International Crisis Group: "There Is Reason to Fear This Is Only a Temporary Salve"

WASHINGTON, May 3 (IPS) - Five years since U.S. president George W. Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech, critics say the administration has yet to show a credible way to actually "accomplish" the mission that could see a peaceful Iraq and a return home of U.S. troops.

Though the 2007 revamping of the counter-insurgency strategy, known as the "surge," has markedly reduced violence, political turmoil and ethno-sectarian strife still plague Iraq.

The U.S. surge and its concurrent positive developments did create political space, but meaningful moves towards comprehensive political accords and reconciliation have yet to follow, said a pair of new Iraq reports from the International Crisis Group (ICG).

For example, the Sunni awakening, or Sahwa movement, that helped to slow violence in much of Baghdad and Anbar province by bringing in former insurgents and incorporating them into U.S.-funded militias, for example, leaves a new Sunni political landscape.

But that landscape, with all of its advantages for bringing stability -- and thereby aiding the U.S. occupation -- has failed to transition into the politics of the Iraqi central government. Frustration with those failures creates a tense atmosphere that even U.S. officials acknowledge as being "fragile and reversible".

"Tribal elements and former insurgents may become disillusioned with lack of political progress, inadequate steps toward economic and social inclusion, and what they perceive as continued dominance by Iran and its Shiite proxies," said the first IGC report, "Iraq After the Surge I: The New Sunni Landscape".

So while the larger insurgent-U.S. battles and wider Sunni-Shia fighting have abated, the new, smaller, more subdivided groups continue to bump heads. The U.S. policy of tending to choose between these groups with either economic or military support, said the report, does not constitute meaningful steps towards political reconciliation.

The IGC report notes that the U.S. "divide-and-rule tactics" reinforce the new fault lines in society, and by benefiting only one group, create resentment among the others.

"Ultimately, stability will require that such rivalries be mediated neither through violence nor buy-off, but by functional, legitimate state institutions," said the report. That, in turn, requires the U.S. to support "a genuinely inclusive political system."

Another incident of U.S. favoritism that could lead to sharp divides and potential large-scale violence is the intra-Shia power struggle for control of southern Iraq.

Backed by U.S. airpower, an offensive by the two main power-sharing partners in the Iraqi central government, Dawa and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, in the southern strongholds of militant anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada Al Sadr was designed to cripple Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia ahead of provincial elections scheduled for this fall.

When the advance was thwarted by Sadrist fighters, the ruling Shia parties took up a piece of legislation that was aimed at scuttling Sadr's bid in the elections by making it illegal for parties with militias to participate.

Council on Foreign Relations fellow Mohammad Bazzi wrote in the Washington Times that though Sadrists and the Mahdi Army were not named in the legislation, it is clearly a misguided attempt to isolate them -- noting that other parties such as ISCI are not hampered though they, too, have militias.

"It's virtually impossible to wipe out the Sadrist trend, which is a social, political, and military movement that enjoys wide support, particularly among young and poor Shi'ites," wrote Bazzi.

"The consequences of trying to isolate Sheik al-Sadr and his political movement are profound," said Bazzi, saying that the move would end a Sadr ceasefire and drastically increase violence aimed at both the U.S. and the central Iraqi government.