Reconciliation Through Withdrawal

Earlier this week Marc Lynch wrote about the rising violence in Iraq and the inability of the Sunni Awakening forces and the Shiite central government to reach a reconciliation. He makes some important points:

Given all that uncertainty, it would be unwise to offer a confident assessment of what's really going on. But the emerging crisis surrounding the Awakenings and the uptick in violence do both seem to be primarily driven by the continuing refusal of Maliki and the Iraqi government to make meaningful political accommodations and their decision to move against at least some of the Awakenings groups at a convenient moment [...]

I'm obviously worried about all of this. I've been warning about the potential for trouble with the Awakenings project for a long time, and it would be easy to say that those predictions are now coming due. But I think it's way too early for that -- there is still time for these troubles to demonstrate the costs of political failure and to become the spur to the needed political action.

That's why it's really important that the United States not now begin to hedge on its commitment to the drawdown of its forces in the face of this uptick in violence. It is in moments like this that the credibility of commitments is made or broken. Thus far, the signals have been very good -- consistent, clear, and tightly linked to continuing pressure on political progress. President Obama reportedly pushed hard on the political accommodation front during his stopover in Baghdad last week, and General Odierno did very well to emphasize on CNN yesterday that the U.S. is firmly committed to removing its troops by the end of 2011. Maliki and everyone need to take deep breath and strike power sharing deals before things go south, and understand that they will pay consequences if they don't.

It's not just the crackdown on the Awakening forces, but the broad trends against human rights and freedom of the press that cause alarm. Maliki has been laying the groundwork for a strongman rule since last year, and it's starting to come to fruition. 25 gay men have been killed over the past two weeks, and newspapers are being harassed by the Iraqi military. This is very troubling all around, but I agree with Lynch that the United States must stay on its glide path to withdrawal, because that's the only way to force reconciliation between the sectarian factions. Ultimately, we can no longer be the backstop for internecine violence, acting as Maliki's proxy militia while he runs roughshod over his competitors. I hope we don't get cold feet on this.

A Stop To Staunch The Bleeding In Iraq

The President completed the Turkish leg of his European tour today, and then made an unannounced visit to Iraq to discuss various issues with government leaders and meet with troops.

This comes on the heels of another car bomb in the Baghdad area, a day after a separate set of bombings killing 33. I know what I'd tell Nouri al-Maliki if I were the President - you need to end the belligerence against the Sunni Awakening groups, because they are either returning to the insurgency or allowing AQI to operate more freely. Sectarian violence is rising in the same proportion as the tension between the Awakening forces and the central government who lied to them rises. The Sunni groups need to be paid and integrated into the security apparatus. The absence of this will cause lots more carnage. This is a diplomatic problem and not a military one, and that's what I'd emphasize to Maliki - your people are dying and our military will not be used as your personal protection force.

Drawing A Straight Line

The ruling Shiite government gained responsibility for paying the Sunni Awakening forces. They stiffed most of them and even started arresting some of the Sunni leadership. And then...

A series of six car bombs exploded in or near Baghdad on Monday, killing more than 30 people and wounding scores more, according to witnesses and the police.

Three bombs struck markets in predominately Shiite neighborhoods around Baghdad, but there did not appear to be any obvious pattern to the attacks. The blasts began shortly after dawn and continued in disparate parts of the city into the afternoon.

Um, I think there IS an obvious pattern to the attacks.

The spike in attacks in Iraq seems to me to be DIRECTLY attributable to the tension between the Shiite ruling government and the Sunni Sons of Iraq. While this guest poster at Informed Comment claims that the disputes in Iraq are about control of resources and power, that seems to me a distinction without a difference. Right now, Maliki and the Shiites are in power, and the Sons of Iraq/Awakening forces are dependent upon them. And they certainly have back channels to what's left of the insurgency, and the increased fighting represents another stage in that power relationship. It does nobody good to turn Iraq into the forgotten war that Afghanistan used to be. The Maliki government needs to be pressured into meeting their responsibilities to keep the country secure and stable, and having a US Ambassador in place would maybe help. So stop grandstanding, Senate GOP. People's lives are at stake.

Send One Back, Take Fifty More

No doubt under duress from the Americans, the Iraqi government abruptly released a Sunni Muslim Awakening Council leader and dropped all charges. Of course, he's just one of the several they've captured.

While freeing Raad Ali, the Shiite-led government continued to hold another Sunni leader, whose arrest Saturday triggered an uprising that left at least 17 people wounded, and it's arrested a number of other Sunni paramilitary leaders and members this week.

The turmoil is fueling fears that rising tensions between Sunnis and Shiites and between Sunni Arabs and Kurds could trigger a new round of violence and even disrupt the Obama administration's plans to draw down American forces in Iraq.

Ali, the head of the Sons of Iraq in the Ghazaliyah neighborhood in northwest Baghdad, returned home to a rain of celebratory shooting by neighbors and supporters. He told McClatchy that he'd been charged with seven crimes, including kidnapping a man who'd already accused someone else of the crime, planting roadside bombs, displacing Shiite families and killing two police officers, one of whom had been his own follower.

He said that all of the charges were bogus. He was treated well while in prison and was able to plead his case before a judge Wednesday, he said.

What's worrying is that the arrests are continuing. Another 50 were arrested yesterday in Ameriyah, a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad. Ali was a US ally, but he's but one of what is now ranging into hundreds of detainees. And he is correct that this could spark a new round of violence.

"The Awakening succeeded to make everything good and clean the face of the government," Ali said. "They (the Iraqi government) are crazy, they are foolish, they don't need to target us . . . . we help you and support you why do you want to target us?"

He said he'd told U.S. officials many times that the Iraqi government's apparent plan was to "arrest big leaders," and that this would "destroy" the U.S. project to end the Sunni insurgency. But the American said he was wrong, he said.

I hope somebody at the highest levels of the White House is paying attention to this. It could explode.

...Oh dear. This could get really, really bad.

An American military aircraft opened fire Thursday night on Sons of Iraq members who were allegedly spotted placing a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Friday.

The incident, which killed one suspected member of the paramilitary group and wounded two, is the latest sign of the fraying allegiance between the paramilitary groups and the U.S. military.

Can you say "insurgency resurgence"?

Sectarian Strife In Iraq Does Not Presume A Continued Military Presence

Brian Katulis, one of my favorite foreign policy wonks, has a very good paper spinning off of the incident in Baghdad over the weekend, which signaled a breakdown in relations between the Shiite central government and the Sunni Awakening forces. Katulis argues that this was inevitable:

The standoff between two U.S. “allies” this weekend in the heart of Baghdad is a harbinger of things to come in Iraq. The showdown between Iraq’s central government security forces and members of Sunni militias, known as "Awakenings," had nothing to do with the size of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and almost everything to do with enduring tensions in Iraq—multiple struggles for power between competing Iraqi factions.

What happened this weekend in central Baghdad between Iraqi security forces and members of the Sunni Awakening groups was not unexpected, in large part because many of the tactics used in the 2007 “surge” of U.S. forces built a shaky and unstable foundation. Violence broke out in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Fadhil—just a few miles north of the Green Zone—when Iraqi troops backed by U.S. forces arrested Adil Mashadani, an “Awakening” militia leader on charges of terrorist and sectarian crimes. According to news reports, Mashadani allegedly maintained ties with Al Qaeda forces, helped plan roadside bombing attacks against Iraqi security forces, and ran an extortion racket that squeezed Fadhil residents for tens of thousands of dollars.

