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?

MND-B [Multinational Division-Baghdad] aircraft engage suspected IED emplacement team

Nothing about the Sons of Iraq there. You would think that this is a fairly routine operation. Same thing for the headline from the American Forces Press Service, the military’s official news operation:

Coalition Air Weapons Team Strikes Roadside Bombers in Iraq

And officials wonder why the public grows mistrustful of their statements.

Four armed men were engaged by an air weapons team from Multi-National Division-Baghdad, after they were spotted emplacing an improvised explosive device north of Taji, Iraq the night of April 2—leaving one dead and two wounded.

– and then gets stomach-churning:

The men, alleged Sons of Iraq members, were seen emplacing an object in the road, near a critical road junction. The alleged SOI members had lookouts posted to keep watch several meters away, prior to being fired on by the Coalition forces aircraft.  The largely rural area north of Baghdad has been the scene of several attacks in the past few months.

Over the weekend and continuing somewhat during the week, Sons of Iraq militiamen have been battling Iraqi government forces after the government arrested Adil Mashadani, a Sons of Iraq/Awakening leader. Now the U.S. military is firing from the air on the militiamen it has backed since 2007.

Update: Interestingly, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government has released a different Awakening leader arrested last week.

]]> http://washingtonindependent.com/37225/us-shoots-at-us-backed-iraqi-militiamen/feed 1 http://washingtonindependent.com/36258/the-awakening-are-not-stronger-than-the-government http://washingtonindependent.com/36258/the-awakening-are-not-stronger-than-the-government#comments Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:18:29 +0000 Spencer Ackerman http://washingtonindependent.com/?p=36258 While you were sleeping, the Iraqi security forces and the ex-insurgent militiamen known as the Awakening Councils or the Sons of Iraq skirmished in the Baghdad neighborhood of Fadhil. The Iraqi government appears to have won the battles decisively. In Iraq, though,”decisively” means “for now, while the aggrieved party More...

In interviews with leaders from a dozen local Awakening Councils, nearly all complained that full-time jobs were lacking, that pay was in arrears and that members were being arrested despite promises of amnesty.

Perhaps most ominously, many expressed concern this might drive some followers back to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely Iraqi group with some foreign leadership, at a time when both Iraqi and American military commanders say that the group seems to be making gains, small but worrisome, around Baghdad.

The New York Times’ Rod Norland and Alissa Rubin note that the councils have sounded these notes before in order to get the government spooked into giving them more money. But it may be that the Iraqi government’s hands are tied in significant ways from paying the ex-insurgents. For instance:

But other American officials are not so sure, given the far weaker financial condition of the Iraqi government because of falling oil prices. “Do we really think the Iraqi government is going to bring 100,000 new employees in at a time when their revenue stream is taking a nosedive?” asked an American military official knowledgeable about the program, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

So here’s a question about Iraq I can’t answer. Let’s say the Iraqi government doesn’t hire the extra ex-insurgents, and instead arrests many of them. Does the Sunni community from which most of the ex-insurgents come from support a return to insurgency in that case? The recent ABC public opinion poll in Iraq suggests that Iraqis in general want a return to normalcy, but Arab Sunnis still lag behind Arab Shiites and Kurds in terms of political contentment. To oversimplify matters considerably: at what point would the Sunnis — who have already stepped back from the violent abyss once this year — say they’ve had the Shiite-led government break too many promises?

This program has always represented a division between U.S. goals in Iraq and those of the Shiite government. The United States wanted to reduce its pool of enemies in Iraq and give them a stake in the government. But the Shiite leadership wanted to ensure a stable future for a Shiite-run state. One of the more hopeful signs in Iraq these days is that the Shiites do not appear to be thinking in zero-sum terms anymore. But they still fear that the armed Sunnis aim to infiltrate and subvert a still-weak state, and that can spool off into dangerous directions.

“This is a great step in the right direction,” Sheik Farhan, a Sons of Iraq leader in the Sudayra region, said. “Each day the government of Iraq is growing stronger, and we are becoming more independent.”

It’s now the responsibility of the Iraqi government to make sure Farhan feels as if he has a stake in peaceful governance. If that happens, one of the greatest counterinsurgency gambles of all will be vindicated.

