The Baathists and al Qaeda in Iraq fought separate fights against us and the new Iraqi government until early 2004 when the Baathists threw in their lot with the jihadis to try and leverage their savagery into control of Iraq. The jihadis got money and planning in return. At the time, I knew that this would be the Baathists' fatal error which would alienate the Iraqi people and drive them to our side. I was thinking mostly of the Shias who were grateful for our removal of Saddam but still suspicous based on our standing aside in 1991 while Saddam slaughtered them, but it surely cemented the already friendly Kurds. What I didn't expect is that eventually that shift in opinion would extend to the Sunni Arabs, too.
In time, by the last half of 2006, al Qaeda in Iraq took the lead over the Baathists in fighting us. Indeed, many local Islamists switched to fighting for al Qaeda in Iraq. This led to an organization of foreign leaders and mostly local fighters bolstered by foreign suicide bombers. Anti-war types used this dominance of locals to deny that al Qaeda in Iraq was really al Qaeda. That was ridiculous to assert this given that al Qaeda is a transnational movement. What exactly is its home territory? Why wouldn't they recruit locally?
But as the surge defeated al Qaeda and the Awakening deprived al Qaeda in Iraq of much of their local support by the end of 2007, the al Qaeda leadership retreated from Iraq to focus on other fronts (Afghanistan/Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen). But local jihadis remained. I thought the local jihadis reduced to third stringer leadership would have been ground down more than they have by now. Oh, they're pretty much defeated but they do retain the ability to stage some high profile and high casualty bombings.
One reason for their stubborn continuation is that the Baathists have turned the tables on the jihadis and provided the leadership for the al Qaeda remnants:
One of the unfortunate aspects of al Qaeda's defeat in Iraq is that the Iraqi branch of the terrorist organization is now run by the people (Baath Party members and Saddam supporters) that al Qaeda was founded to destroy. Five years ago, when Baath undertook their terrorism campaign to regain power, they agreed to coordinate their efforts with al Qaeda, which sought to establish a religious dictatorship in Iraq. Baath and al Qaeda agreed, in effect, to put aside their differences (they hated each other) until the foreign troops were driven out, then they could go after each other to decide who would control Iraq. Five years later, the Americans are still there, and the Islamic terrorist organizations are a shadow of their former selves. The Iraqi government estimates that active Islamic terrorists have shrunk from 10,000, to under 2,000, over the past few years. And Baath members now run the local al Qaeda branch.
Unfortunately, even though the Sunni Arabs of Iraq essentially surrendered in the Awakening, they still mistrust the Shia-dominated government. So the Sunni Arabs dabble in providing just enough backing (even if most is just looking the other way) for this Baathist-led al Qaeda in Iraq to retain armed leverage over the government.
Which is interesting, since the jihadis in Iraq were initially just a creature of the Baathist regime.
Unfortunately (again), this just feeds the Shia (and Kurd) mistrust of the Sunni Arabs that they are just killers waiting to regain power through force and resume their policy of endlessly stomping on the faces of Shias and Kurds:
[Most] Iraqis (the 85 percent who are Kurdish or Shia) would like to see all Sunni Arabs gone from the country. Having discriminated against non-Sunnis for centuries, the Sunnis do not like being on the receiving end. But they must be careful, as too much terrorist violence, that can be traced back to Sunni groups, and the Kurds and Shia might be motivated to ignore world opinion, and attack the remaining Sunni Arabs, killing them and chasing them out of the country.
So, unless the Iraqi government can defeat the Baathist-led al Qaeds in Iraq to make Sunni Arab mistrust a moot point or the Sunni Arabs end their folly of pretending they can still beat the Iraqi government with force rather than working within rule of law to bargain for their well being, the government may ultimately expel the Sunni Arabs remaining in Iraq, creating the new Palestinians and possibly cemented their title of stupidest people on the face of the Earth despite their apparent bout of sanity by joining the Awakening during the surge.