Whether these specific charges against Mashadani are true or not, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that someone like Mashadani was on the payroll of the U.S. taxpayers. I argued in a paper on the Awakening groups more than a year ago that the same U.S. tactics that contributed to the so-called “success” of the surge were actually undermining the process of helping Iraq bridge internal divisions. The tactics employed during the surge helped create alternate centers of power in supporting new militias, which built a shaky foundation that led to short-term security gains at the expense of longer-term political stability.

Iraq still exhibits a stark divide between competing sectarian factions, and the surge did nothing to assuage that. Instead we paid off the Awakening forces to provide the illusion of stability without really addressing the root causes that could make such stability lasting. And we allowed delay on the fundamental political solutions that need to be made between Arabs and Kurds in northern Iraq. As Thomas Ricks says, "That is Iraq 2009. Does it sound peaceful to you? Does it seem like the political questions vexing Iraq have been solved?" And he also thinks the Sadrists could take advantage of the chaos.

If the Awakening fighting spreads, I wouldn't be surprised to see Moqtada al-Sadr's Shiite militia re-emerge. I've always thought the Sunni Awakening forced him to go to ground, because he didn't want to be the only guy taking on American forces. But if the Sunnis are on the attack again, it might be game on for him as well. I am reminded of Ambassador Ryan Crocker's worry, expressed in my new book and elsewhere, that the future of Iraq was something like Lebanon. That is, it has a government, but it is shaky, and there is violence in the streets, with some political parties having armed wings that are outside the control of the government.

That's probably accurate, and yet it's important to note that we don't have 140,000 troops in Lebanon right now, and when we tried to put troops there we eventually were forced to leave, and Ronald Reagan made that call and I would argue that it was the right one. Anyone using the continued sectarian strife in Iraq to call for a continued military commitment from the US is not being mindful of other realities. As Katulis notes, the Iraqis set the withdrawal date, not us. We have bigger challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan that push against a giant commitment in Iraq. In addition, our military presence probably inflames this situation. The US should be engaged diplomatically to force a solution between the factions, but our military is essentially being used as a pawn for Nouri al-Maliki as he jockeys for power. Without soveriegnty, and without the US military as a crutch, Iraq will simply never be stable.

Uprising?

I know the Iraq war is over and everything, but this strikes me as a notable development:

Sunni militants staged a violent uprising in central Baghdad Saturday after Iraqi forces detained a leader of the Sons of Iraq, a mostly Sunni paramilitary force that until recently had received salaries from the United States and is now on the Iraqi government payroll.

Sixteen people were injured in the battle in the once volatile Fadhl neighborhood, and five Iraqi soldiers were missing - snatched Saturday night by members of the Sons of Iraq, a security official said.

The arrest of Adel Mashhadani, who leads the force in Fadhl, and his assistant, heightened fears among Sunnis that the Iraqi government plans to divide and disband the movements now that its taken control of all but a few thousand of the 94,000 members across the country.

Earlier in the week we learned that Sunni Awakening forces weren't receiving the jobs promised to them by the central government. Falling oil prices have lessened the funds for the government, and they are having trouble paying existing employees, so payouts and make-work jobs for Sunni militants are unlikely. And this has caused anger and distrust.

The point of the Sunni Awakening was one of reconciliation, to re-integrate former militiamen into Iraqi society. If each of them could be arrested for past criminal actions, is there any way to avoid massive resistance and a resumption of Sunni-Shiite conflict, as well as violence against US forces (which occurred yesterday as well)?

"They sold him," said Khaled Jamal Qaisi, Mashhadani's deputy, referring to the U.S. military.

"The Americans are vile people and they betrayed our trust," Qaisi said. "We are the ones who fought al Qaida. They want things to return as they used to be? If they don't release Adel al Mashhadani today, you will all be prisoners in your homes."

This could be a blip, and Mashhadani could be a legitimate criminal. But when I start to see pitched gun battles in the streets of Baghdad again, I get nervous.

The Return Of Sectarian Violence?

Violence raged in Iraq today, but the country has yet to be fully pacified; hundreds of Iraqis die every month in bombings and other actions. A certain level of violence is expected. What would truly change the dynamic toward an uneasy stability in the country can be found in stories like this:

The American military marked another milestone the other day in the initiative perhaps most responsible for taming the violence in Iraq: All but 10,000 of the 94,000 Sunni militiamen — many of them former insurgents who agreed, for cash, to stop killing American soldiers — had been turned over to the control of the Iraqi military.

Significantly, the militiamen themselves were not celebrating.

The same day, one group of the fighters north of Baghdad announced they were resigning from their Awakening Council, the Iraqi name for what the Americans call the Sons of Iraq. And in the town of Salman Pak, councils in southern Baghdad and its suburbs, an area once called “the ring of death,” met to denounce Iraqi efforts to integrate them.

These are among the signs that the fighters’ patience is fraying badly at a difficult moment. After months of promises, only 5,000 Awakening members — just over 5 percent — have been given permanent jobs in the Iraqi security forces. Those promises were made last year when Iraq was flush with oil money.

Now with Iraq’s budget badly battered by falling oil prices, the government is having trouble paying existing employees, much less bringing in Sunni gunmen already regarded with suspicion by the Shiite-led government.

In interviews with leaders from a dozen local Awakening Councils, nearly all complained that full-time jobs were lacking, that pay was in arrears and that members were being arrested despite promises of amnesty.

Perhaps most ominously, many expressed concern this might drive some followers back to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely Iraqi group with some foreign leadership, at a time when both Iraqi and American military commanders say that the group seems to be making gains, small but worrisome, around Baghdad.

We've been hearing that the Sunni Awakening forces were unhappy with the ruling government's indifference and even hostility toward them for a while. With a full rift along those lines, the country could easily lapse back into a resumption of the tensions and violence of the civil war period in 2005-2006. Some of this could simply be bargaining positions by the Sunnis, to get the best deal for their men. But commanders should take the threat of a renewed insurgency seriously. It was easier for the Maliki government to make promises about hiring 100,000 Sunnis when oil revenues were high. Since the collapse of the global economy, the government is in a much weaker position, and the Sunnis will surely be the first to get squeezed.

Perhaps the only good news that can come of this would be if everyone stopped their thrall to a "surge strategy" that may well not work and wasn't the exclusive province of the American military, anyway. Nobody "won" in Iraq; instead everyone punched themselves out, and neighborhoods were ethnically cleansed to the extent that something slightly less awful but no less fragile could predominate. Now this Sunni-Shiite rift would turn something slightly less awful into something just as awful, and it frankly doesn't matter a bit whether we have 150,000 troops or 100,000 troops or no troops standing by when the chaos erupts. Perhaps this should NOT be the model for next steps in Afghanistan, after all.

...More hopeful signs exist, as well.

Can We Really Reconcile Taliban?

