Deciphering Iraq

The autumn in Baghdad has been the quietest since the coalition invasion. As a result of the troop surge implemented by General David Petraeus, the murder rate is just 10 per cent of what is was a year ago. Despite some heavy opposition, the surge is starting to achieve its aims. In retrospect, the surge was not the political gamble that many expected it to be. As the initial toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 confirmed, there is little to counter pure weight of numbers. A more troubling quandary is what happens next. A similar question was asked four years ago and the coalition's only response was a wretched, botched and bungled attempt at nation building which, because it prioritised political loyalty over knowledge and experience, was always likely to fail.*

Much of the credit for the falling level of violence in Baghdad has been attributed to a second surge, this time of Iraqi origin. The US military now pays Iraqis to provide their own security squads, dubbed 'concerned citizens' (By emphasising the importance of developing Iraqi autonomy, this policy is also a tacit admission that the CPA's disbanding of the Iraqi army in 2003 was a big mistake). On a purely statistical level, it appears the citizens are cooling down Baghdad, but through the eyes of the western media, it is very difficult to tell exactly what kind of justice the squads represent.

Here is an account by The Guardian's Michael Howard, which despite acknowledging that 'the city's neighbourhood security groups vary greatly in form, content and function', focuses heavily on the 'shared desire' of the citizens 'to rise above the sectarian tensions tearing apart large areas of their city.' In the grim annals of reportage from Iraqi, this is positively heartwarming stuff.

Here is a second view, published a month earlier in the same newspaper by Gaith Abdul-Ahad. Hajji Abu Abed's 'Ameriya Knights' are less a state-sponsored security force than a bunch of hired thugs, drunk on the authority withheld from Iraqis since the invasion. Potentially more dangerous than the arbitrary justice metered out to unfortunates such as Mudhar is the impossibility of sustaining such a venture. Currently Abu Abed is simply a warlord growing fat and arrogant on American cash. But what happens when the money runs out? Given his clear defiance of US conditions ('They [the Concerned Citizens] are not allowed to detain people or conduct raids'), it hardly seems likely he will quietly accept a paycut when security is handed over to an Iraqi administration.

It is most telling that the Abu Abeds of Iraq only committed themselves to the US once al-Qaida attempted to draw up their own state and demanded a cut of the profits from fellow militias. Petraeus must remember that his enemy's enemy is not necessarily his friend.

*Rajiv Chandrasekaran's award-winning Imperial Life in the Emerald City (Bloomsbury, 2007) is an excellent account of how the US attempted to rebuild Iraq and valuable insight into how the CPA and the White House filled vacancies amongst the nation-builders.