Under the terms of the handover, agreed with Baghdad, US Special Forces have freedom of action while operations by regular US units have to be approved by the Iraqi Defence Ministry. The number of Iraqi security forces in Anbar, the heartland of the fading Sunni insurgency, stands at 47,000. But the 23,000 police and 24,000 soldiers are hardly enough to maintain order in this vast province. Furthermore, it is doubtful that the Shiite-run government and armed forces can work with locally recruited Sunni police units or US-armed and financed Sunni tribal “Awakening Councils” or “Sons of Iraq”, tribal formations of former members of the anti-occupation resistance. These formations, which drained the insurgency, have been largely responsible for defeating Al Qaeda in the province.
Due to the government’s negative attitude, the US postponed three times Anbar’s transfer, fearing clashes between Sunni tribesmen and Shiite security bodies, which are staffed and commanded by elements of the Badr Corps militia formed, trained, armed and financed by Tehran.
Badr Corps elements are deeply mistrusted by Sunnis because those integrated in the armed forces and police formed death squads and targeted Sunnis.
Washington came under strong pressure from the government to effect the handover, since the US claims the province is one of the least violent in the country, thanks to the cooperation between the US military and the “Awakening Councils.” The number of attacks on US and Iraqi forces in Anbar, which account for one-quarter of US fatalities, has fallen to 8-10 a week since the councils took to the field in early 2007.
According to Al Hayat, the US command will not transfer security to the Iraqi government in six communally mixed provinces until after the US elections. These provinces are Salahuddin, Mosul, Baghdad, Diyala, Kirkuk and Hilla.
The test of the government’s intentions towards Sunnis will come on October 1, when Baghdad is set to begin paying the salaries of the 54,000 “Awakening Council” members in and around the capital. This is seen by the US as a step towards regularising the status of the councils, whose members are paid $300 a month, about half the amount received by soldiers in the regular army. There is, however, no commitment to pay the rest of the council fighters and Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said recently that all militias must be disarmed and dissolved, challenging the arrangement made by the US military with Sunni tribesmen in the councils.
Although he pledged to recruit 20 per cent of the 100,000 council members into Iraq’s security forces and civil administration, Maliki has reneged on this commitment. He, instead, ordered the arrest of some 650 officers and members of the councils. Their chiefs, who have formed new political groupings, also complain that government reconstruction funds are not flowing into Anbar. They reject the bid for leadership by the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), which belongs to a bloc with 44 seats in parliament and several ministers in the government.
The party fears that political groupings created by the councils will defeat the IIP in provincial and parliamentary elections promised for next year. Maliki is determined that this will not happen.
Analysts believe that Maliki’s refusal to come to terms with the “Awakening Councils” stems from his determination to maintain some independence from the US and unwarranted “overconfidence” in the ability of Iraqi forces to maintain security and impose order. He has always opposed the US effort, proposed and carried out by former US commander, General David Petraeus, to recruit and arm Sunni tribesmen, particularly those who had been in the resistance or the old Iraqi army.
Maliki has counted on magicians in Tehran to pull rabbits out of the hat on his behalf. It was Iran which ended the challenge to Maliki’s authority, mounted by the Mehdi Army militia loyal to dissident Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, the main rival of Maliki’s Dawa party and his coalition partner, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), parent organisation of the Badr Corps. Iran’s aim is to secure the staged withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq and ensure that Tehran’s allies, Maliki, Dawa, and the SIIC retain power. Maliki can be expected to counter any US attempt, through the projected status of forces agreement or any other long-term instrument, to keep its troops in Iraq beyond 2011 or to establish permanent military bases there.
Maliki always seems to have been Tehran’s man in the US fortified Green Zone. According to McClatchy newspaper reports, he emerged as the choice of the Shiite coalition dubbed the “United Iraqi Alliance” as a result of mediation by General Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Suleimani, apparently, secretly entered the Green Zone in Baghdad as the competition sharpened between Maliki and SIIC’s nominee, Adil Abdel Mahdi. Ironically, Maliki won because he had the support of the Sadrists, whom he has marginalised.
Maliki may also have the current backing of the mullahs in Tehran because he strongly opposes the federalist elements in the SIIC who seek to create a super-Shiite autonomous region of nine provinces in the south, modelled on the three-province Kurdish region in the north. Tehran may calculate that it is better to control the whole of Iraq through Maliki and his associates than a contested Shiite region in the south. But to achieve this end, Iran needs to press Maliki to come to terms with the Sunnis in Anbar, Diyala, Salahuddin, Baghdad and Ninevah. If there is to be peace in Iraq, Sunnis with popular credibility must be brought into the ruling circle.
* Published in JORDAN TIMES on September 4, 2008. |