Barack Obama's nod to the possibility that moderate Taliban could potentially be co-opted into working with the Afghan government and US forces, the way Sunni insurgents were presumably co-opted to work against Al Qaeda in Iraq (I say "presumably" because that's not the accurate description of what happened, in fact the Awakening forces got sick of Al Qaeda practically of their own accord), is a fairly good position to take. It recognizes that peace can only happen with the support of those who can enforce it. However, the reality of actually getting moderate Taliban to ally with the US is that it's unlikely to happen. That doesn't mean you stop trying, but it's important to understand the truth of the situation on the ground.

Barack Obama's call for "moderate" Taliban members to be brought in from the cold met with scepticism yesterday from leading Afghan opposition figures, who warned that co-opting fighters would fail as long as Hamid Karzai's government appeared weak and corrupt [...]

Ashraf Ghani, a former Afghanistan finance minister, who is to stand as presidential candiate in the elections in August, said: "I don't know of a single peace process that has been successfully negotiated from a position of weakness or stalemate."

A Taliban spokesman, who said that the US president's overture was a sign of weakness, poured cold water on the notion that "moderate" fighters could be easily turned.

Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman contacted by telephone, said: "They say they want to speak to moderate Taliban but they will not be able to find such people because we are united around the aim of fighting for freedom and bringing an Islamic system to Afghanistan." He added that Obama's comments were a reflection of the fact that the Americans had "become tired and worried".

the tenor of this piece is that there's no reason for the Taliban to switch sides when they appear to be winning. This would have been a good strategy five or six years ago, but now it will be difficult to turn Taliban unless the government first turns itself around and recaptures the support of the Afghan people. And that probably doesn't happen without the end of the Karzai regime. His reputation is too tarnished with weakness and corruption.

Spencer Ackerman goes deeper on this possibility, and is a little more optimistic - hoping that alliances between midlevel commanders and US unit leaders at the brigade level could break out. Personally, I see Chinese copper wealth and a new government able to distribute it as being a potentially better bet.

Iraqi Election Update

The newspapers are reporting a big win for Prime Minister Maliki in the provincial elections, and predictably are leaving out the nuance that such a victory entails. First of all they are claiming that this win for Maliki is a "loss for Iran," as if Iran doesn't have major ties to the Dawa Party and Maliki himself.

Second, while everyone is focusing on the Shiite Maliki/Sadr split - and really, Maliki had all the guns, so his victory was sealed when the US military helped him raid Basra - it's the marginalization of the Sunnis in Baghdad that could spark outrage and unrest, much like the apparent electoral fraud in Anbar:

The conventional wisdom has been that the provincial elections would redress the sectarian imbalance in the Baghdad Council -- which had only one Sunni, a Communist, out of 57 seats because of their boycott of the 2005 elections. Sunnis (many of whom continue to believe themselves a majority) expected to capture a significant share of the Baghdad council this time. Most U.S. analyses shared that expectation, which was the basis for hopes that the provincial elections would lock in the incorporation of Sunnis into the political process.

But a dramatic increase in Sunni representation (commensurate with their aspirations) was always unlikely for one big reason: the clearly visible refusal to take serious measures to allow refugees or internally displaced persons to vote. IDPs were technically enfranchised, but the rule that they vote in their place of origin and the inefficiency of the bureaucracy ensured that few actually would. In September, Brian Katulis and I warned that failure to deal effectively with the IDP problem would "essentially ratify the country's new sectarian map" created by the bloody sectarian cleansing of 2006-07. According to IOM's authoritative surveys, about 64% of Iraqi displaced come from Baghdad -- and it is in Baghdad where the effects of their disenfranchisement are most being felt. With less than 10% (or even 20%) of the seats in the Baghdad council, Sunnis may well feel that this warning has come true. How will they react?

The unexpectedly strong showing of Maliki may reflect a popular yearning for a strong central government. But add on the unexpectedly strong showing of the Islamic Party in Anbar, and it is difficult to not wonder whether there is more to the strong showing of the incumbent parties than their popularity. Months of "shaping operations" and state-funded patronage may have had something to do with it as well. But either way, the provincial elections seem likely to shift attention to exactly the question we worried about last fall: how will frustrated challengers react to their failure to obtain the share of state power that they had expected? Ahmed Abu Risha, head of the Iraqi Awakening Conference and a key American ally in Sunni Iraq, has already proposed one answer: "We will form the government of Anbar anyway...An honest dictatorship is better than a democracy won through fraud." That beats the "Darfur" and "graveyards" and "streets running with blood" of which others speak, I suppose... but none are quite what the cheerleaders for this process seem to have had in mind.

The Sunni Awakening was predicated on hopes that they would get a share of power somewhere down the line. If they are shut out of the political process, who's to say they won't turn to other means?

...It looks like some thumbs were placed on the scales in Anbar, giving the election to a third party and not the Awakening coalition or the Iraqi Islamic Party. Lynch:

I never expected the provincial elections to solve all of Iraq's problems, and they didn't. The elections have created new problems that need to be recognized and dealt with -- especially Sunni frustration in Baghdad, intra-Sunni strife in Anbar, perceptions of electoral fraud in support of incumbents, IDP and refugee disenfranchisement, and the impact of the election of a strongly anti-Kurdish front up north. But that doesn't mean that disaster is lurking around every corner -- with luck, these new problems can be dealt with constructively.

Lest my coverage appear too negative, let me say that I'm very pleased to see the collapse of ISCI across much of the country and hopefully the end of its designs on creating a Shia super-region. And I'm happy with the strengthening of forces calling for a stronger central state -- since I've been arguing for years that the consolidation of a Weberian Iraqi state is the key to establishing the conditions for successfully extracting the U.S. military. With luck, the coalition-building phase can allow points of entry for some of the potentially frustrated challengers.

I'm sincerely hoping that all the parties involved can work out their conflicts peacefully and that the results are accepted as broadly legitimate -- both of which require frank, honest looks at what really happened and why. And then with the elections out of the way, the U.S. should move on to the business of starting its troop withdrawals and setting a new course.

UPDATE: This Anthony Zinni story is completely weird. He was offered the Ambassador job in Iraq and then never heard anything until he found out he was replaced by Christopher Hill (who ran the North Korea diplomacy)? How could they do that? Zinni is a valuable asset for Democrats on national security. Is the Obama team going to disrespect every Democratic general one by one?

Post-Election Uncertainty

Marc Lynch had a good piece yesterday excoriating the conventional wisdom about the "successful" Iraqi provincial elections and warning of potential trouble ahead:

I'm a bit confused by the rapturous reception across the board of the Iraqi provincial elections. I'm as delighted as everyone that the Iraqi provincial elections went off without major violence. But as I've been warning for many long months now, the dangerous part of the provincial elections comes when those groups who expected to win find out they didn't. Early signs are extremely concerning -- Anbar is under curfew after threats of violence, Diyala's outcome may signal a rapid escalation of Arab-Kurdish tensions, and that's not even looking at Baghdad [...]

The only result that the IHEC has certified is the surprisingly low turnout -- only 51%, significantly less than in the much-maligned 2005 election even with much increased Sunni participation. That should be a sobering number to those who have put such great emphasis on these provincial elections as a transformative moment.

That said, I want to focus on Anbar.

