[Marxism] A Calmer Iraq: Fragile, and Possibly Fleeting

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, December 5, 2007
News Analysis
A Calmer Iraq: Fragile, and Possibly Fleeting
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

BAGHDAD, Dec. 4 — The reduced violence in Iraq in recent months stems 
from three significant developments, but the clock is running on all of 
them, Iraqi officials and analysts warn.

“It’s more a cease-fire than a peace,” said Deputy Prime Minister Barham 
Salih, a Kurd, in words that were repeated by Qassim Daoud, a Shiite 
member of Parliament.

Officials attribute the relative calm to a huge increase in the number 
of Sunni Arab rebels who have turned their guns on jihadists instead of 
American troops; a six-month halt to military action by the militia of a 
top Shiite leader, Moktada al-Sadr; and the increased number of American 
troops on the streets here.

They stress that all of these changes can be reversed, and on relatively 
short notice. The Americans have already started to reduce troop levels 
and Mr. Sadr, who has only three months to go on his pledge, has issued 
increasingly bellicose pronouncements recently.

The Sunni insurgents who turned against the jihadists are now expecting 
to be rewarded with government jobs. Yet, so far, barely 5 percent of 
the 77,000 Sunni volunteers have been given jobs in the Iraqi security 
forces, and the bureaucratic wheels have moved excruciatingly slowly 
despite government pledges to bring more Sunnis in.

“We are in a holding pattern,” said Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq analyst at 
the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research organization. 
“The military solution has gained enough peace to last through the U.S. 
election, but we have a situation that is extremely fragile. None of the 
violent actors have either been defeated or prevailed, and the political 
roots of the conflict have not been addressed, much less resolved.”

American military leaders have said similarly that their military gains 
can only go so far without a political solution.

The primary issues remain how to keep Sunnis from turning again to the 
insurgency, and how to stop a resurgence in violence from the Shiite 
militias.

Mr. Sadr was able to pull his militias back in large part because his 
community of poor Shiites was no longer under attack by Sunni militants. 
But if the broader Sunni population is not integrated into the new 
Shiite-dominated power structure, it is likely that the old divisions 
will rapidly resurface as the United States reduces its troop levels. If 
that happens, extremist Sunnis will renew their assaults on Shiites and 
Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia will respond in kind.

The government has a limited amount of time to integrate these formerly 
renegade Sunnis, said Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni and one of Iraq’s two 
vice presidents. The men want jobs, respect, and above all a guarantee 
that they will not be prosecuted for their past activities with the 
insurgency, he said, a concession that the Shiite majority government 
has given little indication it will make.

But Mr. Hashimi asserts that the Sunni groups’ fight against Al Qaeda in 
Mesopotamia, the mostly homegrown insurgent group that the United States 
believes is foreign led, has brought a new level of stability that the 
government could never have achieved without them, and it is making a 
dangerous miscalculation to withhold credit.

“There was four years of fighting Al Qaeda with traditional troops, 
Iraqi and American, and they failed to control these hot areas,” Mr. 
Hashimi said. “Now these areas are under control. But this unique 
experience, somebody is trying to abort.

“I am really afraid what will happen if these local troops are 
frustrated and are not paid by the government and brought into the 
security forces,” he said. “I am really afraid. They might change their 
attitude. You should expect anything.”

But with the memory of the Sunni insurgents’ ferocious assaults on the 
Shiites still fresh, the Shiite-led government has resisted bringing the 
Sunni volunteer groups into the security forces, where they would have 
access to more powerful weapons and to vulnerable Shiite communities.

Already, a walk through neighborhoods where the volunteer groups are 
active is an unsettling experience. Small groups of young armed men 
guard street corners, while others ride in open trucks. In many areas 
they wear camouflage uniforms that resemble military ones, making it 
hard to tell whom they work for.

Leaders of local Sunni groups, often known as “awakening councils,” are 
circumspect when asked what they will do if they are not given 
government jobs.

“These groups must have some support,” said Abu Abed, the leader of the 
Awakening Council in Amiriya, a southwest Baghdad neighborhood that six 
months ago was so dangerous that American military commanders were 
reluctant to conduct foot patrols there. Now they wander the streets as 
if they lived there, and there has not been a bomb since August.

“We need support from the government and not just financial support,” he 
said. “We have made our applications to the police and to the army. It 
has been six months since the government said they would accept us.”

Most members of these groups are paid a $10 a day by the American 
military, with the expectation that the Iraqi government will eventually 
accept them into the security forces and other government jobs. But that 
looks unlikely to happen anytime soon.

The situation with Mr. Sadr has a different dynamic. He has long had two 
roles on the Iraqi street. He has fought Sunnis who he believed were 
attacking his community, and in the process fueled the cycle of 
sectarian brutality. But he and his militia have also fought the rival 
Shiite political force in Iraq, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, many 
of whose members are in the government security forces. The silence of 
Mr. Sadr’s militia has quieted both struggles, but ended neither.

“The Sadrists have not been in an aggressive posture since early this 
year,” said Mr. Hiltermann, the analyst. “They have taken the position, 
‘We will only fight if we are attacked.’ But that doesn’t mean they are 
gone.”

In the last two weeks there have been several violent outbreaks in areas 
of the city where Mr. Sadr’s militia has traditionally been active.

Despite his militia’s pause, Mr. Sadr’s two main projects remain 
unfinished: consolidating Baghdad as a Shiite city and gaining power 
over the Supreme Council.

“The real struggle in the longer term will be between Moktada Sadr’s 
mass movement and the Supreme Council, which is extremely well equipped, 
well financed and well trained,” Mr. Hiltermann said. “This fight is 
still shaping up.”

The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki blames others for 
the failure to reach political accommodation, but does acknowledge the 
problem and the country’s underlying instability.

Sadiq al-Rikabi, Mr. Maliki’s political adviser, said the experience of 
Saddam Hussein’s government left a poisonous legacy in which the Kurds 
and many Shiites still harbor suspicions of a central government. The 
Hussein government persecuted both groups and killed many people. Now 
the Sunnis feel cheated because they have lost control of the levers of 
power, which they had under Mr. Hussein.

“On the Shia, side they inherited a history of suffering so now they are 
not sure,” Mr. Rikabi said. “Should they strengthen the central 
government, which hurt them in the past? Or should they try to have a 
strong regional government? The Sunnis feel they should dominate 
everything in the state. It is not easy for them to be just a partner 
and not the strongest partner.”

“It is not easy to get rid of this history,” he said. “Maybe after 10 
years, maybe after a generation.”