The Three Wars Of Iraq

US Loses Sight Of 'Enemy' As Confusion Reigns About Alliances And Tribal Loyalties

Patrick Cockburn provides yet another insightful, detailed portrait of Baghdad almost five years after the US occupation of Iraq began :

Iraq is less violent than a year ago, but the country is still the most dangerous in the world. So it was no surprise to anyone in Baghdad, where people have long dreaded a renewal of al-Qa'ida's savage bombing campaign directed at Shia civilians, that there should be suicide attacks on two bird markets, killing 92 people on Friday.

For all President George Bush's claims of progress, cited in his final State of the Union address last week, Baghdad looks like a city out of the Middle Ages, divided into hostile townships. Districts have been turned into fortresses, encircled by walls made out of concrete slabs. Police and soldiers check all identities at the entrances and exits.

"People say things are better than they were," says Zainab Jafar, a well-educated Shia woman, "but what they mean is that they are better than the bloodbath of 2006. The situation is still terrible."

There are checkpoints everywhere. I counted 27 on the road from central Baghdad to Fallujah, 30 miles west of the capital. These guard posts provide protection, but they are also a threat because there are so many of them that it is easy for kidnappers, criminals and militiamen to set up their own checkpoints in order to select likely victims.

Meanwhile, US troops are trying to cope with widespread confusion about which Iraqis, and Iraqi police and army personnel, are their allies and which are their enemies. Some of this confusion is due to American recruitment of Sunni insurgents to their side, where they are paid, armed and trained to not only patrol their neighbourhoods and keep track of who comes and goes, but also how to fight Al Qaeda. Many former Sunni insurgents have allied themselves to the Americans because of the brutality and horror of Al Qaeda attacks on civilians, and growing fears that the Shiites have taken almost total control of the Iraq government and parliament.

From the Washington Post :

Three separate but related wars are being waged in this country now, and the third one, against Shiite extremists, is the most worrisome, according to the commander and senior staff of the U.S. Army division patrolling Baghdad.

The first, against al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni group that U.S. officials believe is foreign-led, is going well despite occasional spikes in violence, such as Friday's dual bombings of Baghdad marketplaces. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is "frustrated" but "not defeated," Maj. Gen. Jeffrey W. Hammond, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, said in an interview last week.

The second fight, against the domestic Sunni insurgency, has become dormant in many places in the past year, as about 80,000 armed men, many of them former insurgents, switched sides and came onto the U.S. payroll with groups that officers here call "Concerned Local Citizens."

The third conflict, and perhaps the most vexing for U.S. commanders, is with Shiite extremist militias. More than two-thirds of U.S. casualties are caused by roadside bombs, particularly by high-tech anti-armor devices, planted by those groups.

Overall, senior U.S. officers find the state of the wars unexpectedly good, and are allowing themselves to begin speaking optimistically. "A year ago, I didn't see any way it was going to work out to our advantage," said Col. James Rainey, the 4th Infantry Division's director of operations, who is on his third tour of duty in Iraq. The difference now, he said, is "remarkable."

A major reason for the change, he said, is the increased effectiveness of the Iraqi army and police, to which the U.S. military refers collectively as Iraqi security forces, or ISF. "The ISF, when I was over here last time, couldn't do anything," Rainey said. Now, he continued, they frequently show tactical competence. That's crucial for future security here, because as U.S. troop numbers drop by about 25,000 between now and midsummer, to roughly 130,000, Iraqi forces will be handed a greater share of the burden.

At the same time, the officers are conscious that the fighting here has morphed several times over the past five years, as adversaries have adjusted to changes in U.S. tactics. Some officers worry that various factions, taken aback by how effective U.S. operations proved in the past year after several years of frequent counterproductive effect, are lying low as they try to devise new ways to attack.

For example, as measures such as checkpoints outside marketplaces have made car bombs less effective in inflicting mass casualties, said Maj. Jeff Jones, the division's deputy chief of intelligence, al-Qaeda in Iraq has begun to turn more to suicide bombers.

Lately, Jones said, al-Qaeda in Iraq has begun to attack local armed groups who are cooperating with U.S. forces. The majority of those groups are Sunni, and the attacks now mean that al-Qaeda in Iraq is "the single largest killer of Sunnis in Iraq," he said.

The most challenging part of the war in early 2008 appears to be roadside bombs planted by Shiite extremist groups.

The U.S. military calls those organizations "special groups," to distinguish them from other Islamic fighters under the sway of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. U.S. officials hope Sadr will give up violence as a political tool altogether, rather than declare a six-month cease-fire, as he did in August.

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