Constitution Club

Thanks to pgwarner’s excellent link to BLACKFIVE, I’ve been getting lots of different reality-based perspectives on the war. One article they linked to today from a site called Small Wars Journal was particularly interesting.

Some aspects of the war in Iraq are hard to fit into “classical” models of insurgency. One of these is the growing tribal uprising against al Qa’ida, which could transform the war in ways not factored into neat “benchmarks” developed many months ago and thousands of miles away.

. . . .

Several major tribes are now “up” against AQ, across all of Anbar, Diyala, Salah-ad-din, parts of Babil and Baghdad (both city and province). Some in Anbar and Diyala have formed “Salvation Councils”, looking to well-known leadership figures like Sheikh Sittar ar Rishawi, or to community leaders. In other provinces things tend to be quite informal, based on local elders. In Anbar the movement has acquired the name “the awakening”.

The uprising against AQI has dramatically improved security. In Ramadi, Hit, Tikrit, Fallujah and other centers the rate of civilian deaths has dropped precipitously, and overall attacks are down far below historic trends, to almost nothing in some places. For anyone familiar with these places from earlier in the war, it can be quite disorienting to watch Iraqis walking safely and openly in streets which, a year ago, would have required a major operation just to traverse. This change seems to have passed some observers by, but it is one of the truly significant developments in Iraq this year.
. . . .
The locals have formed a neighborhood watch, are policing their own community, and are enrolling in the Iraqi police under government control and cooperating with local Iraqi Army units. And recently Shi’a tribes in the south have approached us, looking to cooperate with the government against Shi’a extremists.Of course, this is motivated primarily by self-interest. Tribal leaders realize the extremists were leading them on a path to destruction, and have seized the opportunity to dump the terrorists and come in from the cold. They are also, naturally, looking forward to the day when coalition forces are no longer in their districts, and want to ensure that they, nor AQI, are in charge once we leave. And many of the tribal leaders have realized for themselves what our Army, Marines and Special Forces commanders have been telling them for years: “If you don’t like having us around, and you want us to get off your backs, the solution is staring you in the face: just get rid of the extremists, reduce the violence and cooperate with the government to stabilize your area, and we’re out of here”.

I’m aware that you’ve been saying this since I first visited the site, but this is one of the first articles I’ve seen that seemed truly unbiased. No offense intended, of course, just that for someone who only looks at the benchmarks and the statistics, it’s eye-opening and informative to see a detailed analysis of exactly what that means and how things could be improving without any statistics to back that up. If true, this would be promising.

Of course, none of this may actually show the results needed to stop the cycle. The article itself freely admits it could easily go either way. Sectarian violence may spread anew, the tribes may begin to grow more and more insular, and there’s no guarantee they won’t come to blame the United States for its handling of the war in the long run. Just like in Vietnam, there’s no guarantee that once we leave, the same problems won’t crop up again (like in Afghanistan). But I’m going on record now as saying that I may have to eat my words.

But before you get too smug…

The other implication is that, to be perfectly honest, the pattern we are seeing runs somewhat counter to what we expected in the ’surge’, and therefore lies well outside the ‘benchmarks’. The original concept was that we (the Coalition and the Iraqi government) would create security, which would in turn create space for a ‘grand bargain’ at the national level. Instead, we are seeing the exact opposite: a series of local political deals has displaced extremists, resulting in a major improvement in security at the local level, and the national government is jumping on board with the program. Instead of coalition-led top-down reconciliation, this is Iraqi-led, bottom-up, based on civil society rather than national politics. And oddly enough, it seems to be working so far.

It seems like the impetus for this change has been a reaction to the surge, not necessarily a reaction to what the surge has done. The surge was probably unnecessary, and what was really accomplished was done through diplomatic relationships with the community, building trust, bolstering the national defense, keeping peace. Exactly the kind of things Democrats said that they should be focusing more energy on all along. Maybe if we’d taken this approach a few years ago, we wouldn’t have gone through this whole nightmare, or would at least have started moving forward more quickly.