You Go to War With the Militia You Have

Dafna Linzer and Thomas Ricks get a leak of a classified Marine Corps memo on Anbar Province. It notes that "The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda's rising popularity there." The problem, meanwhile, isn't one that "surging" troops will solve. Rather, "The report describes Iraq's Sunni minority as 'embroiled in a daily fight for survival,' fearful of 'pogroms' by the Shiite majority and increasingly dependent on al-Qaeda in Iraq as its only hope against growing Iranian dominance across the capital." And, of course, this makes perfect sense. If I were a Sunni Arab Iraqi, and an al-Qaeda dude stopped by my house I would greet him warmly, offer a cup of coffee and my thanks, agree to help him out in any way he asked, etc. The fact that I might be, by conviction, an atheist and a believer in social democracy wouldn't change this at all. Why wouldn't I support al-Qaeda? Because they're the bad guys? Don't be naive -- they're the guys with guns trying to kill the other guys with guns who are trying to kill me. And if pretending to be a devout Sunni Muslim is the price I need to pay for protection, then why not.

Much the same could be said of Shiite Arabs' attitudes toward Muqtada al-Sadr. Shadi Hamid's complaints about "the utter incompetence of Nouri al-Maliki government and its continued willingness to turn a blind eye to the increasingly brutal, roving death squads of its Sadrist coalition partners" might as well come from Mars. Why wouldn't you support Sadr? He has a fairly effective armed force at his disposal that's willing to protect Shiites who show their loyalty. Wouldn't you want to work with such a force? Maliki would be insane to side with Iraq's American occupiers, its Sunni population, and foreign al-Qaeda types in fighting the Mahdi Army, the Shiites' own self-protection service.

Iraqis of either stripe are right now caught between a guy with a gun trying to kill them and another guy with another gun trying to kill that first guy. Choosing sides isn't going to be difficult.

Comments

And yesterday Bush rehashes the idea that an Al Qaeda conspiracy is to blame for the instability in Iraq. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. People mislabel Bush as being unintelligent, when he is in fact merely incurably stupid.

Posted by Bill | November 28, 2006 9:27 AM

An enemy of my enemy is my friend. It's not exactly an abstruse truism. Well, not so much for most people, possibly excepting this administration.

Posted by steve duncan | November 28, 2006 9:31 AM

Well then can we at least lay to rest the nonsense being peddled that Anbar won't be a fully fledged Al-Queada mini-state upon our departure. Lots of people, like Spencer Ackerman, have kept saying that Iraqi Sunnis are just nationalistic and oppose Al-Queada as fiercely as they do the occupation. But of course in an incipient civil war, any ally at hand will do, and the Sunnis would have to be crazy to fight a two front war against the Shiites and Al-Queada. Maybe a withdrawal is still called for because the cost paid is too high for what we can accomplish, but we can't pretend it won't leave a very real and increased threat to our security and the region: A Taliban state in Anbar operating without opposition, committed not only to war against the Shiites in Iraq but against the moderate regimes in region in large.

Posted by rd | November 28, 2006 9:41 AM

There's some disagreement about AQ's level of influence, apparently. Read Ricks' article:

"The senior intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his work, said yesterday that he largely agrees with Devlin's assessment, except that he thinks it overstates the role of al-Qaeda in the province. "We argue that it is a major element in Anbar, but it is not the largest or most dominant group," he said."

RD - Beyond that, how would AQ elements in Iraq be a threat to us or surrounding states if they were embroiled in a brutal war against Iraqi Shia and Kurds? The Iranians would not take kindly to such an anti-Shia entity bombing their clients in Baghdad, either.

Posted by tequila | November 28, 2006 10:16 AM

"An enemy of my enemy is my friend. It's not exactly an abstruse truism. Well, not so much for most people, possibly excepting this administration."

Well, but this is the adminstration that overthrew Saddam's anti-iranian regime in favor of a pro-Iranian government, all the while insisting that Iran was our enemy. So yeah, the concept is waaaaay to complicated for them.

