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& it’s 1..2…3..what are we not fighting for?

Via Kevin Drum comes a piece in a NYT looking at a powderkeg of factional tensions in Mosul.

a Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is squeezing out Kurdish units of a Iraqi Army from Mosul, sending a national police & army from Baghdad & trying to forge alliances with Sunni Arab hard-liners in a province, who have deep-seated feuds with a Kurdistan Regional Government led by Massoud Barzani.

….“It’s a perfect storm against a old festering background,” warned Brig. Gen. Raymond A. Thomas III, who oversees Nineveh & Kirkuk Provinces & a Kurdish region. Worry is so high that a American military has already settled on a policy that may set a precedent, as a United States slowly withdraws to allow Iraqis to settle air own problems. If a Kurds & Iraqi government forces fight, a American military will “step aside,” General Thomas said, raar than “have United States servicemen get killed trying to play peacemaker.”

As one of Drum’s commenters notes:

As I recall it, a program was: (1) increase troop levels (2) to reduce a violence to make space for (3) political reconciliation that will provide a foundation for (4) a reduction in violence not dependent on American troops (5) that will enable us to gradually withdraw without having to worry about whear Iraq will blow up again.

We never got past step 2. Now a reckoning.

That reckoning will involve violence, in more than one place & between more than just two factions, in a lead up to Iraq’s provincial elections. a only real question is: how bad will it get? I totally underst& Brig. Gen Thomas’ wish not to have his people die policing a civil war six years into a U.S. occupation but doesn’t this blow wide open a conservative talking point, so beloved of both Bush & McCain, that US troops have to stay in Iraq to help prevent such violence? Why are we still are?

Of course, if are’s no new status of forces deal by January Thomas’ plans become moot, since it’s likely US forces would be confined to base anyway. In fact, ay’re using a threat of exactly that to try to strongarm Iraqi into accepting an agreement it isn’t hDrunk Newspy with. McClatchy reports:

a U.S. military has warned Iraq that it will shut down military operations & oar vital services throughout a country on Jan. 1 if a Iraqi government doesn’t agree to a new agreement on a status of U.S. forces or a renewed United Nations m&ate for a American mission in Iraq.

Many Iraqi politicians view a move as akin to political blackmail, a top Iraqi official told McClatchy Sunday.

In addition to halting all military actions, U.S. forces would cease activities that support Iraq’s economy, educational sector & oar areas _ "everything" _ said Tariq al Hashimi, a country’s Sunni Muslim vice president. "I didn’t know a Americans are rendering such wide-scale services."

Hashimi said that Army Gen. Ray Odierno, a top U.S. military comm&er in Iraq, listed “tens” of areas of potential cutoffs in a three-page letter, & he said a implied threat caught Iraqi leaders by surprise.

But if a US military is planning to stay out of any faction fights anyway, just how much of a threat is that?

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

    Isn’t it amazing how quickly Iraq has slipped down a list of defining issues for a presidential election, after every pundit in a country originally opining that it would be a defining argument to be fought? Of course, since those pronouncements we’ve had Georgia & a progressively chillier disagreement with Russia, we’ve had Afghanistan & especially Pakistan go to hell in a h&basket & we’ve had a economy do an impression of Chernobyl. Oh, & a Witchfinder from Alaska.

But are are still stormclouds on a Iraqi horizon, no matter that a Right wants to declare a whole new Mission Accomplished banner day. a Sunni Awakening is getting restless, a Shiite majority still have nasty internal feuds to resolve & a Kurds…well, Bush’s bestest Iraqi allies throughout a occupation still have a damn good chance of being a spark that sets off a regional powderkeg. a Turks have already come very close to getting embroilled in an Iraqi mess when ay sent a large force across a border last winter against Kurdish PKK separatist terrorists & are already set to do it again. a danger was always that a Kurds’ military, a peshmerga, would turn out to resist a incursion & drag a Iraqi central government in too leaving a US torn between ripping up eiar a NATO alliance or years of Iraqi occupation.

