WASHINGTON (AP) — The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East told Congress on Thursday that "Iraq could move toward civil war" if the raging sectarian violence in Baghdad is not stopped. "I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I have seen it," Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said the top priority in the Iraq war is to secure the capital, where factional violence has surged in recent weeks despite efforts by the new Iraqi government to stop the fighting.
It can be argued that Iraq has been gripped by civil war for at least several months, civil war being defined as armed conflict over whom shall govern the country. It has been a curious sort of civil war with three sides. There is the US-established Iraqi national government, the Baathist loyalists and al Qaeda. The two former groups are almost exclusively Iraqi nationals and the latter foreigners. All three want to be in charge. I think, though, that what Gen. Abizaid is probably referring to is not that these three groups will intensify fighting; the level of violence has been growing for a number of weeks. It is that a threshhold of chaos may be crossed that will start to slide Iraq into the category of "failed state."
7 sides, 5 internal to Iraq: USA, Central government, Saddam revanchists/al-Qaeda, Kurdistan, Sistani, al-Sadr (and Iran).
The Kurds have also generally been supporters of the central government and Talabani has made real efforts on its behalf, while they provide their own security in Kurdistan and lay the foundations for independence if necessary. But it's better to be part of Iraq right now because that creates protection from Turkey, who wants oil-rich Kirkuk among other things.
Sistani has generally been a supporter of the present government and a believer in the democratic system, but his power base is the Shi'ites and that's a separate entity with its own determination to have its voice in the country's future.
What holds Iraq together right now is Central government + USA + Sistani + Kurds.
Moqtada al-Sadr is the leader of many if not most of the death squads these days who are killing Sunnis, and is connected to Iran. But Iran is playing its own game to destabilize Iraq and must be considered a linked but independent actor. It is afraid of many things there, from a democratic success on its doorstep where Iranians make pilgrimages (Najaf/ Karbala) to worse unrest in ethnic Arab Abadan next door which is the chokepoint for its oil shipments.
Dan Darling noted that the Baathists and al-Qaeda had more or less merged some time ago, including their command structures and with formal oaths of fealty. Subsequent events would have to offer enough evidence for a split, which would then make 8. There might be a case for that.
I wonder ... the original Sunni insurgency has lost much of its potence, but have we been too slow in switching gears to recognize the new Shiite extremist threat?
They are, in many ways, far more formidable than the original insurgency -- they come from the majority ethnic group, they have the open and full backing of the Iranian regime and its terrorist networks, and rather than rejecting the political process, they seek to insinuate themselves into it without giving up their guns.
One-sided massacres are not a civil war, nor is ethnic cleansing. The Sunni Arab minority (aka Baathists) won't give its goal of dominating Iraq so they are being driven out. The number of Sunni Arabs in Iraq has dropped by a third since our invasion - they comprised close to 25% of the total population but are now down to about 15%.
Only a tiny minority have been killed. Mostly they are emigrating to Syria and Jordan.
At this point it looks like the proportion of Sunni Arabs in Iraq will drop to 5% or less.
I called this three years ago:When the few remaining Sunnis are too terrified of the Shiites and Kurds to let Al Qaeda operate in Sunni areas, the latter's terrorist violence against Shiites and Kurds will end, as will the violence against the Sunnis (because there will be so few of the latter remaining). Then the sectarian violence will end and they can concentrate on criminal violence.
Iraq might be a failed state at that point, and partitioned between Shiite and Kurdish areas, but the sectarian violence will be over.
Iraq's Sunnis Arabs started a war of extermination and are losing. So what else is new in the Middle East?
Who are these liberal, left wing, moonbatty, bend over and wallow LOSERS??
The INSURGENCY IS IN ITS LAST THROES, don't be so FRENCH.
Kevin Drum, you mean?
Don't jump the shark too soon.
What this makes clear to me is, how totally instrumental defeating Iran and Syria (as well as any other comers) in the Middle East is. Were these states not such active players in attempts at destabilization and bids for land and resources that are not theirs, Iraq would be a piece of cake. Hopefully Iraq will behave as a foothold for further action against the terrorist states in the region.
Our job isn't going to be pretty, but we're the only ones who want to do it. The sand might be permenantly red over there by the time everyone is done.
Them's the breaks.
Something to notice is how nobody's talking about Mosul or Tal Afar or Fallugah, or Basra, or Najaf or the porus syraina border anymore. It's not because they're the same and Baghdad's more of a mess by comparison.
It's because the military (Iraqi & US) has been effective in establishing their inkdots. The result has been all the belligerants chased out of the outlands have converged on Baghdad for the final showdown. It's all or nothing now. If the opposition can get the violence in the captial up to a critical mass where normalcy is impossible and the whole city becomes a warzone like Beruit during the Lebanese civil war (It's not there yet), then the beligerants can still have a shot at driving us out and getting power.
