What the Iraqis Think

• There is no single "Iraqi view" of any major issue and most Iraqis disagree in detail regarding on every issue presented in Cordesman's analysis, the severity of the threat posed by Syria and Iran, how and whether they quantified various insurgent groups, and the severity of the insurgent threat. There is also no agreement on whether the situation is getting better or worse, though most Iraqis saw the January elections as a major step forward.

• As with the US, most Iraqis see four major threats: Zarqawi and his foreign followers, who probably number around 1,000 but have a disporportionate amount of impact because of the effectiveness of their attacks; a loose combination of Baathists, alienated Sunnis, mercenaries, and temporary recruits that number between 10-30,000; emerging Iraqi Islamist and al-Qaeda groups that probably number around 500; and organized crime that serves as a major source of violence and insecurity in 12 of the 18 provinces.

• Iraqi Sunnis believe that elements of various militias are also becoming a problem and have accused Shi'ite militias of atrocities, just as Iraqi Arabs have accused the Kurdish peshmerga of supporting ethnic cleansing.

• Iraqi officials see US estimates as misleading because they only include "active" insurgents, instead believing that their defense minister was generally correct in saying that there are as many as 200,000 "soft" supporters of the insurgency. Because the insurgents have some degree of popular support in the Sunni areas, some Iraqi officials see the situation as more of a political than military dilemma.

Sunni Inclusion vs. Conflict

• Civil war is no longer a risk but instead an ongoing reality, with the only question being what degree of intensity it will achieve. The insurgency has laid the framework for a civil war and al-Qaeda in Iraq has made a much more concerted effort to transform it into an openly sectarian conflict between Shi'ites and Sunnis. As a result, the future of the Iraqi insurgency depends in no small part on the wisdom and pragmatism of the country's present and future leaders from 2005-2007, particularly before, during, and after the adoption of a new constitution, the referendum that follows, and the full-scale election in December 2005.

• Iraqi and US officials clearly understand these risks, with the US pressing hard for "inclusion" prior to the elections and for Iraqi contacts and negotiations with Sunni rejectionists in their aftermath. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice all delivered this message during their trips to Iraq and encouraged the government to avoid purging the civil service and armed forces as well as encouraging the expansion of the new Iraqi military as quickly as possible. The US embassy has likewise championed this view.

Shi'ite Resistance to Civil War

• Iraq's Shi'ite leadership has steadfastly resisted polarization along ethno-sectarian lines, with such diverse religious leaders as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, SCIRI's Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, and Muqtada al-Sadr all calling for Sunni inclusion and resisting any kind of general reprisals against the Sunni community. The new Iraqi president and prime minister have both stressed a view of inclusion and amnesty since taking office, as well as negotiating with those who boycotted the elections and bringing them into the new political structure as well as the constitutional process.

• Forming a new Iraqi cabinet was problematic because of the Sunni boycott and some new Iraqi officials are a source of tension, including Interior Minister Bayan Jabar, whose removal has been called for by some Sunnis because of his ties to the Badr Brigades. The new cabinet did, however, include seven Sunnis, including Defense Minister Saddun al-Dulaimi, who was chosen after a long political struggle to find a Sunni with acceptable political credentials among both his own people as well as the Shi'ites and the Kurds. Al-Dulaimi is a former military officer who was originally trained as a sociologist who went into exile during the Iraq-Iran War and was eventually sentenced to death in absentia by Saddam Hussein. He returned to Iraq after the fall of Saddam and established the Baghdad-based Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, which has overseen a number of country's opinion polls. While some Sunnis claimed he did not have necessary political weight to be an effective leader, he announced in May 2005 that Iraqi forces would cease raiding Sunni mosques to demonstrate his independence of the US and many of his subordinates have gradually come to respect him. Other key Sunnis include Deputy Prime Minister Abd Mutlak al-Jubouri and Industry Minister Usama al-Najafi.

The Uncertain Sunni Role

• There have been a number of positive signs from the Iraqi Sunnis as well as growing signs of tension and clashes between the Iraqi Sunnis and Zarqawi's followers. Even hardline voices like Harith al-Dhari of the Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islami have begun condemning the assassination campaign against Shi'ite clerics.

• In April 2005, the Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islami reversed its previous condemnation of Iraqi Sunnis who joined the new security forces, with senior cleric Abdul Ghafour al-Samarrai giving a Friday sermon encouraging Sunnis to join the new army and the police in order to prevent the country from falling into chaos and destruction. 64 Sunni imams and scholars signed the fatwa that al-Samarrai read, including notable hardliners like Ahmed Hassan al-Taha of Baghdad.