One of the main reasons that the U.S. pushed so hard for the provincial elections in the first place was as a reward for the Awakenings groups which had cooperated with the U.S. against al-Qaeda. For over a year the Anbar Salvation Council and various tribal groupings have been engaged in a nasty political battle with the Iraqi Islamic Party. The IIP controlled the provincial council after most Sunnis boycotted the election, and the Anbar Salvation Council wanted power for itself as a reward for its service against AQI. It almost came to violence at several points -- but it was always tamped down (in part) by the U.S. pointing to the elections as the moment for power to be transferred peacefully and legitimately.

I kept warning, publicly and privately, that they might not actually win those elections: that tribal influence may be exaggerated, that the Awakenings were internally divided, that the Islamic Party could draw on state resources. But I was told again and again by military sources and others that this was impossible, that the tribal groups controlled the streets, and that the IIP had no chance.

Well, early returns suggest that the Islamic Party has won at least a plurality in Anbar. Turnout was only 40%. Ahmed Abu Risha, formerly of the Anbar Salvation Council and now of the Iraqi Awakenings Conference [corrected], has been telling everyone who will listen that there was massive electoral fraud in Anbar, and that if the IIP is declared the winner the province will look "like Darfur." Another leader, Hamed al-Hayes of the Anbar Salvation Council, is warning that if the IIP is declared the winner his men will turn the province into a graveyard for the IIP and its collaborators. The Iraqi military has declared a curfew to prevent outbreaks of violence.

An uprising by Awakening groups in Anbar would be terribly violent, and the big question would be: who would step in to stop it? The Maliki government, a Shiite group putting down a Sunni rebellion? The US military, which has left Anbar to the Iraqis?

Today, there is news that Iraq is investigating voter fraud in Anbar:

BAGHDAD, Feb. 3 -- The head of Iraq's electoral commission said Tuesday that it is investigating "serious" allegations of electoral fraud in Anbar province that, if corroborated, could alter the outcome of Saturday's election, providing the clearest indication yet that voting irregularities occurred during provincial balloting.

A coalition of parties that competed against the Iraqi Islamic Party in Anbar submitted complaints that the commission considers grave, commission chief Faraj al-Haidari said. "We will deal with it seriously because it might change the result of the election in this province," he said.

As tensions sparked by the allegations of electoral fraud spread through Ramadi, the provincial capital, Iraqi law enforcement officials and U.S. Marines braced Tuesday for a possible outbreak of violence.

If the Awakening groups are awarded the election over the Iraqi Islamic Party, wouldn't that just cause violence as well? This seems like a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario at this point. It's out of the public eye beyond this WaPo story, but this could be a very difficult several days for Iraq. Stay tuned.

The Strangling Tourniquet

We're starting to see some consideration put to the planned escalation in Afghanistan, and a lot of people are finally getting around to asking the "why" instead of accepting that Obama will fulfill a campaign promise by sending 20-30,000 more troops into that hostile environment and a rapidly deteriorating occupation. The first person asking why is, interestingly enough, Afghan President Hamid Karzai:

President Hamid Karzai pressed America's top military leader Monday on the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and preparations to pour up to 30,000 more forces into the country, reflecting Karzai's concerns over civilian casualties and operations in villages. Karzai asked Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, what kinds of operations the newly deployed troops would carry out and told him that the Afghan government should be consulted about those missions.

The Afghan president, stinging from a series of civilian casualties in U.S. military operations in recent years, said he doubts that sending more American forces into Afghan villages will tamp down the insurgency, and he has questioned a U.S. plan to deploy 3,500 U.S. forces in two provinces on Kabul's doorstep next month.

Karzai told Mullen that U.S. troops must take more care during operations in Afghan villages and stop searching Afghan homes. He asked the chairman to investigate allegations that U.S. forces killed three civilians in a raid last week in Khost province, a reflection of increasing concern about civilian casualties. The U.S. says three militants were killed.

This is the central problem. A larger footprint for occupiers will do nothing for security and is likely to turn the population further against an effort they are after seven years beginning to resent. Karzai acknowledges a possible need for border protection, but troops in major Afghan cities and villages is counterproductive.

Indeed any option in Afghanistan is fraught with pitfalls right now. A surge of troops would have made sense when the population was still behind the effort and the Taliban wasn't reconstituted as an insurgency force. Now the Taliban pretty much controls the countryside and the amount of troops needed to perform a counterinsurgency campaign cannot be brought into the country without much resentment and hatred.

“We may have missed the golden moment there,” said Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon official who has long advocated an increased U.S. focus on Afghanistan.

The tension between the short-run need for more muscle to thwart the Taliban and the long-term trap of becoming the latest in a long line of foreign intruders bogged down in Afghanistan forms the core of the dilemma confronting Obama.

There are efforts underway to recruit local tribal militias to bolster the paltry amount of native security forces in a kind of "Afghan awakening," but they are likely to have little or no control from the central government, not historically a factor in the country, and more likely to rule over their own areas and increase bloodshed among ethnic rivals.

“There will be fighting between Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns,” said Salih Mohammad Registani, a member of the Afghan Parliament and an ethnic Tajik. Mr. Registani raised the specter of the Arbaki, a Pashtun-dominated militia turned loose on other Afghans early in the 20th century.

“A civil war will start very soon,” he said.

NATO forces would like to stem the poppy trade that is funding the insurgency and encourage alternative crop development, but many member nations are wary of involving themselves in counter-narcotics actions.

NATO officials in Brussels declined to list the nations that have opposed widening the alliance mandate to include attacks on drug networks, and no nation has volunteered that it has legal objections.

But a number of NATO members have in broad terms described their reluctance publicly, including Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain. Their leaders have cited domestic policies that make counternarcotics a law enforcement matter — not a job for their militaries — and expressed concern that domestic lawsuits could be filed if their soldiers carried out attacks to kill noncombatants, even if the victims were involved in the drug industry in Afghanistan.

There are discussions about splitting off Taliban elements and causing a rift in the insurgency through negotiations and entry into the government, but there's absolutely no sign that any Taliban fighter would be amenable to it.

Overall, everyone knows that a major strategic shift is needed, but there's simply no evidence that any of these shifts would produce something resembling success, or any indication that anyone knows what "success" means. In fact, "success" is most likely defined as "an end to total failure."

"Right now there is a sense you need to apply a tourniquet of some kind," said a senior Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing contacts with the transition team. "You need to control bleeding at the site of the wound, you need to stabilize, and you need to see what you need to do next."

After a record number of U.S. deaths in Afghanistan this year, national security officials consider it crucial for the new administration to act soon after taking office. The senior Defense official said Obama would have a limited time period to announce a new strategy for Afghanistan and build up the troop strength.

"Over time, it will be harder to put more stuff in," the official said. "You have a window where you can do dramatic things. But the opportunity to do dramatic things reduces over time."

But what are those "dramatic things" and how will they produce improvements in both American security and the lives of the Afghan people? If the goal is now to tread water and not fail so badly I can't see how staying makes sense. Tourniquets can be refashioned into nooses, after all. The plans for Afghanistan 2.0 are all based on such wishful thinking, and suffused with so many potential drawbacks, that it almost looks like they are designed to do nothing but draw our military further into an intractable conflict. There are regional diplomatic solutions that make sense at providing space for a withdrawal without leaving behind any group that can project power beyond their borders. That does not have to include thousands more troops of dubious effectiveness.

