Too many moving parts

So I’m skimming over the Iraq stories this morning, just marveling at the many directions they take. I mean, I know war is chaos and all, but surely there’s never been a conflict with as many moving parts in as tight an arena as we see in Iraq. Even leaving aside the Turkey-PKK piece for the moment, just look at all this:

Twelve days ago, the Washington Post talked up the “devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq” said to be “leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group.” Today WaPo hits this theme again:

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said Saturday that the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq has been disrupted and no longer operates in large numbers in any neighborhood of the capital.

“In general, we think that there are no al-Qaeda strongholds at this point,” Petraeus said. He added: “They remain very lethal, very dangerous, capable at any point in time, if you will, of coming back off the canvas and landing a big punch, and we have to be aware of that.”

(For the lessening violence, Petraeus partly thanks the U.S. attacks on car-bomb manufacturers outside Baghdad that keep them from deploying the explosives in town. One of the last remaining al-Qaeda in Iraq strongholds in Baghdad, he says, is the predominantly-Sunni southeastern section of Dora. Recent raids there have reduced that threat, though “[t]hey’re still there, don’t get me wrong, and they’re still in Adhamiyah, there’s still some in Mansour.”)

So okay, now AQI runs along to Pakistan, per John Robb’s prediction, and nobody in Iraq will miss ‘em (though some in Washington may). But that doesn’t mean as much good news for indigenous Sunnis as they might hope. Both New York’s and Los Angeles’ Times today repeat Gen. Mixon’s complaint yesterday about Nouri al-Maliki’s “foot-dragging” in hiring desperately-needed Sunni police officers because of sectarian bias, then take it from there.

NYT’s Michael R. Gordon story, Iraq Hampers U.S. Bid to Widen Sunni Police Role, describes Petraeus’s success in organizing Sunni neighborhood-watch groups (“Concerned Local Citizens”) even in the infamous “triangle of death” area around Yusufiya and Mahmudiya. It’s the next step — institutionalizing these CLCs into uniformed police — that’s proving too tall.

Shiite-dominated ministries in Baghdad will develop new working relations with largely Sunni police forces in the field, easing the sectarian divide and laying the basis for a more representative national government, or so the theory goes.

Cool theory, Dave, but here’s the reality:

Mr. Maliki ordered that the Diyala police force be increased in size by more than 6,000, and provincial officials submitted a list of names in July that included many Sunnis to the Interior Ministry in Baghdad. But some Interior Ministry officials have questioned whether such a substantial increase is needed, and some members of the reconciliation committee have argued that the original Maliki decree may no longer be valid, putting the plan to hire them in limbo.

While no action has been taken on the list, the Iraqi government surprised the Americans by hiring 548 Iraqis who had not been on the roster. When American officials analyzed the new hires, they determined that the list was mostly made up of Shiites.

Gordon details similar results up and down the country, ending with the dean of a new police academy in Habbaniya (once of Saddam’s Republican Guard) sighing that the Americans seem more concerned than his own government that his recruits be properly clothed, fed, and trained. “We know the Americans better than the Iraqis,” he tells Gordon. “Nobody at the Ministry of Interior asks us what we need.”

LAT’s Christian Berthelsen minces fewer words than Gordon, declaring from the git that Gen. Mixon’s comments

put in stark terms the sectarian divisions in Iraq’s Shiite-led Interior Ministry, which has been beset by allegations of infiltration by Shiite Muslim militiamen and human rights violations, including torture. U.S. officials are rarely so openly critical of the agencies with which they are nominally partnering to try to stabilize the country.

The comments also ran counter to recent remarks by the U.S. ambassador here, who said strides had been made in bringing Sunni Arabs into the police forces. …

Quoting Mixon’s “There’s still a lot of work to be done down there to do away with the sectarian decision-making that occurs in the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad,” Berthelsen then records the MoI’s all-purpose reply:

Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, a spokesman for the ministry, disputed the allegation and said the agency had made great strides in making the police force more reflective of the population.

“In the ministry, the issue of a national balance is a really very important point, and taking into consideration that the recruits will be from all over the spectrum,” he said. “Not accepting a certain segment is not true and is not accepted.”

While the Americans think the former insurgents who’ve signed up to join the police “have demonstrated enough good faith to be included … and that the role would give them more allegiance to the Iraqi state,” the Shiites fear they “could use their new positions within the police force to continue carrying out insurgent activities.” (Um, projection much?) Just Thursday, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker was happy-talking, “We have seen an increasing number of individuals coming forward saying, ‘We don’t want to carry a gun for anybody except the government if we can get a salary’” — while Maliki “decried the U.S. efforts with these citizen groups, saying they amounted to arming nongovernmental militias of which there was little oversight or control.”

With thanks to the American papers for their efforts, I think this clip from a BBC report best captures the essence here:

On Friday, gunmen in military uniforms kidnapped the police chief of a [Diyala Province] town and his bodyguards, police said.

Col Amer Nussayif Jasim, the chief of police in Miqdadiya, and seven of his colleagues were seized after their convoy was ambushed at a checkpoint near Baquba.

Diyala police have formed a taskforce to find the missing officers and have detained 13 Iraqi soldiers who were manning the checkpoint.

We see where this is going . . . and so, apparently, do Iraq’s Christians (mostly Chaldeans) to whom, the AP reports, Maliki on Saturday pledged his government’s protection and support. Having noted his pledges of this and that to the Sunnis — not to mention more direct evidence of their vulnerability — 50% of Christians have left Iraq now.

Aren’t the Brits supposed to be leaving too — 1,000 squaddies “home by Christmas” I do believe Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised? Well, not so fast, Alf. Check this Sunday Times of London headline: 850 more troops in Iraq ‘before Christmas’.

The troops represent an overall increase in the size of the force in Iraq despite the pledge by Gordon Brown this month, when “election fever” was at its height, that 1,000 troops would be home by Christmas.

It later emerged that half of them had already returned while the others would not even be setting foot in Iraq. Now 250 paratroopers from the Special Forces Support Group have been warned they will be spending Christmas in Basra. They will be joined by the 600 men of the 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh Regiment, which is based in Cyprus.

Des Browne, U.K. defence secretary, has decided to hand over Basra Province to the Iraqis by early December, leading to a reduction to 2,500 British troops in Iraq (half the current number) early next year.

Those 2,500 troops will be built around an 1,800-strong quick reaction force to be sent in to assist the Iraqi forces in the event of serious violence. It will remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

The extra special forces and infantry will be deployed temporarily to provide additional protection to cover the withdrawal of the 2,500.

Though that sounds dicey, it’s probably going to be considerably tidier than what we can expect in Karbala, where the U.S. bugs out tomorrow, Iraqis-ready-or-not (I’m afraid it looks “not”). As Juan Cole notes, Karbala is “dominated … by the Badr Corps, the paramilitary trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps” — so at some point, we can probably expect it to figure in a major Badr-vs-Sadr rumble.

Perhaps that will be after the U.S. clears out? After we’ve lost more than the 3,840 so far? After more thousands turn out all over the country in protest?

When will it be? What will it take? Tell us. We’re dying to know.

lotus

Tags: al-Maliki, al-Qaeda, Badr, David Petraeus, Iraq, Sadr, Shiite, Sunni, U.K., U.S.