Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

The top line of this story about head of the Pakistani Taliban Beitullah Mehsud is that he threatened an attack on Washington. The subhead is much more damaging, and should actually be listened to by the policymakers.

Beitullah Mehsud, an Islamist leader from the South Waziristan tribal area in northwest Pakistan, called several international news agencies in Pakistan to assert responsibility for the armed occupation of the police training compound that ended with 11 people dead.

He also told reporters that he was planning to attack targets in the U.S. capital in retaliation for more than 30 strikes by unmanned U.S. drones that have targeted suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries in northwest Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan.

Charles Lemos had an interesting take:

It confirms my view that the predator drone attacks in Pakistan are having a positive effect depite the very real risk of alienating a major segement of the Pakistani population. While the aerial war in Afghanistan has been nothing short of a disaster, the unmanned attacks across the border have been more successful. One net positive of the Obama approach to the drone attacks is that they have widen the circle of targets which may also explain why the various elements of the Pashtun Taliban have now come together to join forces. By striking at the Mehsud network, the United States may be seeking to demonstrate to President Zardari that the Obama administration is willing to go after the insurgents of greatest concern to the Pakistani leadership. There are limits to the use of the predator drones, but it does seem clear that their use is disrupting the operations of the Islamist terror organizations.

Agreed to an extent, but one wonders how disruptive the attacks are when the same group can engineer a midday takeover of a police training compound. What it shows to me is that the consequences of drone attacks continue in Pakistan, just as they have in Afghanistan. They inflame local populations and turn them more militant and radical. They may succeed in the short term to disrupt terror organizations, but there's a cost as well as a benefit. If it gets Zardari off the sidelines, great. But more likely is the prospect that this will start to eat away at Zardari's leadership and make attacks inside Pakistan more likely. We're not going to bomb our way toward security against a terrorist threat. These tactics always come with consequences.

No One Could Have Anticipated...

That actions have consequences.

The Syrian government has broken relations with Baghdad. It has completely opened its border. This article in Al-Arabiya (Al-Arabiya is generally fairly reliable) says that the Syrians have reduced their forces on the border. That's NOT what I'm hearing from BOTH sides of the border. What I'm hearing from very trustworthy sources whom I've known for years is that the Syrians have completely withdrawn their forces from the border.

• No troops.
• No border guards.
• No police.

While the total number of foreign fighters in Iraq was never that large, they have often been deadly, particularly for US troops. And Syria was actually doing a fair job of tightening the border. But no more. Funny how air-dropping commando units into a sovereign nation can clarify the mind a bit.

So our reward for getting rid of maybe one tiny group of foreign agitators is a target on the backs of 140,000 US troops as well as untold numbers of Iraqis. That's why they call it blowback.

Heckuva job.

Sadr, Badr, Big Difference, Right?

This could be the start of something big.

BAGHDAD - Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has blamed the United States and the Iraqi government for the death of a senior aide in the holy city of Najaf.

The cleric's office issued a statement in which al-Sadr promises he won't "forget this precious blood" but he urges his followers to "be patient."

Friday's statement comes hours after Riyadh al-Nouri was gunned down as he drove home after attending prayers. Al-Nouri was the director of al-Sadr's office in Najaf.

You can only anger the head of the most powerful populist movement in Iraq so many times. Sadr is being cautious because he has morphed into something of a statesman (at least that appears to be the perception in Iraq) over the last couple years, and taking the high road works for him. Eventually he won't have to; and he can say he was "dragged" into the conflict. This is the movement that routed the Iraqi security forces in Basra. It is dormant only in the way that a sleeping giant is dormant.

Of course, stateside we get a very Manichean view of things, where Sadr is the enemy and the Maliki forces are on the side of the righteous. Matt Duss and Brian Katulis demolish that argument.

Speaking before Congress, General Petraeus said, "Iran has fueled the violence in a particularly damaging way through its lethal support to the special groups," referring to Shiite splinter groups allegedly receiving support from Iran. According to the general, the recent clashes between Shiite groups stretching from Basra in the south all the way to Baghdad "highlighted the destructive role Iran has played in funding, training, arming, and directing the so-called special groups."

Conservatives such as Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, have latched on to this incomplete description of the ongoing intra-Shiite struggles in Iraq as the latest reason why our over-stretched military forces must remain in Iraq [...]

These depictions ignore an inconvenient truth: The leaders in Iraq's current government are closely aligned with Tehran and represent some of Iran's closest allies in Iraq. This is perhaps best illustrated by the warm welcome Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received in his visit to Iraq last month, which punctures the myth that the current battle is between a unified Iraqi government and fringe groups receiving support from Iran.