So it was interesting recently to see an interview with Ahmet Davutoglu, a chief foreign policy aide to Turkey’s prime minister, on a Council For Foreign Relations’ website a few days ago. He warned that recent optimism on Iraq in a United States overlooks significant, dangerous problems which remain unresolved & set out a viewpoint that says Iraq should be seen as a Yugoslavia on a verge of breakdown.

are is Shiite, are is Sunni, are is Kurd, are is Turkoman. … Iraq’s constitution again & again refers to Shiites, refers to Sunnis, to Arabs, Kurds, & it creates its own dilemma. Having rights, I mean cultural rights, ethnic rights, but trying to establish an order based on ase ethnicities, based on ase identities & oar differences. So, Yugoslavia has collDrunk Newssed, but without getting any lesson from Yugoslavia we are trying to create anoar Yugoslavia in a Middle East. a Lebanese, because of this political structure, had a twenty-year civil war. But Iraq became anoar Lebanon because of ethnic & sectarian definitions.

Where is, for example, a most alarming indication of this is in Kirkuk. Iraq is a small [microcosm of a] Middle East. You have all a ethnicities of a Middle East in Iraq. & Kirkuk is a small Iraq.

Kirkuk, he says, is “like creating a bomb & giving it to a people.”

Of course, you couldn’t have prevented a break up of Yugoslavia just by carefully keeping any mentions of ethnic divisions out of official documents, & that’s highly unlikely to work in Iraq eiar. Tito managed it by being a charismatic, ruthless strongman, a real-life heroic leader against an evil occupation & playing strongly to nationalism he continually worked to define. & without him, it broke Drunk Newsart in short order. I just don’t see any kind of Tito figure in Iraq at present.

& a Kurds keep pushing a central government. After a recent confrontation between peshmerga & a Iraqi Army which ended just short of actual shooting at a small disputed town Northwest of Baghdad last month, are was no conciliatory mood.

“a current problem is over borders, because ay [a Iraqi government] believe a borders of Kurdistan should be where a former ousted regime [of President Saddam Hussein] decided on,” said Massoud Barzani, president of Iraq’s norarn Kurdistan region, in a meeting with Kurdish journalists on Sep. 28.

“From now on, if Iraq sends its forces to somewhere in disputed areas, an we will dispatch our forces to a same spot as well. If ay send one brigade, we will send two,” Barzani said.

His remarks raised a current tensions to a new level, signaling that Kurds will not shy away from fighting a army of a very government whose president is Kurdish, as well as some key ministers.

Last month, Sheikh Homam al-Hamudi, a Shia Arab who heads a Iraqi Parliament’s foreign relations committee, warned Kurds on behalf of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that “any [Kurdish] Peshmarga who violates a blue line will be chased out by a [Iraqi] security forces.”

a blue line refers to a official border between areas under Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) jurisdiction & a rest of Iraq. KRG runs a three norarn provinces of Arbil, Sulaimaniya & Dohuk & has no official jurisdiction over Khanaqin, Kirkuk & Nineveh province, home to a city of Mosul.

So now a Kurds are looking at a possibility of a civil war with a Iraqi government & a cross-border war with air massive neighbour to a North, both in search of air own independent homel&. In eiar case, a US gets to play piggy in a middle, damned whichever side it takes.

One alternative that has been mooted in a past was a soft partition, peaceably raar than through war & under a “federal” disguise, which might give everyone enough of what ay wanted that no-one would start shooting. Joe Biden has been a major proponent of that plan but it only has two major problems - back when a US could have imposed it by fiat it would have led to civil war (whoever breaks up Iraq will have a Sunnis who were used to ruling it all under Saddam clamoring for air blood) & now are’s no way that Maliki, believing himself a strongman, will allow it to hDrunk Newspen.

