Power Surge

The press often takes heat—not unfairly—for only reporting the “bad news” out of Iraq and Afghanistan. But sometimes the bad news just so happens to be the most important news of the day. Check out this morning’s front-page Washington Post piece about problems in the Awakening movement in Iraq—a mostly Sunni security effort that has put 80,000 Iraqi men on the American payroll, and which has cost the American taxpayer about $123 million so far, according to the Multinational Force-Iraq command. 

The program has undoubtedly produced results. Violence in the country is way down now that Iraqis have stepped up to staff checkpoints in their own areas, and some of the same guys who were planting IEDs a year ago are now turning in caches of weapons and explosives. That’s the good news. The bad news, however, is that some of these groups, organized by the Americans and recognized the Iraqi government, seem to have read some of their own press clippings, and are flexing their political muscle. The Post:

U.S.-backed Sunni volunteer forces, which have played a vital role in reducing violence in Iraq, are increasingly frustrated with the American military and the Iraqi government over what they see as a lack of recognition of their growing political clout and insufficient U.S. support.

…The U.S. military acknowledges that it is caught in the middle of a political struggle. “Yes, they are frustrated,” said Lt. Col. Ricardo Love, commander of the 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment, who works in Baqubah, the provincial capital. “They think we can make the government of Iraq do anything. We tell them we don't control the government. But they think we are the mighty power.”

This doesn’t mean that the program of paying locals to secure their own areas is necessarily headed for failure, just that without a central government that can provide services for its people, and which has legitimacy in the eyes of the population, power is going to start taking shape at the local level. The Sunnis who comprise the vast majority of these Awakening groups have little faith in the Shia-led government in Baghdad, and trust it even less. One prospective Awakening group leader I met who was trying to get a contract with the Army "joked" to the American commander that he wanted security in his region so his men could join the Army and police and “overthrow the Maliki government.” Everyone laughed at his joke, but I wasn’t so sure he was kidding.

Comments

[David M]

The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front News and Personal dispatches from the front lines.
http://thunderrun.blogspot.com/2008/02/from-front.html