Defying a sustained barrage of mortars and rockets in Baghdad and other cities, Iraqis went to the polls in strength on Sunday to choose a new Parliament meant to outlast the American military presence here.

Insurgents here vowed to disrupt the election, and the concerted wave of attacks — as many as 100 thunderous blasts in the capital alone starting just before the polls opened — did frighten voters away, but only initially.

The shrugging response of voters could signal a fundamental weakening of the insurgency’s potency. At least 38 people were killed in Baghdad. But by day’s end, turnout was higher than expected, and certainly higher than in the last parliamentary election in 2005, marred by a similar level of violence.

Overall, the election has looked like a real achievement–we’ll have to see how it plays out but it looks as if the results will be publicly accepted (given some likely back room dealing), the elections were generally free and fair, and the races fairly competitive.

All of which is to the good.  I wish the Iraqi people (after so many decades of horror), some bright spots going forward.

That said, this frame concerning the “fundamental weakening of the insurgency” either needs some serious contextualization or is flat out misleading.

Minus a real hardcore element (the so-called irreconcilables in COIN language), an insurgency uses violence to achieve political ends.  The Iraqi insurgency from the get go was dominated by Sunni Iraqis–particularly after the insurgency became the Iraqi Civil War (reaching a climactic moment at the bombing of the Golden Dome Mosque).  This point was entirely missed in the US press during the time (and still today), which referred to said events primarily through the lens of an “insurgency”– but the Sunni were only fighting the US so long as the US was aligned with the Shia.

Once the Shia won the Civil War (2004-2007), the Sunni-dominated insurgency as such lost its rationale.  The Sunni insurgency was at that point bought off by the American government, i.e. during the so-called Anbar Awakening.  But the only real “awakening” was the dawning realization on the part of Sunni tribal sheiks that they would have to accept Shia dominance going forward and they might as well get the US to give them something in return for that recognition. [Read more →]

Part 2 will follow in a day or two so as to break up what are usually hour plus conversations into smaller, bite sized chunks. Check out the audio below the fold. [Read more →]

The president apparently does not realize that in Iraq too there was a coalition, that the Iraq War was approved by both houses of Congress on 23 grounds (only two dealing with WMD), and that more and more evidence is emerging concerning the terrorist ties between Saddam and radical Islam.

The nation’s top military officer said Wednesday that he expected the Pentagon to ask Congress in the next few months for emergency financing to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though President Obama has pledged to end the Bush administration practice of paying for the conflicts with so-called supplemental funds that are outside the normal Defense Department budget. The financing would be on top of the $130 billion that Congress authorized for the wars just last month.

But the surge failed in its core task: to create an environment in which the three major sects in Iraq could form a national government, a national army, and a stable balance between the three major centrifugal forces in the country and in Baghdad. Maliki’s bid for a post-sectarian polity rests fundamentally on his claim to have restored some semblance of security. But how easy it will be for that semblance to be wiped out by violence of the kind demonstrated today.

And how tempting it will be, after the Americans leave, for the largely Shiite Baghdad government to resort to force against largely Sunni insurgents. From there … a short road back to 2006. Maybe the population is exhausted by civil war and will restrain these forces; maybe these blasts are the exceptions that prove the rule of growing normalcy. Or maybe they are warnings that violent forces of sectarianism remain at large, that they are close to impossible to stop, and that the lull is just that: a lull until the invading army leaves and the civil war can resume unimpeded.

There’s a lot to digest here; let me take it point by point.

That first sentence is undoubtedly right.  Though I think it is fair to say that the blame lies not at the feet of the surge but at our strategic design.  What chance was there of the three major sects forming a national government?  It was at the very least a political vision-strategy that had no historical precedent in the context of Iraqi history.  In short, I think the surge had no chance of ever succeeding at that strategic level.

