The tribal militia, known as a Lashkar, is outside the tribal areas where the Pakistani Army is expected to next strike the Taliban. It would be much easier, for obvious reasons, if the Army had local Lashkar auxiliaries in such places, since then the Army will be able to cite a measure of popular support for the offensive, and will have a counterresponse to al-Qaeda and the Taliban’s inevitable charge that it’s acting as an American proxy. McClatchy collects this explanatory quote:

“The most important thing is to mobilize the people of the area (the north west), restore their trust,” said Najmuddin Khan, a government minister from Dir. “Then, there would be no need to use the army. We’d take care of the problem ourselves.”

There appear not to be similar indicators of Lashkars forming in places like Waziristan, where al-Qaeda’s support is presumably more entrenched. But The Wall Street Journal finds mounting anger with the Taliban and its terrorist allies from refugees from the tribal areas, which may presage the formation of such Lashkars or may not. According to the Journal, one inhibiting factor would be, unsurprisingly, U.S.-caused civilian casualties:

“Each time there is badly aimed artillery firing or the Americans fire missiles, if one person is killed, all his brothers and sons and cousins join the Taliban,” said Hazrat Muhammad, 36, who last year fled fighting in the Mohmand tribal area near South Waziristan.

Even among those, such as Mr. Muhammad, who say they now oppose the Taliban, there’s deep distrust of the government, which has done little for the tribal areas since Pakistan was created six decades ago.

It should be clear that the combatants who kill fewer civilians and demonstrate greater concern for the needs of the population will be the ones who gain active and passive support for attacking their enemies. It’s not about winning “hearts and minds” — a misleading and problematic framework for counterinsurgency, since this isn’t about ideological bandwagoning — it’s winning heartbeats and stomachs. (Admittedly this phrase needs precision.) And that’s one lesson that really does transfer from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pakistani Army’s offensive in Waziristan is bound to be arduous, and will occur in an area believed to be where al-Qaeda’s senior leadership is operating. We can’t do the job for the Pakistanis. But we can make their task less difficult by heeding the Center for a New American Security’s call to “strictly curtail” U.S. drone strikes in the area.

Additionally, Josh Foust explained a few weeks ago why supporting tribal militias in Pakistan isn’t nearly as problematic as supporting them in Afghanistan and why the Lashkars will need the support of the Pakistani government to succeed.

The budget squeeze is also heightening concerns about the Shiite-led Iraqi government’s ability to continue paying U.S.-formed — and formerly U.S.-funded — Sunni paramilitary groups that are now working under its supervision. The government promised to shift 20 percent of the 94,000 men in those groups to security jobs, but because of the hiring freeze, fewer than 5,000 of them have made the transition.

In recent months, many Sunni guards have walked away from their checkpoints after working unpaid for months. U.S. officials fear that the dissolution of the groups could refuel the insurgency, widen the sectarian divide and destabilize the government.

Beyond the reconciliation issue, Londono reports that the Iraqis may face problems with preparedness to face external threats, as money dries up to supply the country’s tiny air force, navy and border guard. To go far out in the realm of speculation, watch to see if that becomes a pretext for the Iraqi military to request revisions to the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement holding a total U.S. troop departure by the end of 2011. Senior Iraqi military commanders have often said that they want the United States to leave when they’re able to take control. We can argue whether Iraq isn’t already seeing foreign-sponsored aggression against it, but the implicit premise in London’s reporting is that Iraq won’t be prepared for a major conventional conflict with one of its neighbors. How likely is that, though?

Over the weekend, Iraqi security forces arrested an Awakening leader named Adil Mashadani, whom Leila Fadel of McClatchy describes as “an outspoken critic of the government who ruled his district as a personal fiefdom.” The government forces say they came after him for the latter part of that description. Here’s the U.S. military’s statement on the arrest. Predictably, the Awakening interpreted Mashadani’s arrest as resulting from the former. (The military’s flat declaration: “He was not detained because of his involvement with the Sons of Iraq (SOI).”) The Washington Post reports what happened next:

In response to the arrest, Awakening fighters took to the streets and rooftops, engaging in fierce gun battles with U.S. and Iraqi troops. At least eight Iraqi soldiers were injured; an additional five were taken hostage but were released Sunday morning, Iraqi security officials said.