I don't look kindly on suggestions that we "must do something dramatic" in cases like this, on the grounds that something dramatic always and forever works to our benefit. I agree with Spencer Ackerman on this one - we need to at least pretend to think about the interests of the Afghans at some point.

What I did see was an overwhelming desire for security among the population. Lots of people said something to me that boiled down to, “When the Taliban were in power, the roads were safe, food was cheap and gas is cheap. Now the Americans are here and none of that is true.” The major factor that made the tribal revolt in Anbar work was that the population, including the extremists, understood that Al Qaeda offered them a bleaker future than even the occupation. Nothing like that exists in Afghanistan — or, at least, there is an alarming lack of evidence for that crucial proposition.

People need to take a very deep breath. To judge by the available evidence, the Afghan population wants security. It does not want more militias. The Afghan Senate has actually rejected this proposal explicitly. Is there any actual appetite among Afghans for a Sons-of-Afghanistan program? Or is this a case of hubristic Americans coming into Afghanistan and imposing a template from Iraq upon an overwhelmingly different country and overwhelmingly different set of conditions? You can tell what I suspect from the way I framed the question.

My fear is that we aren't looking at the concerns of Afghanistan policy through the lens of "is this policy good or bad" rather than "does this make us look like we are responding to the problem." That way lies disaster.

Double The Quagmire

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs is signaling that we are about to double our military commitment in Afghanistan.

The top U.S. military officer said Saturday that the Pentagon could double the number of American forces in Afghanistan by next summer to 60,000 — the largest estimate of potential reinforcements ever publicly suggested.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that between 20,000 and 30,000 additional U.S. troops could be sent to Afghanistan to bolster the 31,000 already there.

Considering how deadly this year has been for US forces, it seems almost incredible that only 31,000 troops are stationed there. I knew that the per capita casualty rates were bigger in Afghanistan than Iraq this year, but that is much smaller than I thought.

Meanwhile, we're going to try an Afghan awakening by arming militia groups, which makes the mistake that the dynamics in Afghanistan are exactly like Iraq. In Iraq we were arming ex-insurgent Sunnis to fight foreign AQI forces (that's an oversimplification, but generally the case). In Afghanistan it is completely unclear who the enemy is, whether this move will ask tribesmen to fight other tribesmen, etc. I don't think there are the clear fault lines among insurgency groups in Afghanistan the way there was in Sunni areas in Iraq. And remember, the Sunni Awakening was organic, beginning well before we decided to arm or fund anyone.

That's not to say there isn't possible value in this, especially if it splinters the Taliban. But I don't think it will have any impact on strengthening the central government, as the tribes are famously independent in Afghanistan. The central government lacks legitimacy, and the inability to deliver basic services just buttresses that. Arming militias will just create separate fiefdoms, which is how Afghanistan naturally governs itself anyway so that's not all bad.

But doubling our forces in Afghanistan doesn't seem to be that helpful. Increasing the occupier footprint may only anger the local population, and now the strain on the already threatened supply line will be even greater. I don't see the strategy here.

The Lost Reports

There's a new study on Afghanistan warning of impending crisis, with an ineffective government losing power and influence to the Taliban, full-scale corruption and severe breakdowns in security. But there's also a report on Iraq that dampens the boasts of victory through surge that we keep hearing.

WASHINGTON -- A nearly completed high-level U.S. intelligence analysis warns that unresolved ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iraq could unleash a new wave of violence, potentially reversing the major security and political gains achieved over the last year.

U.S. officials familiar with the new National Intelligence Estimate said they were unsure when the top-secret report would be completed and whether it would be published before the Nov. 4 presidential election.

Um, I can assure you that it won't be.

The report lays out the structural challenges which have let to be dealt with:

U.S. officials say last year's surge of 30,000 troops, all of whom have been withdrawn, was just one reason for the improvements. Other factors include the truce declared by anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of an Iran-backed Shiite Muslim militia; and the enlistment of former Sunni insurgents in Awakening groups created by the U.S. military to fight al-Qaida in Iraq and other extremists.

The draft NIE, however, warns that the improvements in security and political progress, such as the recent passage of a provincial-election law, are threatened by lingering disputes between the majority Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs, Kurds and other minorities, the U.S. officials said.

Sources of tension identified by the NIE, they said, include a struggle between Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen for control of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk; and the Shiite-led central government's unfulfilled vows to hire former Sunni insurgents who joined Awakening groups.

McCain will use this to walk that "we're winning but have not yet won" tightrope and argue that withdrawal equals surrender. But in actuality, our presence has done nothing to reduce sectarian tensions apart from the violence. The NIE is saying that the conditions still exist for civil war or sectarian strife, and having our troops act as a proxy army for Maliki, who wants to be a strongman, actually exacerbates the problem, increases frustrations, and heightens instability. Nobody has forced the factions to come together and reconcile - in fact, Bush decentralized the government but simultaneously empowered Maliki's militia and has now handed over control of the Sunni Awakening forces to him, which is bound to shock the system as the Prime Minister tries to consolidate power. Creating what amounts to a theocratic dictatorship allied with Iran is not a good prospect for Iraq or the world, and makes hollow the focus on violence and security in the short term.

Peter Galbraith makes a similar point in the New York Review of Books:

Less violence, however, is not the same thing as success. The United States did not go to war in Iraq for the purpose of ending violence between contending sectarian forces. Success has to be measured against US objectives. John McCain proclaims his goal to be victory and says we are now winning in Iraq (a victory that will, of course, be lost if his allegedly pro-surrender opponent wins). He considers victory to be an Iraq that is "a democratic ally." George W. Bush has defined victory as a unified, democratic, and stable Iraq. Neither man has explained how he will transform Iraq's ruling theocrats into democrats, diminish Iran's vast influence in Baghdad, or reconcile Kurds and Sunnis to Iraq's new order. Remarkably, neither the Democrats nor the press has challenged them to do so [...]

From 2003 until 2007, the Bush administration helped Iraq's most pro-Iranian Shiite religious parties take and consolidate power. Naturally, the Shiites—and their Iranian backers—welcomed the US involvement, at least temporarily. Now the United States is putting heavier pressure on al-Maliki to include the Sunni enemy in Iraq's security forces. It has created a Sunni army that, as long as the US remains in Iraq, can only grow in strength. Al-Maliki and his allies want the US out of Iraq because the American presence has become dangerous.

Without American troops, the Iraqi army and police would be able to move against the Awakening. Should Sunni forces prove too powerful, Iran is always available to help [...]

Al-Maliki's agenda is transparent. The Kurds and Sunnis are obstacles to the ruling coalition's ambitions for a Shiite Islamic state. Al-Maliki wants to eliminate the Sunni militia and contain the Kurds politically and geographically. America's interest in defeating al-Qaeda is far less important to him than the Shiite interest in not having a powerful Sunni military that could overthrow Iraq's new Shiite order. The Kurds are too secular, too Western, and too pro-American for the Shiites to share power comfortably with them [...]

John McCain says that partly because of his persistent support of the surge, we are now winning the Iraq war. He defines victory as an Iraq that is a democratic ally. Yet he advocates continued US military support to an Iraqi government led by Shiite religious parties committed to the establishment of an Islamic republic. He takes a harder line on Iran than President Bush, but supports Iraqi factions that are Iran's closest allies in the Middle East. He praises the Awakening and but seems not to have realized that the Iraqi government is intent on crushing it. He has denounced the Obama-Biden plan for a decentralized state but has said nothing about how he would protect Iraq's Kurds, the only committed American allies in the country.

