Played Like a Fiddle? For Iraqi Insurgents, 'Surge' Appears to be Working

By Gareth Porter, IPS News. Posted March 12, 2008.

For months, U.S. President George W. Bush and Gen. David Petraeus have been touting the program of recruiting tens of thousands of Sunnis into U.S.-financed "Awakening Councils" as a master stroke of Iraq strategy which has weakened al Qaeda in Iraq and helps reduce sectarian conflict through "bottom up reconciliation."

But the mainstream Sunni insurgents who have been fighting al Qaeda appear to have outmaneuvered U.S. strategists by using Awakening Councils to pursue their interests in weakening their most immediate enemy, reducing pressures from the U.S. military and establishing new political bases, while continuing to mount attacks on U.S. and Iraqi government forces.

The biggest question surrounding the strategy from the beginning was whether it the Awakening Councils -- called "Sahwa" in Arabic -- would be a haven for Sunni insurgents.

High-ranking U.S. officers issued public assurances last year that former insurgents would not be allowed to enter the program, but last month, Iraqi government officials, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, began raising the specter of "infiltration" of the Awakening groups by al Qaeda or "Baathists." Those are terms which have often been used by Shiite leaders to refer to the mainstream Sunni insurgents.

The U.S. command responded by denying that they have been infiltrated systematically by either al Qaeda or other "extremists". At a Feb. 17 press briefing, Rear Adm. Gregory Smith admitted that individual extremists may have infiltrated some units, but rejected the idea that any "complete unit" of the Awakening had gone "bad."

Nevertheless, by the end of 2007 it had become clear the Sahwa were dominated in many places by the Sunni insurgent groups, and U.S. specialists were openly acknowledging it. The 1920 Revolution Brigades, a major Sunni armed resistance organization, is the primary element in the Sahwa in Diyala Province as well as in parts of Anbar Province. One commander of the Brigades, Abu Marouf, brought 13,000 of his fighters into the Sahwa in Anbar. His background as an insurgent commander is well-known locally but has never been acknowledged by U.S. officials.

Meanwhile, the 1920 Revolution Brigades also continues to wage war against U.S. forces. In March 2007, it announced the creation of two separate military "corps," one of which, the "Iraqi Hamas," was clearly intended to continue military operations against the U.S. military in Diyala and other Sunni provinces.

The 1920 Revolution Brigades did not join a new "political council of the Iraqi resistance" formed in October to unify the Sunni armed organizations fighting the U.S. occupation -- at least in its own name. But the Iraqi Hamas "wing" of the organization, which continues to be affiliated with the parent organization, did join the new council.

The de facto security force in Amiriya district of Baghdad is under the command of Abu Abed, a former Iraqi army captain who led a unit of another major resistance organization, the Islamic Army of Iraq (IAI). He claims that the local Sahwa is drawn from both IAI and the 1920 Revolution Brigades. The IAI has distanced itself from Abu Abed, at least publicly, but that move should be understood in light of the great reluctance of Sunni armed organizations to admit that they are cooperating overtly with institutions associated with the United States.

A recent incident in which U.S. troops killed or detained members of the Sahwa during operations against insurgents suggested that the line separating the Sunni insurgents targeted by the U.S. military and the Sunnis working with the U.S. military was nonexistent.

On Feb. 13, U.S. forces carried out an attack on an insurgent target west of Kirkuk, killing six insurgents and detaining 15. But members of the local Awakening Council complained that the six people killed and some of those detained were members of the Sahwa.

See more stories tagged with: iraq, surge, sunni insurgency

Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

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