The critics at home, echoing the Shiite sectarians in Baghdad, complain that an essential part of this strategy -- the "20 percent solution" that allows former-insurgent Sunnis to organize and arm themselves -- is just setting Iraq up for a greater civil war. But this assumes that a Shiite government in Baghdad would march its army into the vast Anbar province, where there are no Shiites and no oil. For what? It seems far more likely that a well-armed and self-governing Anbar would create a balance of power that would encourage hands-off relations with the central government in Baghdad.

As partition proceeds, the central government will necessarily be very weak. Its reach may not extend far beyond Baghdad itself, becoming a kind of de facto fourth region with a mixed Sunni-Shiite population.

Nonetheless, we need some central government. The Iraqi state may be a shell, but it is a necessary one because de jure partition into separate states would invite military intervention by the neighbors -- Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

A weak, partitioned Iraq is not the best outcome. We had hoped for much more. Our original objective was a democratic and unified post-Hussein Iraq. But it has turned out to be a bridge too far. We tried to give the Iraqis a republic, but their leaders turned out to be, tragically, too driven by sectarian sentiment, by an absence of national identity, and by the habits of suspicion and maneuver cultivated during decades in the underground of Saddam Hussein's totalitarian state.
All this was exacerbated by post-invasion U.S. strategic errors (most important, eschewing a heavy footprint, not forcibly suppressing the early looting and letting Moqtada al-Sadr escape with his life in August 2004) and by al-Qaeda's barbarous bombing campaign designed explicitly to kindle sectarian strife.

Whatever the reasons, we now have to look for the second-best outcome. A democratic, unified Iraq might someday emerge. Perhaps today's ground-up reconciliation in the provinces will translate into tomorrow's ground-up national reconciliation. Possible, but highly doubtful. What is far more certain is what we are getting: ground-up partition.

Joe Biden, Peter Galbraith, Leslie Gelb and many other thoughtful scholars and politicians have long been calling for partition. The problem is how to make it happen. Top-down partition by some new constitutional arrangement ratified on parchment is swell, but how does that get enforced any more than the other constitutional dreams that were supposed to have come about in Iraq?

What's happening today is not geographical line-drawing, colonial-style. We do not have a Mr. Sykes and a Mr. Picot sitting down to a map of Mesopotamia in a World War I carving exercise. The lines today are being drawn organically by self-identified communities and tribes. Which makes the new arrangement more likely to last.

This is not the best outcome, but it is far better than the savage and dangerous dictatorship we overthrew. And infinitely better than what will follow if we give up in mid-surge and withdraw -- and allow the partitioning of Iraq to dissolve into chaos.

[paladin2019]

For those who care, I was a few miles away in the same town.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7191234.stm

Still seeing conflicting reports about exact numbers. I'll post more later.