So, what are we really talking about here? A change in military strategy or a change in the entire IRAQ STRATEGY (as in, Bush actually wanting to take the US mlitary out of Iraq)? Actually, I have difficulty seeing either in the news that I monitor. The US government and CentCom are staying the course as if their very reason for being was predicated on permanent occupation of Iraq. They are as desperate to succeed, in their own ways, as the Kurds or the Allawis or Chalabis.
1. The Occupation always had multiple strategies on who could be armed or re-armed. First, the Kurdish militias never disarmed and were largely armed by the US in the first place.
2. Second, there were reports that the Kurds showed up in action with the US military in places like Fallujah as part of an 'Iraqi Army' (which, if you remember, was first identified in the first year of Occupation as the 'Iraqi National Guard'). The Kurdish troops acted as forward spotters for US airstrikes and they were the ones sent into mosques first. Also, I doubt if the Shia Badr Brigades ever disarmed either. And the military loss that the Sadrist Mehdi Army suffered last year was perhaps the difficulty of having to withstand both heavy bombardment from the US military as well as street battles with the Badr troops (coverage of the US-Sadr conflict and the US military operations against the Mehdi Army in places like Najaf, Kerbala and Sadr City were even spottier than the decimation of Fallujah).
3. Third, when the US picked Allawi to be the first ex-Baathist (though Shia, secular Shia) strongman I felt this was a sure sign that the 'Iraqi government' would be involved heavily in 'black ops' against the Resistance.
4. The US plan is to keep Iraq broken up so there can be no unity against their Occupation. The US plan is to set up permanent bases in Iraq, just as they have bases in Germany or Japan--and now Afghanistan. Iraq was supposed to be a good candidate for permanent occupation because with all that oil it should be able to pay for its own occupation.
It seems the majority of secular Kurds (there are fundamentalists too) have long been for a breakup of Iraq in their favour--which is what put them in conflict with the centre to begin with. The effectiveness of using Kurdish militias seems limited because , well, they haven't been very good in the field and they also are still fighting a conflict in the areas they say they control (the two largest secular factions go at it periodically, and there is the Islamic element, which hates them both).
Now for the Shia.The collaborationist elements of the Shia would seem to want to purge the Sunni out of their new Iraq, and they know that the oil fields worth controlling are in the south, not the north. However, Shia radical Moqtada Sadr and his entire movement is STRONGLY NATIONALIST and would never stand for this. The question is who now commands the most respect amongst Iraqis, Sistani or Sadr?
If the Sadrist Resistance can bring enough Shia with them and hook up solidly with the Sunni Resistance, the Occupation becomes absolutely impossible. Recent indications of Sadr acting as a mediator for some politically engaged Shia with the Sunni over the murder of clerics (and a lot of Sunni clerics have been getting murdered too) is one indication that the US's Occupation is reeling. The second indication is the increase in violence--including a lot of it quite effectively against the US military--even in the face of marshall law and combat operations to clamp down on the Resistance, even in the area the Occupation is supposed to control the best, that is Baghdad.
I see nothing new in the strategies expressed or evinced by the Occupation. They have always been the source of the most violence. They have always used militias and para-militaries in their operations in occupied Iraq. They have always pursued policies and actions designed to tear Iraq apart--indeed, if they didn't, their Occupation would be facing a worse debacle than the one now. If Americans want to see their troops go home, it will be because Sadr succeeds in uniting with the Sunni Resistance and destroying even more of the US military's ability to operate and occupy.
Fugazy
-- _______________________________________________ NEW! Lycos Dating Search. The only place to search multiple dating sites at once. http://datingsearch.lycos.com