Appeasement In Anbar
By Steve Hynd Wednesday Aug 27, 2008 11:45am
General James T. Conway, the Marine in charge of security in Iraq's Anbar province the Commandant of the Marine Corps [that'll teach me to pay attention to names when writing posts at 1am. I knew this], has said that US forces there could hand over control to the Iraqi government as soon as Monday, and is lauding the reduction in violence in the province. The general says that remaining US troops in the province will concentrate on bringing Sunnis and Shiites together. But the handover was intended to happen last month, though a sharp uptick in violence there delayed the event, along with a convenient sandstorm. Veteran and blogger Brandon Freidman documented that increase back in May.
And wrote that:
While I do not profess to know exactly what change in the political climate precipitated this specific spike in violence, I do know that General Petraeus was correct when he said that the placidity in Anbar Province was reversible. What most have failed to realize thus far is that, while al Qaeda is deeply unpopular in Anbar, U.S. forces are equally despised. So it seems that those who've repeatedly used Anbar's relative peacefulness as a sign of impending U.S. success in Iraq know little about counterinsurgency and less about Iraq.
Success in Iraq is something that will be brought about by Iraqis--not the American military. As long as we're there, the best we can hope for is extreme violence broken by periodic lulls--such as what we've witnessed in Anbar over the past seven months. As long we remain in Iraq, the violence will remain cyclical. It will rise and fall, contingent on the latest deal we've cut with tribal leaders or the latest deal that someone has brokered within the Iraqi government. But our military will never completely solve this inherently Iraqi problem. We're watching that unfortunate fact unfold before us in Anbar this month.
Since then, it has become obvious what precipitated the spike - the central government's increasing antipathy towards and crackdown on the members of the Sunni Awakening. That crackdown has spread into other provinces too.
The NY Times' report on the story gives the game away - although it tries to preserve a little ambiguity. (Get too critical and you're on Col. Boylan's "not friendly" list - no more interviews for you.)
American forces were originally scheduled to transfer control in late June, but the transfer was postponed. At the time, American military officials said that a dust storm had made it impossible to fly dignitaries in for a ceremony and that the postponement was unrelated to a suicide bombing near Falluja a day earlier that killed 20 people. [At a meeting of U.S.-backed Sunni Arab tribal leaders - C]
In July, the Anbar Provincial Council asked the American military to delay turning over security for at least a year, saying that Iraqi forces were not prepared to keep tight control of the province’s borders. The appeal was widely perceived as stemming from a bitter dispute between the Iraqi Islamic Party, which has long been politically dominant in Anbar, and the increasingly powerful Awakening Council forces backed by the Americans.
... The government’s campaign has been particularly pronounced lately in the area west of Baghdad, where the Iraqi Army has arrested scores of Awakening members. Former insurgent leaders have contended that the Iraqi military is pursuing 650 Awakening leaders, many of whom have fled.
So here's what I think is happening. The Iraqi govt. wants the US out of the driving seat in Anbar so it can more easily purge the Awakening, just as the British handover in the South led to the push against the Sadrists in Basra. Bush wants the handover to happen anyway, no matter the cost in bloodshed, so McCain can claim success in Anbar at the GOP conference. In that sense, the handover is very much appeasement of the Shiite-controlled central government and abandonment of the Awakening. This betrayal hasn't gone un-noticed among Iraq's Sunni neighbours.
I know its the Iraqis' country to mess up or not, at the end of the day, but we can at least point out that the PR is..well...PR. Not victory.
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ALL COMMENTS GO ... POOF!!!???
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Nicole: We've been under near constant attacks on our servers and databases. Our tech people are working hard to stabilize things, but it's been a very trying week.
With the Maliki government arresting and hunting down the Sunni leaders of the "Awakening" movement that is credited with the vast reduction of violence in Anbar... how long do you think it will take for those Sunni to rejoin the insurgency and all hell to break loose?
They're going to have their civil war whether we like it or not...
Iraq Takes Aim at U.S.-Tied Sunni Groups’ Leaders
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/world/middleeast/22sunni.html?pagewant...
Embittered & Anti-Republicrat - Max-Hussein-1 @ 1:
Attacks???
Nicole: Yes, hack attacks on our servers. Happens every time there's a major Dem event, i.e., debates, speeches, etc. Coincidence?
General Conway is the Commandant of the Marine Corps, not the guy in chagre of MNF-W (which is Maj. General Kelly). Also, the dynamic in Diyala province (a mixed-sect area still beleagured by significant violence) is a lot different than Anbar province, which is 95% Sunni and much less violent, so this "purging" of the Anbar awakening seems pretty far-fetched.