But, the belligerants are also out of places to run to. If Maliki's government can silence the guns in the capital, it looks like this is all pretty much over.
That is a bit 'if' though....
Seth, where do you get your news??? (Fox, maybe..)
After 3 years, full-fledged combat still rages in Ramadi
Monday, July 31, 2006
Antonio Castaneda
Associated Press
Ramadi, Iraq - Peering over piles of sandbags in this ravaged city, U.S. Marines sometimes see more gunmen on the streets than municipal employees going to work.
The provincial governor regularly arrives at his office with armed guards in tow. Young Marines notice that few others on his staff trail behind.
After three years of war in Ramadi, the U.S. military has yet to move from combat to stabilization operations in most of this Sunni Arab city of 400,000 people, the capital of Anbar province.
Here full-fledged combat still rages. Efforts to build a local government have faltered."
Google News for "Anbar out of control" gives hundreds of recent hits, but it did take nearly 30 seconds...
"Something to notice is how nobody's talking about Mosul or Tal Afar or Fallugah, or Basra, or Najaf or the porus syraina border anymore. It's not because they're the same and Baghdad's more of a mess by comparison. "
Perhaps, but Rumsfeld's brainstorm is to move troops from those places to Baghdad, instead of bringing in more troops period. We've been playing this wackamole for years now, whereever our troops arent the violence explodes. We to this date do not have enough forces in Iraq to fufill our responsibilities. Worse, this plan has been debated and talked about for weeks and it still hasnt been implimented.
Tom, you'll notice I didn't list Ramadi. Anbar's been like that since before we've been there, is something to keep in mind about that. But, unlike Baghdad, progress is beging made: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4090778.html
"Soldiers retaking Ramadi block by block
U.S. and Iraqi troops carefully carve out small but fertile safety zones."
Yea, things aren't peaceful, but they are substantially improved from a year ago. Previously, the violence was in the nature of we trying to take territory held by the opposition. Now, the violence is the opposition trying to remain relevant in territory they've lost.
Mark-
The reason why the wack-a-mole was necessary is because creating a dependance on US troops for security risked making Iraq a colony. If tried to solve the problem with just US troops, we'd never be able to leave. The key has always been using Iraqi troops to secure Iraqi land. The problems was the old army was the oppressor and disintegrated. Making a new one took time, so in the interim we've had to play wack-a-mole. That's less the case now. We've been able to turn over territory, which frees more troops for the remaining trouble spots without increasing the Iraqi government's dependance on US forces. Now when we move forces from one place to another it's much less the case of abandoning the population, and more turing it over to Iraqi government control.
Not being able to seal, or even really patrol the borders against foriegn interferance for the first 2 years of occupation I dont think helped the Iraqis any when foriegners were gladly blowing up Iraqi police and army targets and murdering them by the busload. Not being able to protect the electricity infastructure and leaving Iraqis to swelter and stew in the desert didnt help either.
Now the IA and IP arent remotely up to preventing the meltdown of Baghdad, largely because of the evolution of circumstances that we have failed to prevent to date. I think they take little solace in knowing we desperately want them to stand on two feet. Im not sure about the logic of tough love in this case. Their self-esteem may be high but the run-away train of violence they are up against is simply beyond them. I myself would have settled for secure borders and Iraq on lockdown and figure out how to train up the Iraqi forces without their HQs blowing up quite so often. Then getting the hell out as proof we werent occupiers, which is the only proof that matters.
Interesting column from David Frum, one of the original neo-con architects of the Iraq war.
Baghdad - and therefore central Iraq - will in such a case slide after Basra and the south into the unofficial new Iranian empire.
"Hands up, everybody who believes that the "hundreds" of troops that the Pentagon plans to move from the rest of Iraq into Baghdad will suffice to secure the capital against the sectarian militias now waging war upon the civilian populations of the city? Anybody? No, I didn't think so.
To take back the capital from the militias that now terrorize it will take thousands, not hundreds, of American plus tens of thousands of Iraqis. No sector in Iraq can spare the loss of so many forces (our current troubles in Anbar date back to the decision in 2004 to shift troops from Anbar to the siege of Fallujah - when they returned, they discovered that every pro-US informant and ally in the province had been murdered, usually horribly and publicly). So a real plan for success in Baghdad will have to be built upon additional troops from out of area, potentially raising US troop levels back up to the 150,000 or so of late 2005. "...
"Baghdad - and therefore central Iraq - will in such a case slide after Basra and the south into the unofficial new Iranian empire. (Classically minded readers will remember that the pre-Islamic Persian empires of the Parthians and Sassanids were ruled from Ctesiphon, about 20 miles southeast of Baghdad. And here is a map of the boundaries of the Safavid empire in the 1500s, the last time the Persians counted for much of the history of the world: Pretty much all of present-day Iraq except Anbar is on the inside.) American troops will be free to stay or go, depending on whether we wish to deny or acknowledge defeat.