On to the second sentence:  I’m not really sure how much of a post-sectarian polity Maliki has ever really represented.  He plays a nationalist card when the situation calls for it–e.g. Maliki can claim he is the man who signed the deal that will get the US out.  He plays the Shia card when he needs to, and most importantly when he apportions roles of influence.  He is, after all, a member of the Dawa Party.  And he can play the Arab card (for Sunni-Shia unity) against the Kurds when the moment calls for it, though his government is seen as a Shia-run operation.

Still, Andrew is right to say that Maliki has portrayed himself as a guarantor of security and attacks like these certainly hurt that image.  Given the nature of the attacks, it is also very likely that they were perpetrated by members of what has usually been called the Sunni insurgency.

But I have some questions about this line, specifically the last part:

And how tempting it will be, after the Americans leave, for the largely Shiite Baghdad government to resort to force against largely Sunni insurgents. From there … a short road back to 2006.

The road to 2006 means of course a renewed, all-out civil war.  While this is not totally impossible (nothing ever is, particularly in such a fragile place), I think it’s highly unlikely.  The civil war phase from the initial post-invasion to 2006 represented a concerted effort by the insurgency to prevent the Shia from taking over the Iraqi state in the wake of de-Baathification, the disbanding of the army/police, etc.  In other words, the civil war was fought over the de-Sunnization and the Shia-ization of the Iraqi state.

That battle is already over.  The Shia won.  They won it by late 2006, early 2007.  Groups like the Mahdi Army and The Badr Corps ethnically cleansed Baghdad.  The Army and Police are dominated by the Shia (with the Kurds preserving their own paramilitary force). If anything, all the surge did was cement a Shia victory:  e.g. accelerated army and police training largely benefited the Shia.

The fact that the Shia won the Civil War is also why there wasn’t an opportunity — surge or no surge — for political reconciliation.

The space the surge created was not taken up for political reconciliation but rather to fight the political battles that needed fighting (instead of US pipe dreams of reconciliation).  Maliki, you may recall, used the period since the surge to attack the Mahdi Army and also the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council at points.

So given what has happened since 2006 with the splintering of the Shia coalition–if there were to be a renewed civil war (and I don’t think that’s the real danger) it would probably not be a Sunni v. Shia one as we say in 2006.  It would very likely go the way of a Lebanese Civil War with various cross-ethnic factions aligning with each other in temporary truces.  i.e. A descent into total anarchy.

But I don’t find that Lebanonization of Iraq very likely.  In fact, I think it is a pretty remote possibility at this point.  The political game that drives insurgency is really over for the Sunni.  There are enough remnants left to launch brutal attacks, and I think such a situation of lower level violence, quasi-controllable, shaky, but nonetheless awful, will likely continue in Iraq for an indefinite period.  [Read more →]

I’m not quite sure about this:

But whatever the root causes, the Iraqi false peace is falling apart. I expect it to accelerate as we head towards the Iraqi referendum on the SOFA, and for the Very Serious people in the D.C. village to ally with the Petraeus/Odierno military axis to use that violence as an excuse to demand that the U.S. walk back it’s agreements with the Iraqi government.

I definitely imagine the Very Serious People using violence in Iraq as an excuse to call for “re-negotiating” our deal with the Iraqi people.

On the other hand, the referendum may never take place. It’s been postponed and it looks like Maliki is  just in stalling mode.

Also, I’m skeptical of the false peace of Iraq falling apart.  Steve is a smart guy and he knows that the violence in Iraq is a means to try to achieve political goals.  That principle applies whoever is doing the violence–whether it’s Saudis helping to fund the Sunni insurgency, the Iraqi gov’t bought and paid for by the Iranian regime, etc.

Since the US Army is clearly in winding down mode, there will be some vacuum left the wake of its departure.  Though it’s worth pointing out that the US has always vastly overestimated its gravitational weight in Iraq. Seems to me from the beginning at most the US has had negative power in Iraq–they may stop for awhile somethings from occurring but have never really positively moved things forward.

Which is exactly why at this point violence is going to come back into the fray because the political fight is back on.  It’s hard to imagine though that the violence will return to the apocalyptic horror levels of 2006 for political reasons.  Namely the Shia already won the civil war. [Read more →]