I'm sure we have more hackers than the GOP, all you guys in the Bay Area get busy, I know you can do it. Fight fire with Fire.
General Conway won't give us the truth about Iraq until he retires like all the retired generals before him.
LtNixon, thanks for pointing out my reading incomprehension on Gen Conway. My bad. I usually know better, honestly, but I wrote this one at 1am :-) Even so, it doesn't really impact the post.
As to the crackdown on the Awakening, there's an increasing amount of reports of exactly that. There's another in the Washington Times today. It's not just Diyala.
Regards, C
I wonder if Bush is trying to get out of Iraq to salvage his "legacy" -- not that it's likely that it will salavage it...
Is is November 2007? 'Cause President Bush said Iraq would take over security in every province by November 2007 when he announced the surge.
Is anyone in agreement with me that the entire concept of "war on terror" is completely misguided. As it fails to define what elements of terror we are targeting and how the military will be deployed to counter the inevitable rise of terrorist activity. I would say that our military has been misused around the world, and especially the covert operations that are by their very nature, hard to analyze. However, in saying this, I realize that what we, as a populace, have failed to do continuously, was to analyze the societal and economical impact of these actions, covert or not.
I have to refer back to specialists in our society, especially those that are free from the shackles of the Military Establishment itself; some of my favorites are Andrew J Bacevich, 3-star General William Odom (sad that he died - I saw a few great interviews with him), and even Eric Shinseki, who have brought some much needed counter thinking on the issues we should all face collectively, since the returnin military members are part of our collective society.
I am against the style and tone of our current political dialogue. I am not interested in demeaning your views as a liberal, conservative, progressive, seeing as reality doesn't take well to fully embodying one perspective. More specifically, how can we expect to achieve any successes in our current operations, if people such as Rumsfeld were given freedom, against the better judgement of military brass with in the field experience, in order to bring a "new" vision of the embodiement of what Bacevich referred to as our Technologically savy military ?
Sadly, I don't feel we are getting any real traction, as illustrated by this article. It is clear to me, that the United States has been unable to achieve real battlefield success of a lasting nature. Yes, we can, citing it politically, describe wins in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 7 years, but ultimately, yesterdays victories are meaningless, if an established peace cannot be create and allowed to migrate throughout the population and the country itself.
Hence, I ask all of you - What is the modern day use of war as defined by our current administration ?
Prevention ? Please...
Much love (more is needed for all of those that have suffered under our foreign policy),
k
Wow, just in time for the RNC convention. What timing!
Ok they don't understand Iraq, but you too don't understand Iraq. look the chart estimate that shows spike in violence!! Are you joking?? in March and April there was a military offensive against Sadrists something Americans and Iraqis were asking the Iraqi government to do long ago, of course when you have a military offensive it causes sharp increase in causalities after that violence went down.. during that period, also there are offensive against AQ, probably some rogue elements in Anbar exploited that period to launch attacks in Anbar, still the attacks there are less than Baghdad average. but now things is calming down, or let's hope so, it is not credited only by US surge like what Republicans try to convince you, it is credited too by Iraqi army, police increase and increased training and equipment, beside the offensive Maliki launched in Basrah which many here criticized and talked about how Maliki talks a lot, while it was a major success.
Please be loyal to your political parties, but also be loyal to facts, as this does not make you better than them.
Beside, the survey talking about how US is paying money to tribal leaders, ok tribal leaders always were like that, this is their nature, it is not the "bad Bush administration" , it is just how it works for those tribes, Saddam paid them a lot and every government pay them, and many such tribes are armed already, typically governments of Iraq leave their arms alone. Not just US and Iraqi governments used them, UK in 1918-1958 used them too. they are good and bad tools.
and if locals showed no confidence in US, I don't surprise, some people just don't like a foreign force in their country, most people in the world don't like that. but I think if you compare Anbar to what it was before, you understand that US and Iraqi government gained more popularity there.
In US many people single out the South, Anbar is like that for Iraq. or you can say like McCain mind, has a big delay.
take for example in 1991, 14 provinces of iraq revolted against Saddam, Anbar not one of them, after about 6 years, they revolted against Saddam because he arrested one of their sheikhs. they have a 5-6 years gap, in 2003, many Iraqis celebrated Saddam removal, that's 2007-2008 for Anbarians. Don't tell me because Saddam backed them, Tikrit is his home town and was one of the safest Sunni areas. even his home town dissed him!, but Anbarians don't get it fast. and both provinces didn't even fight in the actual war, the military units stationed there signed a surrender to the US without any fight. as opposed to the south where most of the intense fighting occurred.
Just how things done in Iraq, no matter what you think, the opposite is always true
/experience
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