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| Iraq |
| Is the Surge Already Producing Results? |
| 2007-01-23 |
| By Jack Kelly Three interesting things have happened since President Bush announced plans to "surge" U.S. troops. First, al Qaida appears to be retreating from Baghdad. A military intelligence officer has confirmed to Richard Miniter, editor of Pajamas Media, a report in the Iraqi newspaper al Sabah that Abu Ayyub al Masri, the head of al Qaida in Iraq, has ordered a withdrawal to Diyala province, north and east of Baghdad. Mr. al Masri's evacuation order said that remaining in Baghdad is a no-win situation for al Qaida, because the Fallujah campaign demonstrating the Americans have learned how to prevail in house to house fighting, Mr. Miniter said. "In more than 10 years of reading al Qaida intercepts, I've never seen (pessimistic) language like this," he quoted his intelligence officer source as saying. Second, the radical cleric Moqtada al Sadr, whose Iranian-subsidized militia, the Mahdi army, is responsible for most of the assaults on Sunni civilians in Iraq, is cooling his rhetoric and lowering his profile. "Mahdi army militia members have stopped wearing their black uniforms, hidden their weapons and abandoned their checkpoints in an apparent effort to lower their profile in Baghdad in advance of the arrival of U.S. reinforcements," wrote Leila Fadel and Zaineb Obeid of the McClatchy Newspapers Jan. 13. Third, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is putting more distance between himself and al Sadr, upon whose bloc of votes in parliament he had relied for political support. Last Friday al Sadr ordered the 30 lawmakers and six cabinet ministers he controls to end the boycott of the government he ordered two months ago. AP writer Steven Hurst described this Monday as "a desperate bid to fend off an all out American offensive." Despite this, Mr. Maliki consented to the arrest that same day of Abdul Hadi al Durraji, al Sadr's media director in Baghdad. Mr. Sadr said Saturday some 400 of his supporters have been arrested in recent days. The first development is more of a problem relocated than a problem solved, because Baghdad's gain from al Qaida's departure will be Diyala's loss. A strategic withdrawal makes good sense from al Qaida's point of view. It's better to live to fight another day. The intelligence officer who was Mr. Miniter's source thinks Mr. al Masri is a more formidable opponent than was his predecessor, Abu Musab al Zarqawi who (ironically) met his end after an encounter with an F-16 in Diyala province. But leaving Baghdad gives the government and the Americans the opportunity to assert control in the contested neighborhoods, which will make it difficult for al Qaida to return. And because the media play up events in Baghdad more than events anywhere else in the country, it means al Qaida will be leaving center stage. The lowered profile of the Mahdi army will only be a problem postponed if decisive action isn't taken against al Sadr and his militia. "Mookie," as the troops call him, can only be relied upon to behave when he is terrified. So success hinges on the attitude of the Iraqi government. Mr. Maliki's turnaround on the Mahdi army "was puzzling because as late as Oct. 31, he had intervened to end a U.S. blockade of Sadr City, the northeast Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is headquarters to the militia," Mr. Hurst wrote. Two Iraqi government officials told him Mr. Maliki had dropped his protection of the Mahdi army because U.S. intelligence had persuaded him it was infiltrated by death squads, the AP reporter wrote. "Al Maliki realized he couldn't keep defending the Mahdi army because of the information and evidence that the armed group was taking part in the killings, displacing people and violating the state's sovereignty," Mr. Hurst quoted one of those officials as saying. But Mr. Maliki would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to have recognized from the get go that the Mahdi army is one gigantic death squad. I suspect Mr. Maliki is only seeing the light now because President Bush finally is applying some heat. Mr. Maliki has tried to walk a line between the Scylla of the Americans and the Charybdis of the Iranians, but the steps he's taking now will be difficult to retrace. "He knows that his personal risk increases with each Shiite militia commander he arrests, and eventually he will pass through a door through which he cannot return," said the Web logger Tigerhawk. Though they may turn out to be fleeting, the troop surge, though barely begun, already is producing beneficial results. Efforts to write it off in advance as a "failure" are, at best, premature. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #4 Rebuilding, LH? How many times and in how many cities? This rebuilding strategy seems ill thought out; a few misplaced bombs can drop a newly built facility as easily as it can an older one. So then what, we rebuild it and they take it down again, ad nauseum? Don't we imagine the "insurgents" are aware of this? Certainly al Qaeda is as one of their supreme strategies is to chip away at us economically. Seems to me that rebuilding should be conditional. |
| Posted by: Jules 2007-01-23 19:29 |
| #3 I would tweak your question, lhawk, to say can/will we use the coming months to actually establish security and credibility in key select areas by killing people, detaining people, and breaking the will of anyone who resists order/the new order - oh, and also political progress and some reconst. in some areas to help cement the deal. Petraeus stole my line and encouraged me, then deflated me and reminded me of what seems a serious problem in the brass, in his Senate testimony, more or less in consecutive sentences. First - it's what we do with the troops, more than the numbers (finally, someone adding some adult supervision to this painful discussion); second - we're going to focus on protecting the populace, not killing insurgents. So what happens to the "insurgents"? Do they evaporate, become butterflies in the spring, move to Mars, what? The bulk of them, and the key ones, sure aren't going to get on board with the new program, if you're talking Sunni areas or any areas with a robust criminal element. The "there is no military solution to military problems" disease has ravaged much of our senior brass, it seems, esp. in the Army. Stop the madness, I say. Iraqis know better than "small war" experts now to secure their neighborhoods - kill/capture/intimidate enough bad guys to give the majority confidence they can rat out the f**kers, join the police, whatever. Short of that, in the areas where most of the violence occurs, we're dooomed to failure or overly costly and partial success ..... |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2007-01-23 17:31 |
| #2 given that we 140,000 or so troops, spread everywhere from Mosul to Tikrit to Baghdad and Anbar, the addition of 21000 more entirely in Baghdad and Anbar, and mainly in Baghdad IS a surge. Even NPR acknowledged today that there were fewer kidnappings/killings going on - again, looks like Sadr is trying for the low profile. The real question is - can we use the next 18 months to achieve real gains politically in Iraq, in rebuilding, etc, so that when we finally do have to reduce troops numbers, the Sadrists and insurgents cant simply come back as strong as ever. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2007-01-23 09:53 |
| #1 I wish they would stop calling it an 'effing "surge". The delta in the number of troops is relatively small. The important and effective change is in the No More Mr. Nice Guy political ROE. Too bad Maliki was unable to break out of traditional arab tribal mode and become Iraq's George Washington. He did deserve to be given the chance, maybe just not such a long one. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2007-01-23 09:43 |