The Doctor Is In

By Cernig

Well worth a read today, Dr iRack at Abu Muqawama on proclamations of final corners turned from over-confident US supporters and from Maliki: "Defeated...Or laying Low?"

most of the AQI guys hanging out in Mosul squirted out before the offensive began, and may be reconstituting elsewhere. Still, Dr. iRack thinks there might be reason to think that AQI is on its last legs. Across Iraq, the Sunni community appears to have turned decisively against them. And, of course, the Shia and the Kurds hate them too, and U.S. forces hunt them throughout the land. In short, they being relentlessly pursued and have fewer sanctuaries by the day.

But JAM is a different story. JAM has not been defeated. JAMsters and special groups in Basra faded away (some probably hopped over the border to Iran). And, in Sadr City, Sadr's followers are laying low but are pissed about it, and may be itching to resume the fight.

...It is also important to remember that JAM is not a foreign body like AQI. No, JAM is deeply woven into Shia communities in Sadr City and throughout southern Iraq (and mainstream JAM has been fully engaged in this fight). So the real issue is not victory or defeat against JAM, but which way the movement is leaning. Here, the ceasefires in Basra and Sadr City reveal that (1) Sadr and centrists within his movement probably prefer staying inside politics rather than engaging in all-out confrontation; and (2) that Iran has at least temporarily taken sides with Maliki et al. against Sadr, weakening Sadr's hand.

But there is a real danger that Maliki will fall prey to his new found (over)confidence and push the Sadrist movement into a corner.

The doctor's commenters are always worth reading and considering too.

But there's one thing I'd have liked to see Dr iRack consider - Iraqi government statements have claimed there were 2,000 AQI people in Mosul, and they've arrested over 1,000. Sunni sources are claiming that, far from rounding up over half of all the AQI folk in town, the Iraqi Army just rounded up vocal Sunni dissidents against Shiite Maliki's goverment - including some prominent people connected to the Awakening movement. The AQI people, as the doctor writes, largely escaped this long-telegraphed push.

So what's going to happen with the indigenous Sunni resistance and it's Awakening cousins? They, like JAM and the Sadrist Movement, aren't going to disappear and have the potential to make Maliki's life very uncomfortable. Now, they too are pissed.

I'm reminded of analyst Mark M. Lowenthal's notes on the Feb. 2007 Iraq NIE. That NIE stated that the bad blood between various factions had become self-sustaining and Lowenthal noted the NIE was effectively saying the situation was worse than civil war - it was near to total anarchy. Despite the Surge's and Iraqi Army's apparent successes in matters military, I really don't see that the underlying political dynamic has changed any since then.