George W. Bush has put the United States on the side of undemocratic Iraqis who are Iran's allies. John McCain would continue the same approach. It is hard to understand how this can be called a success—or a path to victory.

One great tidbit in there is that Maliki was kind of picked up at the last minute by the US when they needed a new Prime Minister, and that initially, they got his first name wrong. Yet in the name of increasing security, we've given him all kinds of power, seemingly ignorant that he's a longtime Dawa Party member who spent 20 years in exile in Iran.

Condi Rice is meanwhile crying that Iraq has been harder than she personally imagined. Perhaps it's because you have to actually pay attention to it.

Iraq In Fragments

It's frankly been a bit stunning how far Iraq has dropped off the radar screen this election season. 140,000 American troops still in harm's way (25 Americans died in September, and hundreds of Iraqis) and you wouldn't know the place existed.

I think what's going on is that Americans have made their minds up about the war. They want to leave, whether for reasons that it's unwinnable or that it's already won. Either way, Republican demagoguery isn't going to work. Sarah Palin's worst marks at the debate came when she offered that Joe Biden wants to "wave the white flag of surrender" in Iraq.

It should be clear that Iraqi isn't a sunny place right now, despite the GOP bleatings. Unemployment is between 30 and 60% in the country. Only 37% of people feel safe outside their immediately neighborhoods, and that's likely to drop as internally displaced Iraqis return home to find their areas ethnically cleansed and guarded by sectarian militias. As Prime Minister Maliki takes responsibility for the sons of Iraq, the Sunni awakening groups, he may actually dismantle them or refuse to pay them, leading to tension and perhaps violence. And the Turks are again launching airstrikes against Kurdish rebels inside northern Iraq, which has the potential to open up a new front in the war.

John Negroponte claims that a status of forces agreement is imminent, which would include the dreaded timeline, with troops out of the major cities by next summer and out of the country by the end of 2011. This is vital and should be sped up. The problems with the political situation are being masked by the US military involvement. Maliki is trying to become a strongman and using our troops as a proxy. Building a new dictatorship in a restive country with sectarian conflict is not advisable. Surging diplomatically and withdrawing is the only way to force a solution.

Changes Of Seasons In Afghanistan

I know that the media can only focus on one thing at a time, but this is a very sensitive moment for Afghanistan. US commanders and international diplomats alike are seeing a scenario that is very close to being lost.

The cable, written in French, paraphrases the 53-year-old British ambassador as saying:

The security situation is bad and getting worse.

The Afghan people have lost all trust in their current government, partly because of corruption.

The presence of foreign troops in the country is part of the problem, propping up the current regime and thus slowing progress toward Afghans putting a more effective government in place.

Sending more military reinforcements to Afghanistan would have a "perverse effect" on the country's stability and future, sending the message that an occupying force is in control of the country and widening the number of targets for insurgents to attack.

That last two are important. Many have this view that adding forces is all that's needed to stabilize a security problem. Call it "the Iraq delusion." John McCain has outright said this, that we need a "surge" in Afghanistan the way we surged in Iraq. Of course, the commander of NATO forces on the ground knows that the two countries aren't even remotely comparable:

First of all, please don’t think that I’m saying there’s no room for tribal engagement in Afghanistan, because I think it’s very necessary. But I think it’s much more complex environment of tribal linkages, and intertribal complexity than there is in Iraq. It’s not as simple as taking the Sunni Awakening and doing the Pashtun Awakening in Afghanistan. It’s much more complex than that.

But there are countless other differences between Iraq and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, it’s such a poor country, by any set of metrics you can imagine. A country that has very harsh geography. It’s very difficult to move around, getting back to our reliance on helicopters. It’s a country with very few natural resources, as opposed to the oil revenues that [Iraq] has. There’s very little money to be generated in terms of generated in Afghanistan. The literacy rate — you have a literate society in Iraq, you have a society that has a history of producing civil administrators, technocrats, middle class that are able to run the country in Iraq. You do not have that in Afghanistan. So there’s educational challenges, challenges of human capitol that I mentioned earlier.

So there are a lot of challenges. What I don’t think is needed — the word that I don’t use in Afghanistan is the word “surge.” There needs to be a sustained commitment of a variety of military and non-military resources, I believe. That’s my advice to winning in Afghanistan. It won’t be a short-term solution.

Of course, McKiernan also wants more troops, so while he doesn't use the word "surge," he at least thinks that adding forces can only have a salutary effect on the country. There is Afghanistan as we knew it in 2002, when a grateful nation was happy to have help in getting rid of the Taliban, and there is Afghanistan today, where the public has lost faith in the government, the Taliban is controlling major sections of the country, and those who have endured six years of aerial bombing don't see NATO troops as saviors.

... I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that six or seven years later, we can just roll up our sleeves and rededicating ourselves to achieving the goals we were told we achieved years ago. The situation has changed, windows of opportunity open and close, and our mission has gotten very murky. Oftentimes when this kind of operation goes on long enough the goal becomes “succeeding” — or, rather, doing something or other that whoever’s in charge of the operation could plausibly label success. But we need to think, instead, more concretely about what it is we’re hoping to achieve in Afghanistan — specifically, does preventing portions of Afghanistan from serving as a base for terrorist operation directed at the United States really require us to establish an effective central state in Afghanistan?

That is the key question that I don't think either Presidential candidate has answered. They are arguing for an intervention in Afghanistan circa 2002. Time has changed circumstances.

The Withdrawal Chronicles

OK, so there are a lot of reports adding color to this US-Iraq agreement on a withdrawal timetable.

Iraqi and U.S. officials said several difficult issues remain, including whether U.S. troops will be subject to Iraqi law if accused of committing crimes. But the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to discuss the agreement publicly, said key elements of a timetable for troop withdrawal once resisted by President Bush had been reached.

"We have a text," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said after a day-long visit Thursday by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

There are two departures here: one from the major Iraqi cities, scheduled for next summer (something counter to the counter-insurgency strategy), and one removing combat troops from the country, scheduled for the end of 2011. The move from the cities coincides with the transfer of the "Sons of Iraq" program, the payment of Sunnis to continue fighting Al Qaeda, to the Iraqi government. Now, the Maliki government doesn't want the Sunnis integrated into the security forces:

West of Baghdad, former insurgent leaders contend that the Iraqi military is going after 650 Awakening members, many of whom have fled the once-violent area they had kept safe. While the crackdown appears to be focused on a relatively small number of leaders whom the Iraqi government considers the most dangerous, there are influential voices to dismantle the American backed movement entirely.

“The state cannot accept the Awakening,” said Sheik Jalaladeen al-Sagheer, a leading Shiite member of Parliament. “Their days are numbered.”

....The Shiite-dominated government has never been pleased with the continuing American plan to finance and organize Sunni insurgents into militia guards, charging that they will stop fighting only as long as it serves their interests.

“These people are like cancer, and we must remove them,” said Brig. Gen. Nassir al-Hiti, commander of the Iraqi Army’s 5,000-strong Muthanna Brigade, which patrols west of Baghdad, said of the Awakening leaders on his list for arrest.

