Dissecting "The Surge"

John McCain clings to “the surge” of US troops into Iraq as proof that 1) America is winning in Iraq and 2) that he’s the best man to serve as America’s next president.

The success line is built on two facts – the US sent an additional 30,000 soldiers to Iraq and violence in that country subsided. It’s highly convenient for McCain to claim that one led to the other, convenient but also highly misleading.

There are a number of reasons for the drop in violence in Iraq but there’s also an awful lot of wishful thinking thrown in for good measure by those with a personal stake in the surge.

We know that a major cause for the drop in violence in Baghdad has been the conclusion of ethnic cleansing. The Shiites have taken over the city and the Sunni and other minorities have been “cleansed” to their own, ethnic enclaves. The surge did nothing to stop much less reverse the ethnic cleansing of Iraq’s main city.

Another major cause for the drop in violence has to be credited to Muqtada al Sadr who has reined in his powerful Shiite militia, the Mahdi army. The good news is that al Sadr has told his forces to lay low. The bad news is that al Sadr has told his forces to lay low. The fuse on that little bomb may have been put out but the guy holding it still has a pocketful of matches.

Then there’s the Sunni resistance which has, at the moment, loaded up with American weapons and American cash to fight their fellow Sunnis, the al-Qaeda terrorists. Now that al-Qaeda has decided to refocus its efforts on Pakistan and Afghanistan, the resistance is pushing on something of an open door. The good news is that the Sunni resistance is winning. The bad news is that the Sunni resistance is winning. You see, the resistance has all along said, quite openly, that they’ve only called a temporary truce in their battle with the Americas and the Shiite militias. That was enough, however, for the US forces to re-arm, re-equip and heavily fund their once and future adversaries.

If the surge had really worked it would have meant somehow defanging the militias and the resistance. The whole political reconciliation business was intended to lay the groundwork for an end to ethnic violence but that hasn’t happened.

The spoiler is America itself. The United States wants Iraq to grant it a near-permanent and autonomous military presence in that country. The Pentagon envisions expanding its existing 32-bases to 60 in total. That, kids, is a clear statement that America has no intention of leaving or even limiting its military dominion over Iraq any time soon. There’s a reason why the US has built its largest embassy in the world in Baghdad, on a site bigger than the Vatican itself.

This is a demand that neither Sunni nor Shia can accept. America will need one hell of a lot more than a paltry surge if it incites Arab Iraq to unite and rise up against it.

In Iraq, all eyes are on America. With Obama leading McCain in the polls it probably suits the interests of the Sunni resistance and the Shiite militias to lay low for the time being. Why fight if not fighting is the best way to rid the country of foreign forces? There’ll be plenty of time for the Sunni and Shiite to hash out their differences once American forces are gone. Those people aren’t going anywhere, are they?

But this is an election year and we’re talking about an electorate not very good at digesting nuance. Surge works, mmmm goood! It may even be that John McCain truly believes it’s working. After all he believes that Iran is training al-Qaeda and that the terrorists are Shiite, not Sunni, and that Iraq shares a border with Pakistan. This guy doesn’t know which way is up but, then again, he’s only running to be president.

 

Surge Politics

There’s something for everybody when it comes to “surge politics.”

George w. Bush has been playing surge politics as the only means he has to salvage something of his presidential legacy. John McCain is relying on surge politics as just about the only means for a Republican to retain the White House in November.

The Demutantes have been on the wrong end of surge politics. Overall it doesn’t help them when voters believe Bush’s 11th hour brainwave is somehow working. Then again, a lowering of violence does bolster the argument that America can declare “mission accomplished” and leave.

Surge politics, however, is also played by the Iraqis insurgents and by the terrorists who’ve insinuated themselves into that country since 2003. With US voters beginning to make up their minds about who they’ll support in November and the US media losing all interest in the place, it behooves the bad guys to get their faces front and center again. They need to be on American voters’ minds if they’re to have any prospect of influencing the November ballot.

My guess is that the key players in Iraq are ready to play Mesopotamia – the Home Game. In other words, they would like the US forces out so they can have at each other without meddling foreigners. If the surge can be made to appear a failure it’s more likely the American people will elect an anti-war president. If the surge is seen as a success, however, John McCain will reap a lot of votes.

I had thought there would be an outbreak of major violence this summer – beginning in May or June. However the recent wave of bombings suggests this may be beginning already. Suddenly more American troops are getting ambushed and killed, Iraqi civilians are again falling to sectarian violence in big numbers.

The New York Times reports that a barrage of 20-mortar rounds was fired into the Green Zone bunker district today while, across the country, 58-Iraqis were killed. According to the paper, witnesses claimed the mortar attack came from a Shiite neighbourhood. More ominously, they said the attack was launched by a group of militia men belonging to the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al Sadr.

If al Sadr’s forces are initiating fresh attacks it could spell the end of the militia’s ceasefire which largely gave the surge the illusion of success. It could just be the next example of surge politics, Iraqi-style.

Update

The NYT is reporting that four American GIs were killed in Baghdad by a roadside bomb, bringing the total US combat death toll over the 4,000 mark.

If, as it appears, this is the beginning of a second insurgency – an end to the ceasefire of the past months – then – sorry, I don’t know what to even guess. There are so many forces in play including Bush’s last months in office, McCain’s election prospects, the Dems (for whom Hillary is probably more lethal than al Sadr), the Shiite establishment and its militias, the Kurds and Turkey and the Iraqi Sunnis with their pan-Arabic backers. Oh, and I left out the Wahabist terrorism movement.

It’s far too early to tell whether this is just a huge blip or the overture to some group’s political agenda. There’ll probably be morgues stuffed with cadavers before the subplots are revealed.

 

Sunni Insurgency on R&R in Iraq

The White House eagerly portrays the 30,000 soldier “surge” of the past few months as a great success and there have indeed been positive signs, especially a decline in sectarian butchery in Baghdad and a sharp reduction in attacks on American troops. But not everyone has been certain just what the surge actually accomplished. There has been a lot of speculation that the warring parties, the Shia militias and the Sunni insurgency, just decided to lay low and wait it out, relying on reports that the surge would only be temporary. Now, a senior member of the Sunni insurgency has told The Guardian that was indeed the case.

Iraq’s main Sunni-led resistance groups have scaled back their attacks on US forces in Baghdad and parts of Anbar province in a deliberate strategy aimed at regrouping, retraining, and waiting out George Bush’s “surge”, a key insurgent leader has told the Guardian.
US officials recently reported a 55% drop in attacks across Iraq. One explanation they give is the presence of 30,000 extra US troops deployed this summer. The other is the decision by dozens of Sunni tribal leaders to accept money and weapons from the Americans in return for confronting al-Qaida militants who attack civilians. They call their movement al-Sahwa (the Awakening).

The resistance groups are another factor in the complex equation in Iraq’s Sunni areas. “We oppose al-Qaida as well as al-Sahwa,” the director of the political department of the 1920 Revolution Brigades told the Guardian in Damascus in a rare interview with a western reporter.

Using the nom de guerre Dr Abdallah Suleiman Omary, he went on: “Al-Sahwa has made a deal with the US to take charge of their local areas and not hit US troops, while the resistance’s purpose is to drive the occupiers out of Iraq. We are waiting in al-Sahwa areas. We disagree with them but do not fight them. We have shifted our operations to other areas”.

Omary predicts the deal negotiated last week between Bush and the Shia prime minister al Maliki for a permanent American military presence in Iraq will fracture the American’s cease-fire with al-Shawa.

If Omary is right, the surge may have accomplished very little perhaps save for giving everyone involved a much needed respite.