Iraq in Wonderland

(Drawing from José Guadalupe Posada)

The ever-alert Gareth Porter points out yet another Alice-in-Wonderland aspect of the Cheney-Bush administration's Iraq War policy in Anbar "Turnaround" Undercuts War Rationale Inter Press Service 08/09/07. He points out that the alliance with Sunni insurgents against "Al Qa'ida in Iraq" undercuts a key part of the administration's argument about why US troops must stay in Iraq indefinitely:

After five years of unsuccessful U.S. military operations in Anbar, the U.S. military's agreements with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar represents an acknowledgment that it was dependent on the very Sunni insurgents it once considered the enemy in Iraq to reduce al Qaeda influence in the province.

In an interview with ABC News May 30, Petraeus admitted that the Sunnis "can figure out who al Qaeda is a heck of a lot better then we can."

The apparent success of Petraeus's shift from relying on U.S. military force to relying on Sunni troops to take care of al Qaeda could be used as an argument against continuation of the U.S. military presence in Anbar.

Recognition that there is a far more effective alternative to U.S. military operations to reduce al Qaeda's influence would be a major blow to George W. Bush's argument against a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops, which has relied increasingly on the threat of an al Qaeda haven in Iraq.

There is more than one problem with the "Anbar" approach, reflecting the murkiness of larger US goals in the Middle East. The government in Baghdad which we are backing with troops and money is a Shi'a-dominated government relying on Shi'a dominated security forces, except in the Kurdish area where the government troops are primarily Kurdish.

In Anbar, we're training and cooperating with Sunni insurgents who see their main enemy as the Shi'a-dominated government in Baghdad and the Shi'a militias, though the US military officially denies providing arms to them.

And, in general, backing local warlords - which is more-or-less what the Anbar approach does - trades off short-term gains for longer-term problems. Once the local militias have been empowered and legitimized in this way, it becomes far more difficult to assert the national government's sovereignty and "monopoly of force" later on. In this case, it's surely even a more severe problem, because we are backing both sides (Sunni and Shi'a) in one of the core conflicts that are part of the Iraqi civil war.

Porter also notes that the demonstrated hostility of the main Sunni insurgent groups in Anbar to "Al Qa'ida in Iraq", and their alleged success in fighting that group, highlights the problem in the most popular Democratic troop-withdrawal proposal. That proposal leaves a multi-Army-division loophole which allows US troops to remain in Iraq to fight "Al Qa'ida".

He reminds us that obvious conflicts between Sunni nationalist groups and the "Al Qa'ida" formation in Iraq were occurring in late 2005. In other words, that conflict long predated the McCain escalation, aka, The Surge. Sunni insurgents and tribal leaders in Anbar appealed to the United States for some kind of truce that would allow them to fight "Al Qa'ida". But the US Gen. George Casey was reluctant to do so, and not without reason. Porter's description of that reason shows why the short-term gain of tribal forces fighting "Al Qa'ida" could make the Sunni-Shi'a civil war more intractable and increase the difficulties for a national government trying to establish its monopoly of force in that province:

The reason the U.S. military refused to allow Sunnis to control security in their own provinces is that earlier in the war Sunni troops and police collaborated with the Sunni insurgents. In April 2004, when Sunni insurgents went on the offensive in the Sunni heartland, the number of Sunni "Civil Defence Corps" troops in the three Sunni provinces fell by 82 percent from 5,600 to about 1,000, according to a GAO report, because whole units deserted to the insurgents.

Meanwhile, as Juan Cole points out at his Informed Comment blog (page down), the Cheney-Bush administration's seemingly schizophrenic Iran policy continues to complicate the war effort in Iraq, as well as diplomacy with Iran.

Tags: gareth porter, iraq war, iran