Maliki probably feels he can dump the Sunnis, or round up the Awakening groups and just murder them, once the American troops are tucked away out of the cities. I think this is a big mistake from Maliki, expecting that the Sunnis will just be steamrolled, but if there's unrest US troops will be available to step in and cut down the Sunnis for the Prime Minister. That's why this is staggered, but I think Maliki's making a very healthy assumption about this.

That leads us to the expected "conditions on the ground" caveat that will be put into this deal. It's clear that who is implementing this deal matters - whether the timeline is delayed, whether permanent bases are installed, etc.

This allows the Bush Administration (and, to a lesser extent, McCain) to argue that the surge worked, and now we're experiencing the benefits. But on the other hand, it's a real collapse of their strategy that timelines are poison and leaving equals losing. Here's Dan Froomkin:

In agreeing to pull U.S. combat troops out of Iraqi cities by June, and from the rest of the country by 2011, President Bush has apparently consented to precisely the kind of timetable that, when Democrats called for one, he dismissed as "setting a date for failure." Bush can call it an "aspirational goal" until he turns blue, but a timetable is exactly what it is, thank you very much.

Bush has repeatedly warned that politics and public opinion should have no role in the decision about when to leave Iraq, but apparently he just meant American politics and public opinion. A clear majority of Americans has favored a withdrawal timetable for several years now, putting anti-war Democrats in control of Congress in 2006.

Bush ignored them. But in the end, he bowed to the will of the Iraqis' elected representatives. After five and a half years of occupation, it was their turn to put a gun to Bush's head: The timetable was the price they demanded for agreeing to let American troops remain in the country beyond the expiration of a United Nations mandate in December.

This, of course, won't be Bush's problem, it'll be the problem of the next President. And that's the real question - how this impacts the Presidential race. Obama put out this statement:

I am glad that the Administration has finally shifted to accepting a timetable for the removal of our combat troops from Iraq. Success in Iraq depends on an Iraqi government that is reconciling its differences and taking responsibility for its future, and a timetable is the best way to press the Iraqis to do just that. I welcome the growing convergence around this pragmatic and responsible position.

"Senator McCain has stubbornly focused on maintaining an indefinite U.S presence in Iraq, but events have made his bluster and record increasingly out of touch with reality. While Senator McCain continues to offer unconditional military and economic support for Iraq, I strongly believe that we need to use our leverage with the Iraqi government to ensure a political settlement. In addition to a timetable, we should only train Iraqi Security Forces if Iraq's leaders reconcile their differences, and we must insist that Iraq invests its $79 billion surplus on rebuilding its own country. It's time to succeed in Iraq and to honor the sacrifice of our servicemen and women by leaving Iraq to a sovereign Iraqi government."

McCain is in danger of being marginalized, with the whole country, the Democrats, and BUSH on one side, and his small band of neocon brothers on the other. He'll argue that the surge worked and this shows why his judgment is superior, but it's a strategy focused on the past, and Obama has one focused on the future. I think Obama will benefit from this.

And in the end, this development will be more important than the number of houses McCain owns, though not now.

Armistice?

Not exactly; three years is a long time. But we've been hearing that the US-Iraq agreement on troops would have a "general time horizon" (as John Stewart said, something you move toward but never gets closer), but this sure sounds like a timeline to me.

U.S. and Iraqi negotiators reached agreement on a security deal that calls for American military forces to leave Iraq's cities by next summer as a prelude to a full withdrawal of combat troops from the country, according to senior American officials.

The draft agreement sets 2011 as the goal date by which U.S. combat troops will leave Iraq, according to Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Haj Humood and other people familiar with the matter. In the meantime, American troops will be leaving cities, towns and other population centers by the summer of 2009, living in bases outside of those areas, according to the draft.

This is of course entirely dependent on the implementation, this only talks about combat troops, and many parts of the Iraqi government must agree to this (only Bush has to give this a thumbs up, because as you know we don't have a Congress). But clearly, the Iraqi Parliament has been able to wring more concessions out of the Administration than anyone ever has, and they did it by using the Administration's own tactics - getting close to the deadline and being stubborn - against them.

Iraq has plenty of its own problems - the looming powderkeg in Kirkuk, a more assertive Nouri al-Maliki pushing around prominent Sunnis throughout the country and muscling out Shiite rivals before provincial elections, the very real threat of spasms of violence if the elections are seen as rigged, and most troubling, Maliki simply won't integrate the security forces.

A key pillar of the U.S. strategy to pacify Iraq is in danger of collapsing because the Iraqi government is failing to absorb tens of thousands of former Sunni Muslim insurgents who'd joined U.S.-allied militia groups into the country's security forces [...]

But the Iraqi government, which is led by Shiite Muslims, has brought only a relative handful of the more than 100,000 militia members into the security forces. Now officials are making it clear that they don't intend to include most of the rest.

"We cannot stand them, and we detained many of them recently," said one senior Iraqi commander in Baghdad, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the issue. "Many of them were part of al Qaida despite the fact that many of them are helping us to fight al Qaida."

He said the army was considering setting a Nov. 1 deadline for those militia members who hadn't been absorbed into the security forces or given civilian jobs to give up their weapons. After that, they'd be arrested, he said.

Some militia members say that such a move would force them into open warfare with the government again.

These struggles are localized and, honestly, inevitable in the jockeying for power, and our troops there are serving no national interest for the United States OR Iraq. In fact, it's very clear that their presence is allowing Maliki to edge out the competition, secure in the knowledge that our military will protect him. He figures he needs two or three more years to crush everyone, at which point the American combat troops he's using as a proxy can leave (it also strengthens his hand to show his people that he ended the occupation). And so we are enabling authoritarianism and the building of a strongman. This endangers Iraq in the medium and long-term, but it sure makes the place safe for the multinationals for the time being.

A speedier withdrawal would remove that cover and, while making the country more chaotic in the short term, might actually force them to reconcile their differences (obviously we'd remain engaged diplomatically). Our troops are too precious and our military too broken to have them being used as a nascent dictator's paramilitary with no strategic benefit to the United States.

Calling Their Bluff

Somehow, the reporting on this has been very thin, but it's extremely significant that the Iraqi government is gradually but insistently extracting the concession of a firm timeline for withdrawal from Iraq in ways that the Democratic Congress never has.

Iraq's foreign minister insisted Sunday that any security deal with the United States must contain a "very clear timeline" for the departure of U.S. troops. A suicide bomber struck north of Baghdad, killing at least five people including an American soldier.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told reporters that American and Iraqi negotiators were "very close" to reaching a long-term security agreement that will set the rules for U.S. troops in Iraq after the U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.

Zebari said the Iraqis were insisting that the agreement include a "very clear timeline" for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces, but he refused to talk about specific dates.

Yes, it's conditions-based, and who becomes the next President matters as to its implementation. But the Iraqis have taken a page from George Bush's playbook to force this concession - move toward a deadline and stubbornly refuse to concede. There were about 3 or 4 points where Democrats could have achieved the same thing, but their will never held out beyond a couple days.

There are still pitfalls in Iraq that could alter any timetable, of course. Suicide bombings continue and the military operations designed to root out insurgents are still telegraphed to allow them to slip away. The collapse of the provincial elections law is very disturbing, particularly because those in Iraq's greatest trouble spots are growing increasingly angered.

