This article says that while we focus on Baghdad, the jihadis are gaining strength out west:
American attention has shifted in recent weeks to Baghdad, where violence between Sunni and Shiite extremists is on the rise. The U.S. is sending nearly 12,000 U.S. and Iraqi forces to the capital to curb the violence.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has said sectarian violence in the capital is now a greater threat to Iraq's stability than the Sunni Arab insurgency, which is entrenched in western Iraq.
Nevertheless, of the 23 U.S. troops who have died this month in Iraq, 16 of them were in Anbar. The situation in Anbar, with its heavily Sunni population, is a barometer for the entire Sunni Arab minority, which lost its favored position to the majority Shiites and the Kurds when Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed in 2003.
As long as the insurgency rages here, it is unlikely that Sunni Arab politicians in Baghdad can win over significant numbers of Sunnis to support the government of national unity, which took office May 20.
Some areas in Anbar have shown significant progress, such as the border city of Qaim, once an al-Qaeda stronghold. Trouble has increased in other areas, like the rural stretch between Ramadi and Fallujah.
In Baghdad, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said Wednesday that al-Qaeda was making a concerted effort to gain legitimacy by promoting itself as a credible organization.
Anbar has long worried me but within limits it is a problem that can wait as other priorities are pursued. Even Saddam did not really rule the area as much as he reigned over it via tribal proxies.
Until sectarian violence erupted in Baghdad, it looked like the capital was secure enough to send our forces west, as we did in the latter half of 2005:
The situation in al Anbar does worry me. In Saddam's time it was beyond his control but it did not send jihadis to Baghdad to fight his regime. Today, as long as the tribes of the region support the jihadis or look the other way, this area will be a bleeding wound for Iraq. The press never made much of this lack of control under Saddam but will note it as a failure of the new Iraq, so it is a problem. If the terrorists can fan out to disrupt the elections, this will be a problem.
Oh, this won't stop Iraq from standing up a new government, mind you. I don't think the Baathists and jihadis can actually beat the government--stalemate works both ways, after all. And the stalemate, if the reporter is right, is only in the field. Behind the shield of this battlefiled stalemate the government gets stronger and so will in time be able to exert more force in the field to break the stalemate.
And Strategypage doesn't have the concern that USA Today displays:
Only American intelligence has a good idea of what shape the anti-government forces are in, and the intel people are not releasing any scorecards, as that would give the enemy an idea of how much the Americans know. However, more safe houses and arms caches are being discovered in Sunni Arab areas of Baghdad and western Iraq. These successes are the result of more tips phoned in by Sunni Arabs who are fed up with all the violence. There are fewer Sunni Arab terror attacks, and more Sunni Arab victims of terror attacks against them.
The big question is, when will the new government have a sufficient competent security forces to impose the kind of "law and order" that Saddam's thugs maintained for decades. Most of those Sunni Arab enforcers are no longer involved with security issues, and many are actively involved with the anti-government attacks. The largely Kurd and Shia Arab security forces get better, especially if you check progress on a month-to -month or year-to-year basis. For example, in the past year, the ratio of dead has turned sharply against the Sunni Arabs.
And as I wrote recently, if the Sunnis won't deal, eventually the Shias and Kurds will move into Anbar in force to compel submission. And if the Sunnis won't deal, centuries of Sunni domination and decades of Baathist mass murder and oppression will make it easy for the Iraqi government to be as brutal as they must to end Sunni terrorism. Full Iraqi democracy may be put on hold for years or decades if this happens, but we will get an Iraq where the Baathists are harmless--and possibly decimated.
I still haven't had my persistent question of just how stupid are the Sunnis answered.
