January 14, 2008
As Troop Surge Recedes, Focus In Iraq Shifts To Political Arena
Cautiously confident about the troop surge's success in tamping down violence in Iraq, U.S. military leaders are shifting their focus to the political arena, the Los Angeles Times reports this morning. Specifically, commanders are working to transfer more than 70,000 men working in the Sunni guard corps, aka "Concerned Local Citizens" or Awakening Councils, to the payroll of the Shiite-dominated national government. The men, many of them former Sunni insurgents, are currently working directly under the U.S. military, helping to enforce neighborhood security.
"The day-to-day commander in Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, believes that the Iraqi government's reconciliation with onetime Sunni fighters represents the 'primary driver of enhanced security' over the next six months, according to internal military planning documents," the Times reports.
So far, however, the effort has run into some opposition among government officials wary of letting former insurgents into the fold. Specifically, they fear that the move could pave the way for a new rival army of Sunni insurgents. American commanders, on the other hand, fear that if Shiite leaders continue to resist, members of the Sunni security groups will abandon the effort and re-enter the battlefield.
The effort to integrate the citizens groups comes amid other tentative signs of progress in the long, slow process of political reconciliation among Iraq's warring factions. Over the weekend, the Iraqi Parliament passed the Justice and Accountability Law, which allows some former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to seek government jobs and claim their pensions for the first time since the 2003 U.S. invasion.
President Bush had immediate praise for the "de-Baathification" law, which the U.S. has long advocated. "It's an important step toward reconciliation, it's an important sign that the leaders of that country understand that they must work together to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people," Bush said Sunday in Bahrain. "Iraq is now a different place from one year ago. We must do all we can to ensure that 2008 will bring even greater progress."
Even as many Democratic lawmakers have conceded that Bush's strategy of boosting troop numbers in Iraq has improved security in some of the nation's most volatile areas, critics of the war point out that quelling the violence is only half the battle. The underlying goal of the surge, as stated by the president when he announced the strategy one year ago, was to provide a calmer, more peaceful environment in which Sunni and Shiite political leaders could work toward reconciliation. Thus far, those gains have been slow to come, if not entirely elusive.
The new de-Baathification law, for example, has already met with skepticism among some former Baathists, most of whom are Sunnis. "This law could be a government decoy to spot high-ranking Baathists in hiding when applying for jobs and get rid of them by gunmen," former school headmaster Shihab Hamad told AP. "My life is more precious than any job."
In an analysis this morning, the New York Times' Solomon Moore contends that "the legislation is at once confusing and controversial, a document riddled with loopholes and caveats to the point that some Sunni and Shiite officials say it could actually exclude more former Baathists than it lets back in, particularly in the crucial security ministries."
"Under that interpretation," Moore writes, "the law would be directly at odds with the American campaign to draft Sunni Arabs into so-called Awakening militias with the aim of integrating them into the police and military forces."
Despite his praise for the reduction in violence achieved by the troop surge, Bush warned on Saturday that Iraq "will require active U.S. engagement that outlasts my presidency." Speaking from Kuwait, Bush said that the current drawdown of U.S. troops may be slowed or halted to continue fighting threats from al-Qaida and other extremists.
Meanwhile, on NBC's "Meet the Press", Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton offered her own assessment of recent developments in Iraq, attributing the signs of political progress to the imminent end of the Bush presidency: "2007 was the deadliest year for American troops, and, you know, from my perspective, part of the reason that the Iraqis are doing anything is because they see this election happening and they know they don't have much time, that the blank check that George Bush gave them is about to be torn up."
Posted at 11:49 AM
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Campaigns, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Iraq, Middle East, Military, President Bush, WH 2008
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