Quick response to comments

I wanted to quickly note and try to respond briefly to a few comments yesterday to the Ricks article, the Kahl-Katulis debate, et al.   I'll have more detailed thoughts on the comments in the various Kahl-Katulis threads later, but for now I did just want to publicly thank everyone who left such thoughtful, challenging and respectful comments or who engaged with the debate on their own blogs.  In four plus years blogging, I've rarely seen such an intelligent and constructive collective discussion, engaging with substance and avoiding personal attacks or canned rhetoric.  Thanks. 

First, Col. Pat Lang - who I respect immensely, wrote:

I sympathize with those like Abu Aardvark (Lynch) who would like to see a unitary state in Iraq that receives the meek submission of the various groups.   In fact, that was never going to happen in Iraq.  The state and the national identity were too tentative and fragile to survive the battering that we inflicted on it.  There is a chance now of restoring national unity on the basis of bargaining (deal-making) and power sharing across ethno-sectarian and regional lines.If the Baghdad government seizes that chance then a new Iraq can emerge.  If the government does not, then the stage is set for a long drama of internal and external conflict.

I don't think that we're actually that far apart.  I don't have any romantic attachment to the Iraqi state, or any passionate objection either to federalist structures or ethnon-national bargaining and power-sharing.  My argument is more pragmatic:  that in conditions of heavily armed sectarian militias and deep mutual distrust, the only way to overcome the sectarian security dilemma is for there to be centralized control over the means of violence.   As long as the state is weak and armed force is organized along sectarian lines, there's just nothing to prevent a spiral back into armed conflict - particularly given the deep mutual mistrust and powerful memories of recent atrocity.  At the same time, if the state is thoroughly identified with one of those sectarian groups - as is currently the case in Iraq - then strengthening the state doesn't solve the problem since it simply empowers one side in the sectarian conflict.   That's why I see political accomodation at the top, the strengthening of state capacity rather than local level institutions, the integration of armed groups into the state and not into local militias, and the de-sectarianization of the state as the only hope for avoiding catastrophe. 

One of the posters over at Small Wars Journal (which I always recommend for serious thinking about counter-insurgency, even when I disagree with them) offers a fair juxtaposition of the competing arguments, and concludes:

Regardless of what one thinks of the bottom-up approach to COIN (I maintain that as 2007 dawned it was the “only approach” we had as an option), time, resources and patience are not unlimited and if the Iraqi national government does not immediately take advantage of the recent relative calm it may not have another chance.

I'd say that this puts at least part of the SWJ group (like the officers quoted in the Ricks article) right within the emerging consensus that I've been sketching out.  This is a productive consensus, which can potentially move past old political battles to focus on the strategic questions about the future:   will the Iraqi government in its current form move on national reconciliation or not?  If it doesn't, then even if we continue to disagree about the causes and significance of the recent local-level progress, the future looks bleak. 

Finally, Nibras Kazimi has some Questions and Observations.  I've always enjoyed reading Nibras, though I've never met him.  I'm just not interested in a blog war right now, so I'm not going to take his bait - I'm busy, he's announced he's taking a break from blogging, and he's welcome to his views (and so I'm following Jay instead of Em, for now).  I've always seen him as an entertaining read, and a good source of information from the Iraqi Shia rumor mill. (And his post on "ASMEA vs MESA" is one of the funniest things I have ever read, though perhaps not for the reasons he intended.)  Over the last few months I've been troubled by the emergence of a strain of Shia triumphalism in his writing.  When he describes Sunnis as "beasts", proposes using a Shia-dominated Iraqi army to police Saudi Arabia, or writes in a comment thread: "We won, you lost. One would assume that we should be magnanimous in victory, but I think not. You are the lowest of the low, and you deserve no respect or mercy."... well, this does not strengthen my faith in bottom-up reconciliation.  He has for months been pushing the argument that the Sunni insurgency has been defeated and should not be taken seriously moving forward.  But let me point to a nice bit of analysis Kazimi offered before his recent triumphalist turn.  In October 2006, he described the thinking of the Sunni insurgency leadership as such: "“We can’t maintain the momentum over an extended period of time", so "“We need to make one last push before bringing the Americans to the negotiating table," and “Once we are ready to negotiate, we will have to break our alliance with the Saddamist-Ba’athists and with Al-Qaeda.”  I see that as a better guide to the insurgency's subsequent behavior than his later more triumphalist spin.  But if personalities can be set aside and we can focus on substance, those are interesting and important strategic arguments to have.   

