The security gains, tenuous as they are, have not come from the activities of the Iraqi Army. Remember, Bush's plan for the surge was that the Iraqi Army would "stand up", and the 30,000 surge troops were merely supposed to be supportive of their effort. Instead, the occupation troops have done much of the heavy lifting, while the Iraqi Army is in perpetual training mode. The "Concerned Citizens", which I call the "good terrorists" since they are among those that the surge was supposed to disarm and wipe out, are not loyal to the Iraqi government. This "awakening" strategy was a short-term fix, and it has only made the foes of the impotent federal government far stronger. The Iraqi Army, which has long suffered from profound "loyalty issues" itself, is now supposed to incorporate several thousands more of these Sunnis who have profound loyalty issues of their own. Is a regular paycheck supposed to turn these loyalty issues around?
Aside from that, the suspension of violence from one of the most powerful Shia militias will end as soon as it becomes practical to do so.
What is missed here in Lynch's assessment is the "Basra effect", where the Shia militias and criminal gangs have all but taken over Basra and is not being dealt with by the occupation troops. Lynch can no longer push this off on Britian, since they are gone. Basra, in fact, may very well turn out to be post-surge model for Iraq - not a case of bombings and ethnic cleansing, but of militia rule and fearful chaos.
But this, as Lynch says "is really a government of Iraq issue". We could have said that four years ago, and the result would probably have ended up the same. The surge was supposed to have allowed the Iraqi government to take over control of all of the provinces by November. Now it's a "ready or not, here it comes" proposition, and the country is a shambles. The newly-promised cuts in rations surely won't help things, either. The surge was supposed to leave a stable Iraqi government in its wake. Instead, it will leave the same feeble government it had at its start, only with fewer bombings for the time being.
story from The Daily Star
US general in Iraq 'optimistic but realistic'
Compiled by Daily Star staff
Friday, January 04, 2008
Recent security gains that have led to a significant fall in violence in the last six months are still tenuous and could be reversed if Iraqis become disillusioned or if extremists mount a major attack, a top US commander in Iraq said Thursday. The cautionary statement came as violence flared across the nation, following a string of New Year attacks.
Violence has fallen by 60 percent since June, according to US military figures, and the government has been sounding upbeat. The country is notably calmer than it was at the same time last year, when there were fears Iraq was heading to all-out civil war.
"I'm very optimistic, but at the same time I'm very realistic. We have a tenuous security situation right now," Major General Rick Lynch, the commander of US forces south of Baghdad, said.
Extremists still carry out dozens of attacks each week.
Car bombs, suicide bombings, mortar attacks and kidnappings kill civilians and security forces alike, and Al-Qaeda in Iraq is still dominant in certain areas.
"The enemy's still out there," Lynch said during a visit to Salman Pak, a town about 25 kilometers southeast of Baghdad in a region known as the "Triangle of Death" where Al-Qaeda is still active. "My concern is when people begin to use words like defeat. We haven't defeated the enemy; we clearly have the enemy on the run. The main focus right now is Al-Qaeda."
The reduction of violence has been attributed to a combination of 30,000 extra US troops, a six-month cease-fire declared in August by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the work of predominantly Sunni tribal groups backed by the US military. The groups - more than 70,000-strong and growing fast - began turning against Al-Qaeda in Iraq in mid-2007.
Attacks in Lynch's area have fallen from about 25 a day before the summer to about six each day now, he said.
"But it is tenuous at best," he said. "On any given day, the security situation could go backward by some catastrophic attack, or by the local population not seeing continuing forward progress. So we just have to be sensitive about that. We have to focus on governance."
One of the issues is what will happen to the armed US-backed Sunni groups, which the military has dubbed Concerned Local Citizens, once security is restored to a point where they are no longer needed. The government has said it will integrate about a third of them into the mostly Shiite security forces.
"The other two-thirds we have to find productive work for," Lynch said.
The US has said that Iraq is matching the $155 million it has set aside to create jobs and provide vocational training for the fighters.
"This is really a government of Iraq issue," Lynch said. "They've got to think about 'how do we take all these productive citizens and compensate them for the work that they're doing?'"
Failure to provide useful employment for the fighters could lead them straight back into the insurgency, he warned.
"If indeed a concerned citizen is getting paid today and he's not getting paid tomorrow, there's a tendency of going back to doing bad things," the general said. "And I don't want that to happen."
The Shiite-run government shares these concerns and while acknowledging the work of the groups, it has been reticent to fully legitimize them.
A number of people were killed in a series of attacks in Iraq Thursday.
One attack targeted a local member of the prime minister's party, police said.
There were also reports that six Iraqi Army soldiers were killed and two were wounded while conducting joint operations with US forces against Al-Qaeda in Iraq in the village of Abu Nakhal, about 80 kilometers north of Baghdad.
The US military said it was looking into the report.
In the other incidents, three people were killed and 11 injured when a bomb planted at the house of a local member of the Dawa Party detonated at dawn in a Shiite-dominated area of southeastern Baghdad, a police official said on condition of anonymity.
The party member, who police did not name, was not at home when the bomb exploded, but a 13-year-old boy and a woman who was in a house next door were among those killed.
Additionally, three Iraqi civilians were killed by US military fire in two incidents on Thursday in the province of Diyala, one of the most dangerous regions in the country, Iraqi security officials said.
Two people died in the town of Al-Ghalibiyah, just west of the provincial capital Baquba, when a US patrol shot up their vehicle as it entered the main street from a side road while the convoy was passing, Iraqi Major Ziad al-Ani told reporters.
"It was in coincidence. The passing US military convoy thought the car was a hostile target and opened fire," said Ani.
In the other incident, US forces killed a civilian near a gas factory in the center of Baquba, said police Captain Muhannad al-Bawi, without giving further details. The US military said it was investigating the reports. - Agencies
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