There is little doubt about who is Iran's primary proxy in Iraq: the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. This leading Shiite faction, now a key member of the ruling coalition in Iraq's government, was founded in the early 1980s by exiled Iraqi clerical activists in Iran, with the blessing and support of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The Quds Force, a special branch of the ayatollah's Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, created and trained the supreme council's armed wing, the Badr Corps, for the express purpose of eventually serving as an arm of the Quds Force in Iraq. The supreme council was among the Iraqi exile parties with which the U.S. worked in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, even though it maintained close ties to Iran. And the Iraqi Shiite faction continues to receive Iranian funds.

And now, the Badr forces essentially make up the backbone of the Iraqi police and Army. We once again have armed, trained and supported bad actors who will not remain loyal because we paid them off. Amazing how the concept of blowback remains so foreign to this Administration. Or rather, remains so foreign with respect to Iraq; in Afghanistan we're starting to figure this one out.

NATO commanders in Afghanistan have decided to end local police training, fearing that cops in remote areas -– most of whom once fought for tribal warlords –- might one day turn their weapons against Kabul and the U.S.-led coalition.

The change in policy perhaps signals a shift in Western attitudes towards the growing ranks of sanctioned tribal armies that perform routine security functions in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The “Sons of Iraq” militia groups, in particular, are a key facet of the U.S. strategy for preventing extremists from taking root in vulnerable Sunni communities.

But some military officers have questioned the long-term wisdom of arming sectarian groups whose allegiances are notoriously fickle.

Of course, we're still arming sectarian groups inside Iraq, in fact on both sides of the sectarian divide, with the Badr Brigades inside the security forces and the "Sons of Iraq" Sunni Awakening groups outside. We are sustaining and furthering an eventual inter-sectarian civil war.

Lighting a Stick of Dynamite In Iraq

As we end the year of the surge in Iraq, the dynamic is one of tense calm. The US military armed and sustained these Sunni awakening groups, which is akin to wiring an IED that could go off at any moment. The Awakening groups, numbering around 80,000, appear distrustful of each other, in addition to being distrustful of the Shiite majority government.

Despite the successes of the movement, including the members’ ability to provide valuable intelligence and give rebuilding efforts a new chance in war-shattered communities, the American military acknowledges that it is also a high-risk proposition. It is an experiment in counterinsurgency warfare that could contain the seeds of a civil war — in which, if the worst fears come true, the United States would have helped organize some of the Sunni forces arrayed against the central government on which so many American lives and dollars have been spent.

In interviews with Awakening groups in 10 locations — four interviewed during a week in Anbar, and six groups in and around Baghdad interviewed over several days — it was evident that the groups were improving security in their areas. But it is also clear that there is little loyalty, in either direction, between the Sunni groups and the Shiites who run the government.

The Americans are haunted by the possibility that Iraq could go the way of Afghanistan, where Americans initially bought the loyalty of tribal leaders only to have some of them gravitate back to the Taliban when the money stopped.

The biggest concern about this strategy has always been that the Administration is risking long-term security in the region in exchange for a short-term political victory. This is almost always the scenario that winds up blowing back in the face of America and our interests. It's not sustainable to pay for Sunni loyalty in Anbar for the rest of all of our lives, so some political accommodation between the factions has to be reached. And that's just not happening on either side. The Sunnis think that the government is led by Iranian front groups and working on behalf of sectarian interests. And the Shiites think the Sunnis are massing for a coup attempt and will not allow that to happen:

Iraq's Shiite-led government declared Saturday that after restive areas are calmed it will disband Sunni groups battling Islamic extremists because it does not want them to become a separate military force [...]

The statement from Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi was the government's most explicit declaration yet of its intent to eventually dismantle the groups backed and funded by the United States as a vital tool for reducing violence.

The militias, more than 70,000 strong and often made up of former insurgents, are known as Awakening Councils, or Concerned Local Citizens.

"We completely, absolutely reject the Awakening becoming a third military organization,'' al-Obaidi said at a news conference.

I tend to think that the Sunnis and Shiites will differ on what amounts to "calm" in those areas, and the Shiites will come in to take away the guns at a time the Sunnis think is too early, and both sides will turn their guns on one another, with our troops in the crossfire. This will accelerate as disaffected renegade Shi'a take the law into their own hands, fed up with a government and a clerical leadership that they feel is not providing basic services. So the Shiites will battle the Shiites, the Sunnis will battle the Sunnis, the Turks will punish the Kurds with bombings and ground troops, and all of these elements will press toward civil war.

This is not an out-of-thin-air scenario, it's the inevitable conclusion of a strategy that arms opponents and strengthens tribal militias. Right now Iraq is breaking apart into sects jockeying for power, and no country in world history has managed to avoid conflict in such an almost feudal splintering.

A calmer and safer Iraq right now is preferable to the chaos that has marked much of the conflict, but that's a snapshot in time. And the means by which we've bought that safety and calm are the same means by which a much bigger spasm of violence is set to explode.