• Sunni coalitions like the National Dialogue Council (NDC), a body made up of 31 Sunni political organizations that has the support of notable Sunnis in the new Iraqi government like Adnan Dulaimi, have long pushed for inclusion. On May 21, 2005 a group of 1,000 Sunni clerics, politicians, and tribal leaders declared an end to their boycott of the new government and stated that they were uniting to form a political bloc in order to participate in drafting the new constitution. This bloc includes both moderate and hardline members of the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islami.

• There are only 17 Sunnis in the 275-member National Assembly and no one knows how the Shi'ite majority government plans to govern. There have been unexplained raids by the Interior Ministry on peaceful Sunni groups like the NDC, with some Sunnis claiming that the new government has deliberately targeted Sunni mosques, mistreated prisoners, and carried out extra-judicial killings against Sunni civilians. The Sunnis, however, have been too unrealistic in their demands and remain too divided internally as far as dealing with these concerns or others relating to inclusion.

• Those Sunni clerics in the Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islami who urged their followers to join the new Iraqi government did so in an ambiguous fatwa, stating that the new army and the police needed to be fully staffed in order to curtail the power of ethnic or sectarian militias.

• An investigation by the New York Times raised serious questions over the willingness of the NDC to accept an Iraq that was not Sunni-ruled. The Times found that the NDC's Secretary-General, a conservative Muslim named Fakhri al-Qaisi, claimed that only 30% of Iraqis were Shi'ite and 40% were Sunnis. Al-Qaisi was also quite at the raid on the NDC offices by the Interior Ministry, citing it as proof of a plot against the coalition and claiming that United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) slogans about democracy were lies. The secretary-general went on to claim that former Sunni vice president Ghazi al-Yawwar hadn't protected Sunnis, and that Defense Minister Saddun al-Dulaimi was a "traitor" for agreeing to participate in a Shi'ite majority government. NDC member Saleh Mutlak claimed that the leadership of the Badr Brigades were a major obstacle in negotiations and that Prime Minister Jaafari was half-hearted in his approach towards inclusion.

• While the Times article was only one report in the wake of a considerable amount of tension, it accurately captures attitudes widely held by Sunni politicians concerning Iraqi demographics and the new government. It is also clear that senior members of both SCIRI and Dawaa do believe in purging the new government of anyone previously connected to the Baath Party and setting up very demanding requirements for any Sunni who desires to participate in government. Foremost among these individuals is SCIRI leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, who is not a member of the government but still serves as a prominent voice in Shi'ite politics.

• The initial group of 55 members of the legislature chosen to draft the new constitution include 28 Shi'ites from the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), 15 Kurds from the Kurdish Alliance (KA, a coalition of the PUK and the KDP), 8 members of Ayad Allawi's al-Iraqiyyun party, 1 member of the Iraqi Communist Party, 1 Turkman, 1 Christian, and 1 Sunni Arab. At US urging, this group was expanded to include 15 additional Sunnis, thus giving Sunnis a total of 17 seats or roughly 20% of the total in the Constitutional Commission.

• Underlying negotiations between Sunnis and the new government are fears that the constitution might be delayed by 6 months or that if members of the Constitutional Commission refuse to grant the Shi'ites more seats that they will withdraw from the Commission altogether, thus costing the government a valuable means with which to stem Sunni support for the insurgency. Prime Minister Jaafari, however, has said that he will not seek to invoke an extension.

• Adnan al-Dulaimi, the head of Sunni affairs for the new Iraqi government, has raised the possibility of a Sunni withdrawl from the drafting process if they are not granted 25 seats in the Commission. Other Sunni leaders, however, suggest the problem is not unresolveable, with Sunni negotiator Nasser al-Ani stating that as this is politics, anything is possible. 1,000 Sunni leaders met at the end of May 2005 to discuss the community's role in the drafting process and in early June Iraqi politicians were considering expanding the Commission's size in order to meet the Sunni's 25-seat demand.

• In mid-June, the Constitutional Committee of the National Assembly offered to give the Sunnis 10 advisors on the Commission but no more than 15 members. The Sunni delegation agreed to this compromise but continued to stress its dissatisfaction with the number of voting members it possessed on the Commission. Key Sunni factions appear to have accepted this compromise as of June 2005.

