The signature shift in President Barack Obama’s handling of the wars he
inherited from the Bush Administration has been to reverse their order of
priority. The campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and
Pakistan has eclipsed the stabilization of Iraq in Washington’s focus, which is hardly surprising given the trend lines in the two wars. While
Afghanistan and Pakistan have been sharply deteriorating, the assumption
has been that Iraq is on course to a more or less acceptable outcome.
However, in recent weeks, insurgents in Iraq have begun to challenge
their relegation in the order of U.S. strategic priorities by unleashing a
wave of violence reminiscent of darker times. Some 365 people were killed in political violence during April — most in bombings directed at Shi’ite communities — making it the most violent month in a year. Although there’s no sign yet that these provocations will rekindle the sectarian civil war, they underscore the fragility of the security gains that have accompanied the troop surge that began in 2007, and potentially cast a shadow over the agreed timetable for U.S. withdrawal that envisages taking U.S. soldiers off the streets of Iraq’s cities this summer. A spokesman for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday emphatically ruled out any extension of the redeployment and withdrawal deadlines set out in last December’s Status of Forces Agreement between the U.S. and Iraq.
The renewed violence has accompanied the unraveling of a vital component
of the success of the surge strategy: the Sunni Awakening movement, also
known by the U.S. military as the Sons of Iraq. That movement
brought some 100,000 local Sunni men in towns and neighborhoods across Iraq
onto the U.S. payroll, which backed them in a campaign to drive al-Qaeda out of
many of Iraq’s Sunni locales. Many of these Awakening fighters had
previously been Sunni insurgents fighting the U.S. — and many of them
had been part of the support base of Saddam Hussein’s regime — but they
were happy to make common cause against a mutual foe. But many of the
Awakening leaders remained suspicious of the Shi’ite-dominated government of al-Maliki, and the feeling was mutual, and then
some.
The limits of the Awakening strategy have become clear since last month,
when the U.S. transferred responsibility for paying the fighters’ salaries to the
Iraqi government, which had agreed to integrate some of them into the Iraqi security forces and help integrate the rest into the Iraqi economy. But payments to the Sunni militiamen have dried up, and only 5,000 have been incorporated
into the security forces. If bringing the Sunni insurgents onto the U.S.
payroll undid some of the damage done by the Bush Administration’s 2003
decision to summarily disband Saddam’s army, reversing that decision
appears to run some of the same risks. Numerous reports out of Iraq suggest
that growing numbers of Awakening fighters have abandoned their posts, and
that at least some have returned to the insurgent fold.
Tensions have been exacerbated by the al-Maliki government’s sending
troops to arrest some key Awakening leaders. U.S. forces had to intervene to
assist their Iraqi counterparts when the arrest of Baghdad Awakening leader
Adil al-Mashhadani — accused by the government of attempting to revive
the Baath Party — sparked a protracted firefight. At the same time,
Washington’s efforts to promote reconciliation between the new government
and the Sunni community, in which Saddam’s Baath Party enjoyed significant
loyalty, have produced little by way of concrete results. Instead, al-Maliki
appears to be strengthening his own regime and acting to weaken and
disorganize an Awakening movement he appears to regard as a potential
threat.
As was the case under Saddam, the majority of Iraqis who have
jobs are employed by the state, and the ability to dispense the power of
patronage has helped al-Maliki secure the loyalty of key
elements of the security forces and intelligence services — the critical
foundation of any Arab strongman regime. Even if he were tempted to follow
the U.S. strategy of buying off the Sunni insurgency, however , al-Maliki has a problem. Oil accounts for more than 80% of Iraq’s
revenues, and the fact that the global oil price has fallen by some
two-thirds over the past year has punched a gaping hole in the country’s
budget. Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh noted in London on Friday that
Iraq had just last month been forced to trim its national budget from about
$80 billlion to about $60 billion, and even $20 billion of that lower
figure was deficit spending. Iraq’s economic pie is shrinking, and the
sectarian and even intra-Shi’ite political competition over how it is sliced
is likely to intensify sharply, at the expense of Iraq’s overall security.
The Arab-Kurdish tension over Kirkuk and its oil wealth adds another
dimension to the same problem.
The Obama Administration may have hoped that the Bush Administration’s surge left Iraq on autopilot toward an acceptable outcome, but the
power struggle underlying Iraq’s sectarian political violence remains
unresolved. Even as the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan expands, Washington
may yet find its plans to shift resources there from Iraq tested by
some nasty developments in Bush’s war.
