Published November 26th, 2007 by Future Atlas
Iraq: still in limbo
In the Nov. 19th New Yorker, John Lee Anderson concludes that “Iraq’s future, for the moment, is in limbo. The best one can say, perhaps, is that the U.S. has bought or borrowed a little space to work with.”
This is partly because the cause of the current decline in violence is not at all clear:
- The surge in American troops seems to be working, but only in some areas.
- On the other hand, “analysts credit much of the recent drop in Iraqi civilian deaths not to the surge but to Sadr’s decision, in August, to order the Mahdi Army, which is believed to have been responsible for much of the Shiite-on-Sunni sectarian killing in and around Baghdad, to “freeze” its activities for six months.”
- Also crucial is the fact that “the surge also coincided with the so-called Sunni Awakening, the decision by some Anbar tribesmen to ally themselves with the Americans and to fight against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia—a shift that was not foreseen in Petraeus’s plan.”
In other words, at least two of the elements of recent gains are not under American control at all, and thus subject to reversal, whatever future policies the US pursues.
In a harbinger of future instability, Anderson writes that “Many of the players in Iraq seemed …. to be positioning themselves for the next battle.” A Sunni leader now working with the US says, “Once Anbar is settled, we must take control of Baghdad, and we will.”
A second ominous sign is that, while the American relationship to various Iraqi players has shifted, internal Iraqi reconciliation is not proceeding, despite that being the central goal of the surge. Shiites in the Iraqi government feel the new Sunni “allies” that the US has enlisted are the militias of the future. Meanwhile, efforts to create nonsectarian security forces–essential to a post-occupation Iraq’s stability–are still faltering. The national police, for instance, are “still part of the problem,” an American officer tells Anderson.