It is natural to forget dull aches for flashes of sudden pain, and our vaunted twenty-four hour media can only keep so many stories in the air at once, but lost amid the continuing shit storm of attention devoted to finance and the economy is a potentially very important day in Iraq. Today is the day the Shiite Iraqi government begins to assume command authority and financial responsibility for the Sunni militias who have been put on our payroll over the last two years.
The militias, variously referred to as part of the “Sunni Awakening” or as the “Sons of Iraq” depending on the currently fashionable euphemism, are thought to be responsible for a great deal of the post-invasion insurgency. After several years of futility trying to capture or kill them the decision was made, roughly in autumn of 2006, to begin simply paying them not to attack American forces. From that time to this, a period which has seen a tremendous drop in the amount of violence, they have been working directly with Americans and getting paid directly by Americans. As of today those responsibilities will begin to transfer over to the Iraqi government.
Some of the Sunni fighters will doubtless be incorporated into the government’s security forces. Others are probably beyond the point of reconciliation with the Shiite government. As with any plan in a war this one looks good on paper, carries enormous risks and nobody knows how it’s going to turn out.
There are some things we know for sure though. No matter how often the decrease in Iraqi violence is cited by politicians as a profound turning point whenever the military talks about those same security gains the word they always use is “fragile”. Pick your prominent American flag officer and you can find them using that word, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen in March, “fragile, delicate and tenuous”, then Iraq commander General Petraeus in April, “fragile and reversible”, and newly minted Iraq commander General Odierno two days ago, “it’s a fragile state”. Those fragile security gains were, near as anyone can tell, almost entirely the result of this policy of paying off the Sunni militias. Today that policy comes to an end:
Al Qaisi swears that he won’t report to the Iraqi Army, despite the fact that he and his men are among the 50,000 or so Sunni militiamen who gave their names to the Iraqi government for registration.
A man with a gruff face and a sharp tongue, al Qaisi said he speaks for a series of armed groups and for some 30,000 men across the country who once fought American troops and the Iraqi government. He’s an ally of the U.S. military now, but if he’s betrayed he’ll become an enemy of the Americans again, he said.
The plan is certainly not doomed to failure but there’s an awful lot riding on there being a significant reconciliation between Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite government and these well armed and veteran Sunni militias. The article quoted above also mentions that the US Army has plans to continue the payments should the Maliki government fall down on the job. (One assumes the money is ultimately coming from American coffers either way.) So it’s not as though we’re cutting these men loose, but as there’s still no agreement on the status of American forces in Iraq beyond December 31st it’s hardly a stable situation.
Like its Southeast Asian predecessor, the Iraq War has had its public ups and downs but none of them have ever altered the fundamental flaw, namely that American troops are caught in what amounts to a civil war. In this case the civil war has undergone something of a lull in the last year but the chances for serious political reconciliation remain low. The warring parties are still in close proximity, extremely suspicious of each other and armed to the teeth.
As we hand the Sunni militias off to the Shiite government it’s worth remembering that, financial crisis or no financial crisis, there were publicly trumpeted signs of hope in Iraq right before the last presidential election. The razing of Fallujah, just after the ballots were cast, exposed them for the illusions that they truly were. A lot has happened in the last four years but we were then and are now: an unwelcome presence in an unfriendly land.
A Brief Note on the American Politics of Iraq:
For the moment the economy has blown Iraq out of the water as the major issue of the campaign. That change is largely credited with the profound shift towards Barack Obama in the polls these last few weeks and much as I like to dump on polling in general this close to the election it usually starts to firm up. Two Public Policy Polling reports from this week show Barack Obama ahead in Florida and North Carolina (both PDFs). PPP is nice enough to allow free public access to some of the internal data and “Economy and Jobs” led “War in Iraq” as people’s number one issue 64%-15% in Florida and 64%-10% in North Carolina, no other issue was in double digits. Amongst those people who rated Iraq as their top issue Obama led 54-43 in Florida and 49-42 in North Carolina.
Both are traditionally Red states with large military presences; it stands to reason that the people who care most about Iraq in those states are heavily comprised of active duty military and their friends and family. Combine those numbers with the fact that Obama had (as of August) outraised McCain 6:1 from military personnel serving overseas and it looks safe to conclude that those most directly involved with Iraq have had just about enough of it.