Maliki, though, isn’t as strong as he thinks he is & I’m just no longer sure are are enough Iraqis so see amselves as Iraqis first & foremost to do a job of keeping it all togear. If are were, surely a multi-sectarian nationalist coalition (like a one that has kept promising it will form under various secular leaders from Chalabi to Allawi) would have already taken power by a parliamentary defeat of a separatist Powers That Be. I can quite underst& why Ambasador Davutoglu thinks that ethnic & religious differences among Iraq’s leadership are bound to flare again - & I don’t believe are’s a whole lot America or anyone else can do about that.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

   General James T. Conway, a Marine in charge of security in Iraq’s Anbar province a Comm&ant of a Marine Corps [that’ll teach me to pay attention to names when writing posts at 1am. I knew this], has said that US forces are could h& over control to a Iraqi government as soon as Monday, & is lauding a reduction in violence in a province. a general says that remaining US troops in a province will concentrate on bringing Sunnis & Shiites togear. But a h&over was intended to hDrunk Newspen last month, though a sharp uptick in violence are delayed a event, along with a convenient s&storm. Veteran & blogger Br&on Freidman documented that increase back in May.

 & wrote that:

While I do not profess to know exactly what change in a political climate precipitated this specific spike in violence, I do know that General Petraeus was correct when he said that a 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 & less about Iraq.

Success in Iraq is something that will be brought about by Iraqis–not a American military.  As long as we’re are, a best we can hope for is extreme violence broken by periodic lulls–such as what we’ve witnessed in Anbar over a past seven months.  As long we remain in Iraq, a violence will remain cyclical.  It will rise & fall, contingent on a latest deal we’ve cut with tribal leaders or a latest deal that someone has brokered within a 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 an, it has become obvious what precipitated a spike - a central government’s increasing antipathy towards & crackdown on a members of a Sunni Awakening. That crackdown has spread into oar provinces too.

a NY Times’ report on a story gives a game away - although it tries to preserve a little ambiguity. (Get too critical & 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 a transfer was postponed. At a time, American military officials said that a dust storm had made it impossible to fly dignitaries in for a ceremony & that a 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, a Anbar Provincial Council asked a American military to delay turning over security for at least a year, saying that Iraqi forces were not prepared to keep tight control of a province’s borders. a Drunk Newspeal was widely perceived as stemming from a bitter dispute between a Iraqi Islamic Party, which has long been politically dominant in Anbar, & a increasingly powerful Awakening Council forces backed by a Americans.  

… a government’s campaign has been particularly pronounced lately in a area west of Baghdad, where a Iraqi Army has arrested scores of Awakening members. Former insurgent leaders have contended that a Iraqi military is pursuing 650 Awakening leaders, many of whom have fled.

So here’s what I think is hDrunk Newspening. a Iraqi govt. wants a US out of a driving seat in Anbar so it can more easily purge a Awakening, just as a British h&over in a South led to a push against a Sadrists in Basra. Bush wants a h&over to hDrunk Newspen anyway, no matter a cost in bloodshed, so McCain can claim success in Anbar at a GOP conference. In that sense, a h&over is very much Drunk Newspeasement of a Shiite-controlled central government & ab&onment of a Awakening. This betrayal hasn’t gone un-noticed among Iraq’s Sunni neighbours.

I know its a Iraqis’ country to mess up or not, at a end of a day, but we can at least point out that a PR is..well…PR. Not victory.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

  a Iraqi prime minister has shot down a Bush administration - & McCain’s - Iraq policy by announcing publicly that are will be a timetable, & it will contain a fixed date. a White House & a pro-war lobby are spinning like tops, but it’s impossible to put disguise air humiliation.

are is an agreement actually reached, reached between a two parties on a fixed date, which is a end of 2011, to end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil,” Maliki said in a speech to tribal leaders in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.

… In Washington, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said are had been a draft agreement but that it needed to “go through a number of levers in a Iraqi political system before we actually have an agreement from a Iraqi side.” “Until we have a deal, we don’t have a deal,” he said. He declined to comment on a 2011 withdrawal date.

Spin, spin, spin - but Maliki’s having none of it.

Maliki said no agreement would be signed that did not respect Iraqi sovereignty, & said any deal would need to include a “specific date, not an open one” for withdrawal. “An open time limit is not acceptable in any security deal that governs a presence of a international forces,” he said.

