I don't do day-to-day updates on Iraq, but today's news is so bad that it cannot be ignored.
First comes news of an assassination in Anbar province. Abu Risha, the man most closely identified with the new US strategy in the province, is now dead. Gen. Petraeus immediately framed it as the work of al Qaeda, and the US media has dutifully followed, but as Mark Lynch points out, there's no reason to necessarily believe this is the case:
I'd guess that one of the nationalist insurgency groups, the ones which current American rhetoric pretends don't exist - is a more likely suspect. Other tribes deeply resented him. The major nationalist insurgency groups had recently issued a series of statements denouncing people who would illegitimately seize the fruits of their victorious jihad - of whom he was the prime example. All those photographs which swamped the Arab media showing him shaking hands with President Bush made him even more a marked man than before.
His murder graphically demonstrates that the other groups threatened by the American Anbar strategy were never going to just sit back passively and allow it to succeed - an obvious strategic point which has always seemed to elude surge advocates. The Sunni strategy as presented by surge advocates has always rested not only on a whole series of dubious claims about Iraqi Sunni politics, but also relies on a whole series of best-case scenarios in which nothing could go wrong. In Iraq, something always goes wrong.
I remember seeing those photographs with Bush and wondering what on earth the administration was thinking. What with all their "the enemy is watching and listening very carefully, so we must never announce we're leaving lest they decide to wait us out" nonsense, you would think it would have occurred to them that a photo op with the president might not be such a good idea. I mean, sure, if you believe that all Sunnis are united behind this one man, then maybe such a picture is fine. But if you are even remotely aware of how tribal politics works in the Middle East, you had to know that wasn't the case. You had to know that there were divisions among the Sunnis, and that such divisions had already turned violent. And yes, you had to know, because that's the entire premise of the Anbar success story - Sunni locals have united to fight Sunni extremists!
Here's the thing: alliances in tribal politics are always momentary. The enemy of your enemy is your friend, but only so long as that is convenient for you. But inconvenience doesn't arrive with victory over your enemy; it almost always arrives before. Once leaders see that their alliance is likely to be successful, infighting usually begins in earnest. With the enemy almost out of the way, attention turns to who will lead after the conflict has run its course.
Again, this is something we knew. Go look at what happened in Afghanistan once the Soviets left, for example, and this is exactly what you'll discover. The alliances that formed to oppose the Soviets were already fraying well before the Soviets left, and once the withdrawal was complete, a full blown civil war was the result. And given the fact that this is how the Taliban came to power, I know this is a lesson that the foreign policy community knows.
So the question is: will this lead to a breakdown in the alliance among the Sunni tribes in Anbar? My answer is that I suspect this is a sign that it already has. And if it hadn't before, it almost certainly will now.
As if that's not all depressing enough, there's also this:
A carefully constructed compromise on a draft law governing Iraq’s rich oil fields, agreed to in February after months of arduous talks among Iraqi political groups, appears to have collapsed. The apparent breakdown comes just as Congress and the White House are struggling to find evidence that there is progress toward reconciliation and a functioning government here.
Senior Iraqi negotiators met in Baghdad on Wednesday in an attempt to salvage the original compromise, two participants said. But the meeting came against the backdrop of a public series of increasingly strident disagreements over the draft law that had broken out in recent days between Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi oil minister, and officials of the provincial government in the Kurdish north, where some of the nation’s largest fields are located.Mr. Shahristani, a senior member of the Arab Shiite coalition that controls the federal government, negotiated the compromise with leaders of the Kurdish and Arab Sunni parties. But since then, the Kurds have pressed forward with a regional version of the law that Mr. Shahristani says is illegal. Many of the Sunnis who supported the original deal have also pulled out in recent months.
The oil law — which would govern how oil fields are developed and managed — is one of several benchmarks that the Bush administration has been pressing the Iraqis to meet as a sign that they are making headway toward creating an effective government.
As Josh Marshall points out, this ties directly in to a story that ran last week:
The story though connects up with another one we told you about just a couple days ago -- the decision of the Kurdistan regional government to sign an oil exploration deal with Dallas-based Hunt Oil, run by Mr. Ray L. Hunt.
The Shia and Sunni leaders believe the Kurds are opting for a sort of oil secession that puts them outside the whole concept of a law to share the country's oil resources. And the Hunt deal is apparently the straw that broke the camel's back, shall we say.But remember, Hunt, in addition to being the son of legendary Texas John Birch Society extremist H.L. Hunt, is also a pal of the president's. Indeed, President Bush has twice appointed Hunt to his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. So while the president is striving to get the Iraqis to meet these benchmarks one of his own pals -- and more importantly, political appointees -- is busy helping to tear the whole thing apart.
So it looks like in the pursuit of profit, one of the president's buddies directly undermined political process in Iraq. Now to be fair, I've long expected negotiations over oil rights to break down, mostly because I suspected the issue was simply too contentious for a bunch of warring parties to agree on. What I didn't expect is that the US government would allow our private oil interests to directly interfere. Given the level of incompetence we've seen over the past 7 years I'm not entirely sure why I didn't expect it, other than perhaps it is so crazy that it hadn't even occurred to me.
Oh well.
So the "surge" is a success, but Iraq is falling further apart. I just can't wait to hear what the President has to say to the country tonight.
UPDATE: Looks like Andrew Sullivan is finally - finally! - starting to understand Middle East tribal politics.
Yes, Andrew. We are pursuing the same strategy around the same fault line that we pursued in the 1980s. That's why Saddam Hussein was our ally; he was to be a bulwark against against Iranian influence and control. Saddam was evil, but we believed we needed him to confront a greater evil that were and are the supposed Persian hordes. It was only after we deposed Hussein and unleashed chaos on the region that the people in charge remembered why we had supported him in the first place. But now he's gone, Iran's regional power is on the rise, and we're frantically searching for someone who might be able to re-impose order and take control. All while simultaneously and nonsensically promoting democracy and self-determination as our end goal.
Again, this is something people in this administration most certainly knew. We even have photographic proof.
This mission is destined to fail. We cannot permanently remake the politics and society of the Middle East using military force. An occupying army cannot create the political conditions necessary to create social peace. It cannot be done, not matter how badly we might wish otherwise. The mission was, is, and always will be folly. We need to admit that, and we need to move on.
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