And now back to work...

Comments

[Nitin]

Basra's demographics clearly differ markedly from those of Baghdad, but I'm curious as to what you make of this British statement, with all its attendant implications for the rest of the country.

[Moloch-Agonistes]

As Nibras points out, "ja' al-Haq wa zahaqa al-Batil." Unfortunately, the Haq in question was laid down by the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Batil-- well, all too many of them to choose from.

[bb]

The interesting thing about Nibras Kazimi is that when you read everybody's archives, as I did late last year, his analysis and predictions always turn out to be spot on while everybody else's mostly turn out not to be. That Oct column on the Sunni insurgency being a case in point.

I put this down to the fact that he, unlike other western bloggers, actually is an Arab, understands Iraq intimately and obviously has extensive on-the-ground contacts there and in the region, both shia and sunni?

Also, of course, he doesn't suffer from the Iraqi Shia/Kurd black-hole syndrome. Since they comprise 80% of the population of Iraq this gives his commentary - I think the word is - nuance?

[Derfel64]

Actually, if you go back even deeper, Kazimi was claiming in AUGUST 2006 that the sunni insurgency was EXHAUSTED, but not because of military progress against it but because the sunni society had been torn to pieces by the shia militias, a disaster of historic proportions. He quoted an article which reportedly he liked much, saying that "the Sadr City underclass, after been uprooted from tne marshlands, had come back por revenge" or something like that. That was 15 months ago.

Then from October to December, he without the smallest or slightest data continued to claim that the war was about to be won and endorsed "constant, stay-the-course pressure." HE MISTRUSTED PETRAEUS and instead adviced "keep doing what we know that workds. Keep killing the bad guys" which supposedly was working! It´s a pity I can´t provide the links but if you search they are there, this I´m talking about is from a December 2006 post.

On later months as it became obvious that the key to "defeating the sunnis" was the sunnis themselves, he shifted again and blamed "al-Qaeda´s self-defeating and disastrous attempt to impose its Islamic State". He even considered worthy of trust some of these "former sunni insurgents/al-Qaeda collaborator sheiks who were turning on extremists" as the media repeat over and over.

ABOUT THIS TIME TOO, EARLY 2007 (about april if i remember well, when the media war between insurgents exploded), HE PREDICTED A 5-10 YEAR INTERNAL SUNNI CONFLICT IN WHICH AL-QAEDA WOULD EMERGE VICTORIOUS AGAINST THE ISLAMIC ARMY (due to given its greater ideological commitment). Yeah, not very far off the mark.

(By the way, of course, there´s absolutely no proof that this al-Qaeda is related or controlled by in any meaningful way by the "historic" Bin Laden´s al-Qaeda, whatever its form is. Back in 2004 NOBODY was seriously mentioning al-Qaeda. They talked about wahhabees, salafists and the like but this al-Qaeda avalanche is a 2007 propaganda matter. Of course Zarqawi, by renaming his group "al-Qaeda in Iraq" made a huge propaganda favor to the American military. Far from showing his power, it was a stupid mistake.)

And yet again, on recent weeks waht we´re now only hearing that the new sunni (and some shiite) volunteers are just militias, that there´s no reason tu enlist them since they are already defeated. Clearly listening to this guy is a recipe for disaster.

Frankly, Kazimi knows a lot but at the same time he knows nothing. First and most obviously, he has never seriously read about insurgency, civil war or conflict in general, or if he did he doesn´t show up in his posts. He knows nothing about how things work in real life.

PD: BTW, if you want a (quite rare) case in which the sunni volunteer program is visibly failing and, in my opinion, heading slow-motion to disaster look to Baquba. The villages around it still have a serious Islamic State presence but the city itself was rid several months ago. August passed almost without violence, September had some. Starting in early October (check "recent events" in the Iraq Body Count), we began to hear reports about clashes between those "Concerned Local Citiznes" police forces which in Diyala province are controlled by the Badr brigades and have been running death squads - US allies too. The death toll is now of scores (in one ocasion a displaced family of 3 was killed) was with many more arrested, kidnapped, injured, or "military" casualties.

Frankly Baquba is exceptional in this, but it can happen elsewhere. Also have a look at the incredible reports from the Adhamiya blogger. Although nobody knows exactly what happened, either the insurgents gave up one their strongest (and last) strongholds almost whithout combat, or they have made a fake awakening to continue at work.

http://last-of-iraqis.blogspot.com/