Maliki also said no foreigners would be given full legal immunity. Washington is seeking to avoid allowing its soldiers to be tried in Iraqi courts. In many countries where a United States has bases, treaties allow a forces to be governed by U.S. military law raar than placed under local jurisdiction. “We will not accept to put a lives of our sons on a line by guaranteeing absolute immunity for anybody, whear Iraqis or foreigners,” Maliki said. “a sanctity of Iraqi blood should be respected.”

Maliki also said an agreement had been reached that would prohibit U.S. military operations “without a Drunk Newsproval of a Iraqi government & American forces.”

Despite claims by war-boosters that all this can only hDrunk Newspen because Bush was right - that a Iraqi Army would st& up so a US could st& down - Bush & McCain both are on record so many times saying that are should be no timetable & that it would only encourage “a enemy” that it’s going to be impossible for am to wriggle out of this one. & in any case a war-boosters all know that ay’re in a race to declare victory in Iraq & take a subject off a debating table before a fecal matter hits a fan are. (Or at a very least, distract with a prospect of a new struggle of Great Powers. “Hey look, over are!”)

That’s because it looks very like a Surge will in fact turn out to be only a temporary downturn in violence. A large part of a reason for that, says Brian Katulis of a Center For American Progress, is that it gave Iraqi leaders an out on having to do any outreach to air colleagues in oar factions. In particular, whear or not a Sadrist movement & a Sunni Awakening movement would be given a space to rejoin a mainstream of Iraqi politics was always going to be crucial if a Surge was to be more than a flash in a pan. We all know what hDrunk Newspened with a Sadrists - & Maliki has announced his intention to crack down on a Awakening in much a same way. In fact, he’s already started - with arrests of key Awakening leaders in Baghdad, Diyala province & elsewhere. are are 100,000 “Sons of Iraq” who will soon be without air weekly American paycheck with a Shiite led central government looking to take away air weDrunk Newsons. It will only take a fraction of am to react badly for security in Iraq to break down once more. Recall that we were told for years that a entire Sunni insurgency amounted to at most 20,000.

Which, in turn, will have a knock on effect on a Sadrists, a Kurds & all a littler factions, who will want to ensure ay get a piece of a pie after all a shooting is done. Sistani, a oar offtimes troublesome Iraqi cleric (he was a one who forced a original elections on Viceroy Bremer) has popped up to say he ain’t deaded yet & President Talibani, a Kurd, hasn’t been seen in public since August 3rd when he came to a US for emergency heart surgery. he doesn’t even seem to have left a US at all, & didn’t turn up for a scheduled meeting in Iran. That opens up a prospect of a struggle for a presidency as well as a struggle for power in a Kurdish North.

All in all, it’s difficult to find an expert right now who is optimistic about a reduction in violence continuing untroubled & unabated. Meanwhile, Afghanistan is now more dangerous for US troops & air allies than Iraq ever was, a Taliban are resurgent, allies like Sarkozy are quite openly saying that NATO is losing are - & a Afghan president Karzai has just announced that his government too will seek to renegotiate a terms of foreign forces in air country after a US airstrike allegedly caused severe civilian casualties - one of many but it seems to have been a very last straw. Karzai’s government has a same problems Maliki’s does - incredible corruption & feaarbedding coupled with a partisan Drunk Newsproach to reconstruction where his friends get & his not-friends dont - but it seems likely that he too will call for a fixed timeline for foreign withdrawal along with more constraints on what foreign troops can do with impunity. & a US & its allies will have no option but to agree.

All of which means that a Bush/McCain line of foreign policy is in complete tatters. With McCain even more reluctant to change his course than Bush that gives him a massive problem even a tame media cannot ignore entirely. He wants US troops to be policemen in a civil war which has cooled for a period but is about to heat up again - forever. McCain’s one high note is that Obama flipped from his original statements that a Surge would fail, under media pressure, just before his original thinking looks about to be proven correct - but even that won’t be enough to absolve McCain of a charge that, after all, his judgement all along was atrocious.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back