Basically, Gartenstein-Ross and Goodman report on and summarize a memorandum written by Sheikh Abu Risha, the brother of the slain leader of the Awakening. It’s an overview of an Awakening leader’s perspective on what made the Awakening click, but it doesn’t really add anything new: Al Qaeda overplayed its hand brutally; it helps to have a charismatic figure; it doesn’t help to offend Muslim sensibilities. Readers of Dave Kilcullen’s “Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt” essay from 2007 will be nodding their heads.

But what Abu Risha, Gartenstein-Ross and Goodman don’t deal with is whether the factors that led to the Awakening are in evidence in Afghanistan’s Pashtun areas. And that’s really the game: either the conditions are there, seen in the same way by the Pashtun tribes, or they’re not. Here’s the closest they come to addressing the point:

Abu Risha argues, nevertheless, that there are parallels between Afghanistan today and Iraq’s Anbar Province in 2006 and 2007. Most important, al Qaeda and affiliated groups in Afghanistan have created a “climate of terror” similar to what they created in Anbar, where “they murdered anyone who opposed or criticized their actions and behavior.” As in Anbar, he believes, an Awakening could help Afghanistan reverse its present deadly course.

But the trouble is this isn’t anything new for Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other affiliated groups have existed and operated in these fashions for, in some cases, 30 years (10 years in Al Qaeda’s case). By contrast, Al Qaeda was a foreign import to Anbar Province, arriving in 2003 and taking about four years to alienate the populace. But this is nothing new for the Afghan tribes. So why believe that the tribes are ready to flip now? If there’s evidence, the authors don’t present it. This boils down to saying it would be nice to have an Awakening in Afghanistan. And it would be!

Instead, what’s perhaps the most interesting part of the piece is that Abu Risha evidently doesn’t favor a plus-up of U.S. troops in Afghanistan:

“Keep U.S. forces’ and NATO forces’ movement in Afghan cities limited,” Abu Risha writes, “to only fight when needed, and control the Taliban insurgency and their expanded activities.” He suggests that scaling back U.S. and NATO activity will diminish public hostility to their mission.

A shame that the authors didn’t explore that further.

Gradually, these SOI are being “peel[ed] off their security positions” and redirected into other lines of work. So far, 3,000 former SOI have joined the Iraqi national police. Around 1,600 have entered vocational training.

The latter is key. There isn’t room for all the SOI in the Iraqi police — nor are all of them suited to police jobs, since many SOI are former insurgents. The vocational training is supposed to be the consolation prize for those Sons of Iraq who won’t be allowed to continue their security careers. But Kulmayer said that “non-security employment” is “a little tougher,” in light of Iraq’s continuing economic woes and high unemployment.

If you were a neighborhood warlord, what would make you want to be a garbage man?

The short answer: If the U.S. doesn’t broker a formidable deal between the Sons of Iraq — the 100,000 mostly Sunni ex-insurgents currently paid by the U.S. to be a pro-U.S. militia — and the Shiite-controlled Iraqi government, which hates them.

“That could be a gamechanger,” Hafez says.

Already, Al Qaeda in Iraq is putting out the line that the U.S. will betray the Sons of Iraq. Unless the U.S. figures out how to get the Shiites to embrace them — easier said than done, obviously — it’ll play right into AQI’s hands.

Once again, sectarianism cuts against the U.S.’s counterterrorism goals.

We talked to a number of tribal and Sons of Iraq leaders during our trip. When asked what would happen if the Maliki government did not keep its word and integrate or otherwise accommodate their members, one leader was blunt: “There will be trouble.”

It is obvious where this road might end. The last time tens of thousands of armed Sunni men were humiliated in Iraq — by disbanding the Baath Party and Iraqi army in May 2003 — an insurgency began, costing thousands of U.S. lives and throwing Iraq into chaos. Yet Maliki and his advisors risk provoking Iraq’s Sunni community into another round of violence.

Kahl and Brimley also expand on a point I’ve been making about Maliki:

During our trip, a common theme among U.S. military commanders, intelligence officers, diplomats and Iraqi political leaders we spoke with was the growing hubris of Maliki and his closest advisors. Recent government successes in Basra, Sadr City and Mosul seem to have convinced Maliki’s inner circle that Iraq’s army does not need American help as much as it used to.

Be careful what you wish for when you wish for the Iraqi government to “step up.” Can we finally put to rest all the talk about sectarianism having receded? We’re still feeling the aftereffects of our civil war.