Surging into the storm

After last evening’s address by President George Bush, I suspect this morning’s airwaves and papers will take up in force his proposed decision to increase temporarily US troops in Iraq by about 20,000, bringing the total to around 160,000. Many journalists and commentators, no doubt, will dismiss the surge out of hand, citing the overwhelming number of military folk who are on record as saying, in effect, the surge will not alter the military reality on the ground.

The soldiers are probably right, and after all, they should know a thing or two about the realities we face in Iraq, but even in wartime, a soldier’s perspective is not the only one that counts, and if that’s true, I am left to ponder whether there might be other explanations for this surge, explanations other than mere presidential obstinacy. I am left with only one.

There may be a short-term diplomatic advantage that the surge will bestow to us, for the message being sent diplomatically by the surge is that the US isn’t going anywhere anytime soon in Iraq. In the best of all worlds—not that we’ve had the best of all worlds for quite some time—this message could set in motion a favorable course of political events around and in Iraq that might make the Iraqi government’s job a little easier.

On its face, the message Mr. Bush intends to send will placate the Saudis foremost, who are terrified that an Iraq absent the Americans will in effect consign the country to Iranian domination, a notion the Saudis truly despise. However, in order for the US message to yield benefits more tangible than cooler Saudi tempers, we must hope that, in exchange for the US troop presence, the Saudis will begin playing a more constructive role in the process of rebuilding Iraq. Foremost, they might begin by being more assertive in staunching the flow of men, money, and materiel to the Sunni insurgency. It is a matter of some debate how much aid Iraqi Sunnis derive from Saudi Arabia, and by itself, a more assertive Saudi Arabia might not matter much at the end of the day, but it’s a start.

For the Saudis, the difficulty here is placing trust in a US effort that has been to date mismanaged and ineffective. The Sunni insurgency is a major headache for the US, but for the Saudis, it serves as an insurance policy—it insures that, if the US leaves in failure, the Saudis will still have a lever to pull in Iraq that might cancel out Iranian influence there. If the Saudis truly believed that the US will succeed, there would be no reason to look the other way as funds and weapons get channeled to the insurgents. As is it, I believe Saudi confidence on this point is quite low; maybe, just maybe, the surge will do enough to raise that confidence level to the point at which the Saudis feel comfortable shutting down the pipeline of aid to the insurgents, as well as stomaching the inevitable Shiite domination of Iraq (and as long as Iraqi Shiites don't become mere Iranian proxies).

But the Sunni insurgency is only one piece of the puzzle in Iraq. The Shiites are far from united, and the Americans desperately need larger numbers of Shiites to throw their unequivocal support behind the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. I’m afraid more US troops, by itself, will not accomplish this.

One might be tempted to ask at this point, “Why does the US not simply throw its support to one of the Shiite factions and make a deal with them?”

A very good question, but the obvious response is “Which group?” Unfortunately for the US, the most trustworthy group of Shiites is the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), unfortunate because it is also the Shiite faction most closely aligned with Iranian interests. The other major faction, the followers of the virulently anti-American Moqtada al-Sadr, simply cannot be trusted on two different levels. First, Sadr’s dislike of the US—and his unstable personality—make him a poor choice with whom to create an alliance of convenience. Second, Sadr might not have full control of his own supporters, including the Mahdi Army, a several-thousand strong militia under his nominal control. There is a third faction, the Hizb al-Dawah (HD), which is quite influential in its own right (Maliki himself is a member). HD tends to track more closely with SCIRI’s policies and stances. Together, HD and SCIRI account for about 50 of the 275 seats in the Iraqi National Assembly. Aside from these three factions, there are numerous smaller factions of Shiites around the country. My working assumption regarding the Shiites is that, so long as the Americans hedge and play one group off of the other, no Shiite faction will yield to the national government or break up its militias. Those militias lie at the heart of the problem, but they also guarantee each faction a place at the table, so ultimately, the solution must begin with building trust, if not between the Iraqis themselves, then between the US government and one or several of the factions vying for power.

If there is any blueprint that will get us to a workable resolution to this mess, I don’t believe the troop surge will be a major factor in it beyond the modest diplomatic cards it gives us to play and which I outlined above. My sense is that getting to a solution will involve two things happening, more or less simultaneously. First, the Sunni insurgency dies or is crushed. Can this happen? I really don’t know, but choking the insurgency of its oxygen via the outside and then dealing it crippling defeats on the inside might produce the desired results. Second, the US must once and for all find a Shiite faction or factions to incorporate into the Iraqi government. If this requires a government of a less democratic nature, then so be it. The reason this is so important is that we need one or several of the large Shiite militias to in effect join the national security apparatus, both as soldiers and policemen. The only viable alternative in this regard is to cut a deal with SCIRI and HD and hope like hell that they’re willing to turn mercilessly on their Sadrist coreligionists. We would also need uncommitted and independent Shiites to side with SCIRI and HD as well. If these two things happen within a time frame of reasonable duration, then we can say the surge was worth it; if we’re still dancing the same jig a year from now, dreaming up hypotheticals and such, then the surge will be George Bush’s final failure in Iraq.