The consequences for the region and the world will be grim."
"The present plan - "as the Iraqis stand up, we stand down" - has not worked to date, as the president admitted yesterday, and there seems little reason to hope it will work better over the next months than it has in the recent past."
Basically his new plan is to partition Iraq, abandoning most of it to become part of the Greater Theocratic Republic Of Iran, but using over-the-horizon forces to prevent growth of AlQuaeda type forces which would threaten the US. Not exactly being welcomed with flowers..
Frum said what I was trying to say, but much more coherantly. Except for the over the horizon nonsense. That requires superior intelligence, and our plain sucks. We see how well its worked for Israel on those rockets.
What we need is the same thing we've needed since the day the invasion ended. Many more troops.
It was always going to come down to this. Once we made the decision (deliberately or by default) to try to maintain an Iraqi nation-state within its existing borders, we were always going to face the issue of whether those accidents of empire really embraced peoples who wanted to be a nation together, or whether the centrifugal forces of sect, tribe and external interference would make it impossible.
Even imposing a federalized system from day one would not have removed the issue: Like many third world countries, Iraq has had a large net migration from the countryside to the central city. Sect and tribe were only partially dissolved there, and with the collapse of (coercive) central authority, came back to the fore. Federalization or even early dissolution would not have removed the spectre of an ethnically cleansed Beirut redux in Baghdad.
We HAVE created conditions where what happens next will settle the question. Ramadi may still suck, but when you see milbloggers calling Tal Afar a quiet sector, and the Syrian ratline disappears from the news, then there has been some progress and we are backfilling with IA.
(Rank speculation alert.) What we've managed to build in the Iraqi Army matters a lot more than any hundred or thousands of troops we commit into Baghdad. At most, our guys will whack some fraction of the extremists of all sides, more effectively than the IA, and more importantly taking the blood onus of those acts upon ourselves. Then we will leave. If the center can't hold thereafter, it doesn't make any difference. If we've managed to construct an institutional core to the IA that is professional and (relatively) nonsectarian at the NCO and junior office level - and is seen to be so - there's a fighting chance. I put my hopes there and (believe it or not) in Sistani, not so much in politicians of the day.
#13
"It was always going to come down to this. Once we made the decision (deliberately or by default) to try to maintain an Iraqi nation-state within its existing borders, we were always going to face the issue of whether those accidents of empire really embraced peoples who wanted to be a nation together, or whether the centrifugal forces of sect, tribe and external interference would make it impossible."
That is so true. Our Government is horribley out of touch with reality. None of the borders in the mideast make any sense. Has anyone considered that maybe Saddam's methods were the only kind that could keep Iraq together. Ergo, Iraq is a bad idea.
I have no evidence, and have seen no recent reports, but I would guess that Iran and Syria are pushing this violence as hard as they can without getting caught.
Call it an intuition.
While this latest warning should of course be taken seriously, it should be remembered that such MSM proclamations have been made repeatedly for some two years - the MSM is hoping that Iraq slides into an actual civil war so they can try and score propaganda points against Bush.
rich, your intuition is accurate. It should be obvious that Iran and Syria, having failed to stop the democratization of Iraq, have escalated the general war against the West - likely out of desperation, since the longer they fail to stop democratization the greater the risk that their peoples will finally get the courage to rise and overthrow them in favor of democracy.
Of course people considered that Saddam was what was keeping Iraq together. It's why the US tolerated his regime at least as far back as the 70s. The ethnic and sectarian divisions have always been there, so it's no surprise that we are seeing the start of conflict between some Kurdish factions and Turkey, to take another example.
But let me back up one step -- the divisions have been there much longer than the US has. While Saddam was in power there was plenty of ethnic and sectarian violence. It just happened to be visited upon the Shia and Kurds by the Sunnis in a more one-sided fashion. Over time, Saddam averaged about 30K dead annually. So what we see today is a reallocation of the prior rate of sectarian violence.
#18 Karl:
Agree with what you said. You didn't say why Iraq is worth it.
Tom Holsinger your foresight and knowledge are amazing. If you promise to hone up on ethnic cleansing we will reward you with the position of Undersecretary of Fupistan. Your first order of business will be to find the upside of spending $400 billion dollars to create an Iranian client state.
Holsinger is right. The Arabs are partitioning themselves. So what else is new?
Iraq might become a client state of Iran, and it might not. That was always in the cards. We are there to free the Iraqis, not dominate them.
Spending $400 Billion to let Joe Arab have his say is worth every penny, even if Joe Arab has some things to say we don't want to hear. We can still rain fire and brimstone on them in ways they can't imagine. It's good for them to have a say in what might be their own destruction. Well worth the money. When the Arabs have total democracy, then we'll truly know who wants peace and freedom and who wants endless war. What? It was better not to know?