Posted by rea | November 28, 2006 10:29 AM

Well of course if the Shiites can overrun al-Anbar, then sure, problem solved, albeit at the cost of slaughter at levels not yet seen. But it seems to me that it's unlikely they'll have the power to do that. Maybe they can cleanse much of Baghdad, but achieving control of an almost entirely Sunni area like Anbar seems like more than most militias can handle, absent massive Iranian intervention, which would surely trigger counterinterventions the Iranians may not want to deal with just for the doubtful prize of Anbar. The likeliest outcome is a mostly Shiite area south of Kurdistan, but with substantial Sunni rump statelets populated by locals and the surviving Sunni refugees from the rest of Iraq. Given the logic of the analysis above, they'll either be dominated by Al-Queada or with substantial al-queada presence. Certainly these statelets would be involved in constant conflict and terrorism against Shiite Iraq, but before too long the alignment of forces will stabilize such that both sides realize that they can't take all of Iraq. At or before that point, I see little or no reason given that fighters in the Sunni statelets won't turn their wrath against the moderate Sunni states that "betrayed" them by not stopping the Shiite takeover. And of course, there's us, the ultimate cause of it all.

Posted by rd | November 28, 2006 11:02 AM

RD, if what you're getting at is that post-withdrawal Anbar (and by extension Iraq as a whole) will look a lot like pre-911 Afghanistan, i.e. a failed state with regional power centers anchored by factions at war with each other, which serves as a save haven for Al Qaeda logistical and planning operations and a launch pad for further terrorist attacks in the region and abroad, then I think you're right.

Posted by ds | November 28, 2006 11:37 AM

I was really struck by this post over at Healing Iraq where he does a roundup of what seems to be Sunni neighborhood message boards. The "Mujahideen" seem to be the only hope for these people. I assume mujahideen is reffering to Sunni militias and groups, maybe "Al Qaeda In Iraq", maybe some foreign fighters.

I thought it was weird how they kept referring to the Mahdi Army as the 'Antichrist' army, maybe it's a pun in their language.

Sounds like what we have here is sectarian civil war which will lead to ethnic cleansing. It will be ugliest in Baghdad with it's 7 million people in integrated neighborhood.

I predict the de-facto formation of three ethnically cleansed countries in Iraq, even if it's not internationally recognized. The scariest one will be the Sunni country.

Posted by miguel | November 28, 2006 12:25 PM

Why are so many people assuming that Al Qaida - whatever that means in the case of Iraq - is the strongest faction among the Sunnis?

Foreign fighters willing to blow themselves up may have been useful in provoking a sectarian civil war, but it's very hard to believe that they will be a match for the former regime elements who seem to make up the core of the insurgency. These are the guys who made up the Saddam-era professional army and security forces. They know a lot more about fighting than either Al Qaida types or the Sadrist militia, they know where the weapons stockpiles are, and they will have the overwhelming support of a desperate Sunni population. And, finally, they are far more likely than Al Qaida footsoldiers to be the recipients of aid, covert and otherwise, from neighboring Arab states. I wouldn't bet against them.

Posted by Dave L | November 28, 2006 3:40 PM

"Maybe a withdrawal is still called for because the cost paid is too high for what we can accomplish, but we can't pretend it won't leave a very real and increased threat to our security and the region: A Taliban state in Anbar operating without opposition, committed not only to war against the Shiites in Iraq but against the moderate regimes in region in large."

If only someone had warned about that before we went in.

Posted by aleks | November 28, 2006 3:52 PM

Yeah aleks, it would've been nice. But I'm really scared of the Democrat's and blogger's call for a quick pullout. I don't buy the argument that our army isn't helping, they must be at least slowing things down a little bit as the whole place descends into hell. Yeah Bush is terrible and deserves the worst of the worst, but it really seems horrible to think that we'll abandon the Iraqi civilians as the orgy of violence intensifies. I think the parallels with Vietnam end here, when we pull out things won't stabilize, this is headed towards Somalia or Darfur type situations.

Just because our soldiers are dying doesn't mean we should leave. If they're helping the civilians population even a little bit we are morally bound to stay.

PS. I opposed the war from day 1, I marched, etc.

Posted by miguel | November 28, 2006 4:30 PM

Yea, the US army is "helping" a great deal.

Why just today they helped six young Iraqi females in Ramadi to way premature graves.

Let's face it - the Sunni and Shia overwhelming want our sorry asses out of there. Our military is without peer at murdering people from a safe distance but worse than useless at nation building and peace keeping.

And the reason we won't go has absolutely nothing to do with helping the Iraqis and everything to do with controlling their oil and dominating the country via the permanent bases and staggeringly expensive embassy we're building.

Posted by ran | November 28, 2006 9:05 PM