Dissolving the Sons of Iraq... ?

The UAE newspaper al-Khaleej today reports that Prime Minister Maliki is forming a committee to study how to go about dissolving the "Sons of Iraq".  According to al-Khaleej, military and political figures around the Maliki regime have been complaining about his silence with regard to the Awakenings, which they allegedly call "American militias."  Now that the exceptional circumstances surrounding their formation has passed, these government and military figures reportedly believe, the time has come to break them up and correct what they believe was a strategic mistake by the Americans to support militias full of brutal killers and unreconstructed sectarians.   

The move to break up the Awakenings now is also, according to al-Khaleej, tied to a secret deal with the Islamic Party of Tareq al-Hashemi (which as part of the IAF has finally announced its return to the Maliki government ).   Maliki, reportedly, would move to weaken the Awakenings ahead of provincial and Parliamentary elections, breaking up their power and barring them from forming political parties (using the "no parties with militias" as the legal pretext, perhaps).   This could put the Maliki government in sharp conflict with the Americans, the story concludes.

How much weight to put on this?  Since the entire story rests on unidentified sources, I'm inclined to view it as an accurate reflection of what some people are talking about and would like to see happen but not necessarily what's actually going to happen (though one of the comments in an earlier thread here suggests that those stories are, at the least, widely circulating).  The intense dislike and distrust of the Awakenings among Maliki's circle has been widely reported, as has been the intense political competition between the Awakenings and the Islamic Party and the recent controversies about whether the US is beginning to shut down its support for the Awakenings.   Count this as one more data point in a rapidly developing story, which could go in a number of different directions depending on how it's handled. 

Comments

[motown67]

I think Maliki feels emboldened by his security crackdowns and will tell the Awakenings to go screw themselves. Despite a couple nice statements that the government will support the SOIs, the overwhelming comments have been negative. (click on my name to go to my blog for some examples.) The U.S. has also said they will cut off funding by the end of 2008. The SOIs need to get organized and run in the elections, otherwise they're going to be unemployed, mad, and armed.

[smintheus]

Bush and Cheney used to talk all the time about the 'Anbar Awakening' and 'Sons of Iraq'. But that pretty much stopped in early to mid April. Since then, there's been only a single public reference (by Bush in May in a speech to US troops). Suggests to me either that the WH sees no further political mileage to be had from talking about the arrangement, or that Bush has decided it is becoming a liability.

[Barry]

"The U.S. has also said they will cut off funding by the end of 2008. The SOIs need to get organized and run in the elections, otherwise they're going to be unemployed, mad, and armed."

And (reiterating my standard hypothesis), the Bush/Cheney administration might figure that that would be somebody else's problem. I never figured that the administration believed the Surge to be anything other than kicking the can down the road a year or so.