April 24, 2009 The National (Abu Dhabi)
http://thenational.ae/article/20090424/REVIEW/704239996/1008
The big sleep By Nir Rosen
The Sunni militiamen of the Awakening movement have outlived their
usefulness to American forces and the Iraqi government. Some worry
these unemployed fighters will relaunch the insurgency they left behind
but they don't stand a chance. Nir Rosen reports.
On March 28, clashes erupted in Baghdads Fadhil district after Iraqi
troops arrested the leader of the local Awakening Council, Adil al
Mashhadani, one of many former Sunni insurgents who had allied with
American forces in the fight against al Qaeda-inspired Salafi militants
in Iraq. Mashhadanis men staged a two-day uprising, which was put down
by Iraqis with considerable help from American troops fighting against
their former allies.
In Baghdad Mashhadani was a notorious figure, one of many Awakenings
men suspected of serious crimes before he went on the American payroll
and of continuing them afterwards. I had heard complaints about him
since 2007 from Shiites, and especially from supporters of Muqtada al
Sadr, who were outraged that a man they accused of the indiscriminate
slaughter of Shiite civilians had been empowered by the Americans. An
American intelligence officer in Washington told me that the US had
possessed incriminating information on Mashhadani for several years but
that he had been one of the first insurgents to see which way the wind
was blowing and sign on with the Americans.
Mashhadanis men and their allies complained that the Americans had
betrayed them, and threatened to renew their insurgency unless their
leader was released; the clashes in Fadhil provoked new speculation
that the failure to integrate the Awakenings into the Iraqi security
forces would lead to renewed sectarian strife, if not a return to
full-scale civil war. But the brief uprising was quickly put down, and
Mashhadanis arrest demonstrated quite clearly that the civil war is
over: there is no organised force in Iraq today capable of challenging,
or attempting to overthrow, the government of Prime Minister Nouri al
Maliki.
In early April, Maliki appeared on Iraqi state television to say that
the fighting in Fadhil was not against the Awakening but against
remnants of the outlawed Baath Party: what happened in Fadhil, he said,
was a message to other Awakening leaders in contact with the Baath
Party that they would be next. The Awakening, Maliki said, was over,
and its men would now serve the state or hang up their guns.
The arrest of Mashhadani and other Awakening leaders and Malikis
remarks would seem to mark the beginning of the end for what was a
controversial and potentially dangerous component of the American
strategy in Iraq, the creation and funding of Sunni militias outside
the authority of the state. By 2005 there was no doubt that Iraqs
Sunnis and Shiites were engaged in a bloody civil war, and the
increasingly aggressive, Shiite-dominated Iraqi Security Forces began
to punish Sunni civilians for attacks conducted by al Qaeda and other
Sunni radicals against Shiites. The bombing of a Shiite shrine in
Samarra in February 2006 triggered a wave of retaliatory violence and
escalated attacks by Shiite militias like the Mahdi Army and the Badr
Brigade, who served as the storm troopers of the increasingly powerful
Shiite bloc. They effectively depopulated Baghdad of its Sunnis, who
fled to Jordan, Syria or Anbar province. When I met with Sunni
resistance leaders in Amman and Damascus in 2006, they openly admitted
defeat.
The cleansing of Sunnis from much of Baghdad deprived Sunni insurgents
of sanctuary among the population as they were losing battles with al
Qaeda, the Americans and Shiite militias. The Shiite bloc had numerical
superiority, backed by the force of the Iraqi state and its security
forces. And so, one by one, groups of Sunni resistance fighters struck
ceasefire agreements with the Americans and joined the fight against al
Qaeda and other radical elements.
The surge of American forces allowed Maliki to strengthen the authority
of the state and its security forces, while the establishment of the
Awakening groups neutralised anti-government Sunni militias (in some
cases simply by paying them salaries not to fight the state). The
decline in sectarian violence gave Maliki space to weaken competing
Shiite militias, who had been integral to cleansing Sunnis from mixed
areas and establishing Shiite dominance but whose presence prevented
his fully consolidating control.
The prevailing order in Iraq today is a Shiite-dominated one, but the
balance of power is not divided along exclusively sectarian lines: it
is between those close to the state and those without its backing as
some wags put it, between the powers that be and the powers that arent.
Maliki has pursued a divide-and-conquer strategy among Sunnis,
rewarding some local leaders with prestige and privileges while
arresting or crushing others. Many Sunnis are more than willing to
accept an authoritarian prime minister in exchange for a reduction in
violence.
What has not followed the drop in violence is a political settlement:
for the past year analysts have worried that the failure to disarm or
integrate the Sunni Awakening groups into the state risked sowing the
seeds of a new insurgency. But the tepid response to the arrest of
Mashhadani and other Awakening men suggests that a political
reconciliation may not have been necessary. The burgeoning Iraqi state,
embodied by Maliki himself, can simply continue to expand its power and
crush any rivals. One US Army Iraq expert, who worked closely with
General David Petraeus to plan and implement the surge, told me in 2008
that the civil war would end when the Shiites realised they had won and
the Sunnis realised they had lost. Based on the conversations I had
during a trip through Iraq last month, both sides seem to accept that
this is the case.
In September 2008 Maliki in a concession to the Americans issued an
order calling for the integration of 20 per cent of the eligible
Awakening men into the ministries of defence and interior. The
following month the government of Iraq began to assume responsibility
(financial and otherwise) over the Awakening groups. But as of today
less than five per cent have joined the Iraqi Security Forces. At the
same time, senior Awakening leaders and many of their men have been
arrested, while others have been relieved of their duties (and their
pay) and told to go home. It is a quiet and slow process, but one that
continues to emasculate one of the last groups that rivalled the
authority of the Iraqi state.
There is nothing the Awakening groups can do. As guerrillas and
insurgents they were only effective when they operated covertly,
underground, blending in among a Sunni population that has now mostly
been dispersed. Now the former resistance fighters-turned-paid guards
are publicly known, and their names, addresses and biometric data are
in the hands of American and Iraqi forces. They cannot return to an
underground that has been cleared, and they still face the wrath of
radical Sunnis who view them as traitors. They have failed to unite and
as their stories demonstrate, they are on the run.
<end excerpt>
Full (and the rest of the article is top-notch) is at:
http://thenational.ae/article/20090424/REVIEW/704239996/1008
Michael