• Many issues still remain regarding the role that Sunnis will play in the constitutional process, how much popular support those Sunnis who will participate actually have, and their inclusion remains a risk. It is also clear that a failure of inclusion will have a critical impact on both the short and long-term stability of Iraq and the pace of the domestic insurgency. The new constitution may be vetoed if 2/3 of voters in any one of Iraq's 18 provinces reject it, so it must be considered that Sunnis dominate Anbar province and maintain strong majorities in Salahuddin and Nineveh. The effort to draft a new constitution is also on a very tight schedule: the draft has to be approved by the 55-member Constitutional Committee of the National Assembly and then the full National Assembly by August 15 and then presented to the general population for a national referendum on October 15.

• The key issues for Iraqis in fighting the insurgency are whether large numbers of Sunnis that are now neutral or hostile towards the new government can be persuaded to join the political process and whether some stable balance of power can be found that will make Sunnis accept a political process likely to be dominated by Shi'ites where Kurds and other minorities play a role porportionate to their demographics. The Sunni insurgency will not end without a political solution that the majority of Sunnis cannot tolerate if not actively support.

• The new Iraqi government must be able to demonstrate that it has the power to govern at the local and provincial levels. The Iraqi military, police, and security forces must reach a level of critical mass where they are large enough to serve the country and take over most of the security burden from the US. They must be effective in order to demonstrate that the new Iraqi government is not only legitimate politically but is able to back up its laws with force. Political legitimacy is essential for good government, but no government can govern when it lacks the necessary forces to ensure the security of its own people in the face of the insurgent threat.

• There will also be at least another year of intensive fighting against al-Qaeda and its allies who reject any kind of political inclusion regardless of what kind of government emerges from any electoral process. The only way to deal with these forces is to kill them, imprison them, and force them to abandon the country. This will be a very real war to fight and it is still unclear when or if the new Iraqi forces will be up to the challenge or the numbers required.

• Most Iraqi Arabs think of themselves as Iraqis rather than Shi'ites or Sunnis as a result of decades of state-sponsored nationalism. The insurgency can turn into a broader civil war and whether or not the trend towards Sunni inclusion will continue is anything but certain in a nation that is just beginning to develop its political leaders and parties.

Dan's comments:

A bit dated to be sure, but still a very thorough primer that examines the ins and outs of Sunni inclusion and provides a great deal more context and background to the Iraqi political process than I've seen to date. One thing that Cordesman didn't touch on that I really wish he would have is the issue of infiltration as it relates to the issue of inclusion. This may not seem very inter-connected for most observers, but it is for a great many Iraqis. One of the reasons why so many Shi'ites are so skeptical about incorporating Sunnis into particularly the military and security services is not due to some centuries old religious feud but rather that every time they try it there seems to be disporportionate amount of infiltration going on.

Another point that needs to be made clear is that even if Iraq completely or largely stabilizes politically we are still going to be dealing with an al-Qaeda threat to the country for the immediate future. This is pretty much what has happened in Afghanistan, where the former ruling class (the Pashtuns) have been incorporated into Karzai's (granted, much weaker) government with relatively few hitches. The reason that this is so problematic in the case of Iraq is that if you accept (and I do) that most of the mass casualty terrorist attacks are being carried out by Zarqawi, it is not entirely clear that they will necessarily cease in the event that a new constitution is successfully drafted. Just today, for instance, we got a stark reminder that al-Qaeda continues to support its campaign in Afghanistan and there is little reason to suspect that it won't do the same in Iraq. That also means, incidentally, that the "bleed back" is likely to continue from the immediate future since most of the individuals that intelligence agencies are concerned about are foreigners rather than Iraqis. In the interest of refraining from snark, I will simply note that Cordesman is unambiguous that the only way you are going to stop Zarqawi and his ilk is through a military solution.

This is not all doom and gloom, however, but rather a recognition that we are involved in what is going to be a long war. If Iraq is able to achieve the level of political stability that Afghanistan currently occupies (though Afghanistan has a tradition of a far weaker level of central government than does Iraq) it'll definitely be a positive good, but it also won't necessarily mean the end of the conflict. It will, however, likely enable the US to start pulling down the number of troops stationed there, which should help to ease up both the logistical pressures of troop over-stretch as well as the political issues that come out of the perception that Iraq is little more than a meat grinder for US troops with no real progress being made.