The Post quotes an Iraqi Army sergeant saying, “This shows that we don’t need the Americans and that Awakening are not stronger than the government.” Both points appear to be correct. But the Awakening has now had its first pitched battle with Iraqi forces in the capitol. They have a legitimate grievance (the Maliki government has been slow to live up to its U.S.-pushed promises of integration into the security forces and civilian employment) and an illegitimate one (the Maliki government doesn’t like them acting like neighborhood warlords). The incident is unlikely to convince Prime Minister Nouri Maliki al-Maliki to speed up incorporation of the Awakening into the government forces, as they appear to be a lawless element — and the Awakening has reason to believe that Maliki is using Awakening registration as an intelligence asset. The Post:

Iraqi soldiers conducted door-to-door searches in Fadhil with the help of informants, targeting Awakening fighters. At one entrance to the neighborhood, once an al-Qaeda in Iraq stronghold, men were dragged from their homes, blindfolded and placed into Humvees. An Iraqi intelligence official calmly crossed off names on a wanted list.

Both factions in the dispute can claim U.S. backing. Which is actually good — it’s better for the United States to act as an intercessor in this case than it is to act as the guarantor of one of the factions. It sure is a good thing, then, that Sen. Sam Brownback is vowing to block U.S. Ambassador-designate Chris Hill’s nomination. (Actually, in this case, assume that Brownback’s charges against Hill are correct and Hill is a craven appeaser of the North Koreans. You want an appeaser in Baghdad in this case! It’s important for the sake of stability in Iraq to get the Maliki government to appease the Awakening Councils. After all, the entire success of the U.S.-backed Awakening project in 2007 is predicated on the idea that appeasement, in specific cases, can reduce the pool of enemies that the U.S. faces. Don’t take it from me, take it from Maj. Gen. David Fastabend.)

This, however, is kind of an unfortunate way of putting things:

Perkins added that on Feb. 20, no Iraqi civilians were killed or even targeted in attacks.

“This is a very significant event, and we are seeing more and more days like that throughout Iraq,” he said.

If you were an Iraq, would you really want to hear an American general highlighting one day in six years of war that no civilians were targeted for murder? The Iraq war is a confusing and frustrating thing, and Perkins undoubtedly meant nothing by the statement, but that’s rather tin-earned.

Interestingly, Perkins added that the results of the provincial elections are being accepted by the losers, but NPR’s Corey Flintoff reports that members of the Iraqi Islamic Party — the recently-deposed party in Anbar Province — are being targeted for assassination, suggesting that the winners are having a hard time settling for mere political victory.

“We will form the government of Anbar anyway,” vowed Ahmed Abu Risha, his voice dipping to a quiet growl. The tribesmen seated in his visiting room, where photos of U.S. generals and Sunni monarchs adorn the walls, nodded in approval. “An honest dictatorship is better than a democracy won through fraud,” Abu Risha said.

Curfews and stricter security measures have locked Anbar down as the vote count proceeds. The Iraqi Islamic Party, naturally, insists there was no vote fraud, and the national election commission is investigating. It’s foolish to try to adjudicate that dispute from Washington, so forgive the he-said-she-said aspect of this post. But, as Marc Lynch writes, we’re in a situation where the losing party in the elections will not accept the legitimacy of the outcome, and quite possibly will turn violent. The irony is that for all the expectation that this round of elections would redress the power imbalances of the 2005 national elections — where the Sunnis rejected the legitimacy of the process and boycotted — this is a comparable situation.

Remember as well that the Awakening has, since at least 2006, always wanted a seat at the governing table and distrusted both its Sunni rivals and the ruling Shiite-led government. Under Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military command in Iraq went to arduous lengths to convince the tribes that participation in the process — what Petraeus and outgoing Ambassador Ryan Crocker called “reconciliation” with the government — would get them what they want. This was the first test of that proposition. It may well have failed.

It’s very difficult to imagine the Awakening returning to insurgency. But it’s not difficult to imagine the Awakening fighting the Iraqi Islamic Party, or any Iraqi security forces that try to assist it. Could Anbar spark an inter-province conflict? Hey, incoming Ambassador Chris Hill: welcome to Iraq. Good thing the Obama administration alienated proven warrior-diplomat Tony Zinni!