The anger among the Awakenings movements is already palpable. The New York Times quotes Ali Hatem Suleiman saying that “We are running out of patience,” and Sheik Hamid al-Hayis saying “This is a slap on the face of Iraq... we couldn’t make a big change in the government structure. That pushed us to work to make change in the provincial council. But even that we can’t touch.” Dr. iRack, just back from Iraq, reports that the notoriously outspoken Ali Hatem "is deadly serious about returning to war against all the Islamic parties (Sunni and Shia) if the Awakening groups are not given the power they think they deserve." That fits what I've heard from others less prone to hyperbole.

Leaders of the Awakenings have been warning that they are "losing patience" and "the next few months will be decisive" so many times that I suspect some people have stopped taking them seriously [...] We are potentially approaching a moment of truth. The consequences of building up these forces outside of the structures of the Iraqi state, while stringing them along with promises that require Iraqi government acquiesence to deliver may be coming due. I know well that US military commanders have been far more attentive to these issues than have the cheerleaders, and MNF-I and Ambassador Crocker have been working as hard as they can to resolve them. Their failure to deliver a compromise on the provincial elections law and their failure to deliver meaningful progress on SOI integration both suggest the limits of American influence in Iraq - a lesson which the advocates of "strategic patience", who continue to view American decisions as the only ones which really matter, never seem to digest.

The Awakenings groups continue to be denied entry into the larger Iraqi security forces, which as we learned in the NYT today is where most of the jobs are in the country, on the government rolls. The provincial elections would have provided them some representation in the Parliament, and yet should they ever go through it would spell full-scale armed conflict in Kirkuk. There are also intra-Shiite battles that have not been extinguished. Because the root causes of the violence in Iraq have not been addressed, the potential for chaos always exists. And of course there are limits to the pressure that the US military can put on this situation.

And yet, the surge supporters are a victim of their own cheerleading. Their perception of success has led to the Iraqi Shiite ruling party believing they can pummel any challenges to their power and bribe the rest, so they feel free making the move to call for a withdrawal. They've caught Bush and Cheney in a real bind - you can only walk the tightrope between "we're winning" and "it'll all go to hell if we leave" for so long. In addition, that American-centric view of the state of play in Iraq is deeply misguided. We've set events in motion that we now will find difficult to control.

There's No Corner Turned

The series of bombings yesterday in Baghdad and Kirkuk underscored the continued presence of sectarian tensions that have been unresolved by the security gains in the period of the surge. Of particular concern is this bit:

The attacks also underscored that the raw passions and anger fed by Iraq’s deep ethnic, regional and sectarian divides can still instantly ignite. Concerns about stability ran so high that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ordered a battalion of Iraqi troops to reinforce Kirkuk and put other unspecified “emergency reserve” troops on alert in case the violence spread, state-run television reported late Monday.

The city was already on edge when thousands of Kurds poured into an area near the provincial headquarters on Monday morning, to protest legislation in Baghdad that would dilute the Kurds’ dominance in the city.

Then, just after 11 a.m., a suicide bomber blew herself up, killing at least 17 demonstrators and wounding 47 others, according to Iraqi security officials.

No one claimed responsibility for the bombing, which bore the hallmarks of Sunni Arab extremists. Nonetheless, many in the crowd blamed Turkmen extremists for the attack, and within minutes a mob of enraged Kurds began attacking Turkmen political offices and setting their buildings ablaze.

“They burned Turkmen buildings and they burned many cars,” said Brig. Burhan Taha of the Kirkuk police.

Gunfire and rocks from the mob wounded at least 25 Turkmen guards, according to the Kirkuk police. The guards — some armed with machine guns — returned fire, killing at least 12 Kurds in the mob. An additional 102 people were wounded in the melee that followed the bombing, the police said, though it was not clear how many were shot by Turkmen guards or wounded by other violence.

This is the kind of event that can spark recriminations. And tensions are already high in Kirkuk, where it has always been simmering, but the election law is threatening to burst it out into the open. Brian Katulis, one of the smartest thinkers in the country about Iraq, reports:

The Kirkuk dispute has its origins in the Kurdish struggle for even greater autonomy from Iraq and perhaps statehood, Iraqi national identity, and control over Iraq’s oil. Kurds claim Kirkuk for their autonomous region, arguing that they have historical claims on the city that were broken by the brutal “Arabization” campaigns of the Baathist governments of the late 20th century. Kirkuk’s oil is widely perceived to give Kurdish independence economic viability.

Ethnic Turkomans reject Kurdish claims and offer their own historical narrative. They argue that Kirkuk should be given its own special regional status, which would serve to help this minority group maintain a governing role in the city. Iraqi Arabs—both Shi’a and Sunni—insist that Kirkuk and its resources remain under the control of the national government. They say Kurdish efforts to include the city in their region are a prelude to the break-up of Iraq [...]

Today’s bombing took place against this background of increased Arab-Kurd tension over delays on Kirkuk’s status and the elections law. What the Kirkuk dispute serves to illustrate is that Iraq’s problems are fundamentally political in nature. The challenge is not security, which has improved dramatically over the last year, but political accommodation and power-sharing between Iraqi factions.

Thus far, the U.S. strategy and political discourse has been narrowly focused on the security situation, arguing over whether the “surge” has worked or not. This debate is beside the point. Iraq’s conflicts will not solve themselves peacefully unless political compromises and deals are made. As long as they remain unresolved, Iraq’s security gains will remain fragile and open to violent destabilization.

Exactly. Surge supporters try to paper over the structural impasse by citing the security improvements or hailing yet another operation to tackle extremists. But much of that is moot if there is no political reconciliation. Similarly, the success of the Sunni Awakening is not worth commenting on unless there are legitimate steps to integrate the Sunni security forces into the government; otherwise, you're relying on money to keep the peace, and that price will always go up:

The Iraqi officer leading a U.S.-financed anti-jihadist group is in no mood for small talk -- either the military gives him more money or he will pack his bags and rejoin the ranks of al-Qaeda.

"I'll go back to al-Qaeda if you stop backing the Sahwa (Awakening) groups," Col. Satar tells U.S. Lt. Matthew McKernon, as he tries to secure more funding for his men to help battle the anti-U.S. insurgents.

That's just an unsustainable solution. And so the gains in security are kind of illusory and not worth focusing on instead of the very real political compromises that must happen to avoid chaos, either sooner or later.

Reality Used To Be A Friend Of Mine

The McCain camp is trying to defend his laughably bad gaffe about the Sunni Awakening and the surge by saying it doesn't matter, anyway.

Democrats can debate whether the awakening would have survived without the surge ... but that is nothing more than a transparent effort to minimize the role of our commanders and our troops in defeating the enemy, because to credit them would be to disparage the judgment of Barack Obama and praise the leadership of John McCain.

Well, that's completely besides the point. McCain said the surge enabled the sheikhs in Anbar to fight Al Qaeda. And that's just not true. In fact, the sheikh McCain was talking about who was "protected" by surge forces, Sheikh Sattar Abu Risha, was actually murdered last year.

They're going ahead with this, though. "Senator McCain is correct,'' said spokesman Tucker Bounds today. Reality is just besides the point.

McCain's team is really flailing about these days.