The WaPo had a front-page item on Saturday about U.S. forces, in several instances, aligning themselves with Sunni sectarian militias — including insurgents that have attacked Americans in the past — who are anxious to battle al Qaeda. The Maliki government (and Bush administration policy) has always been that the militias need to disarm, and there should never be private armies working outside the Iraqi security forces, but as far as the new policy is concerned, desperate times call for desperate measures.
As the Post article made clear, the strategy is fraught with complications. In many skirmishes, U.S. troops no longer know which side is which. We’re supporting insurgents with arms, ammunition, cash, fuel, and supplies, and hoping that they won’t, sometime soon, turn around and start using the weapons on us. As one Sunni militia leader put it, “[T]he enemy now is not the Americans, for the time being.”
The NYT follows up today fleshing out some of the risks.
[C]ritics of the strategy, including some American officers, say it could amount to the Americans’ arming both sides in a future civil war. The United States has spent more than $15 billion in building up Iraq’s army and police force, whose manpower of 350,000 is heavily Shiite. With an American troop drawdown increasingly likely in the next year, and little sign of a political accommodation between Shiite and Sunni politicians in Baghdad, the critics say, there is a risk that any weapons given to Sunni groups will eventually be used against Shiites. There is also the possibility the weapons could be used against the Americans themselves.
An intelligence officer in a battalion cooperating with Sunni militias said, “We have made a deal with the devil.” That appears to be tragically true.
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the Third Infantry Division and leader of an American task force fighting in a wide area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers immediately south of Baghdad, said at a briefing for reporters on Sunday that no American support would be given to any Sunni group that had attacked Americans. If the Americans negotiating with Sunni groups in his area had “specific information” that the group or any of its members had killed Americans, he said, “The negotiation is going to go like this: ‘You’re under arrest, and you’re going with me.’ I’m not going to go out and negotiate with folks who have American blood on their hands.” […]
The requirement that no support be given to insurgent groups that have attacked Americans appeared to have been set aside or loosely enforced in negotiations with the Sunni groups elsewhere, including Amiriya, where American units that have supported Sunni groups fighting to oust Al Qaeda have told reporters they believe that the Sunni groups include insurgents who had fought the Americans. The Americans have bolstered Sunni groups in Amiriya by empowering them to detain suspected Qaeda fighters and approving ammunition supplies to Sunni fighters from Iraqi Army units.
In Anbar, there have been negotiations with factions from the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a Sunni insurgent group with strong Baathist links that has a history of attacking Americans. In Diyala, insurgents who have joined the Iraqi Army have told reporters that they switched sides after working for the 1920 group. And in an agreement announced by the American command on Sunday, 130 tribal sheiks in Salahuddin met in the provincial capital, Tikrit, to form police units that would “defend” against Al Qaeda.
General Lynch said American commanders would face hard decisions in choosing which groups to support. “This isn’t a black and white place,” he said.
Maybe this strategy will work like a charm. Maybe Sunni militias will be effective in battling al Qaeda and will never turn on those they consider “occupiers.” Maybe we’ll support those who were up until recently killing Americans, and they’ll consider us, for now, the enemy of their enemy. Maybe they’ll eventually lay down arms and agree to some kind of reconciliation in an Iraqi political context. We’ll see.
But in the meantime, I have a question: if Sunnis in Iraq are anxious to take up arms in order to drive al Qaeda from their country, what are we still doing there? If counter-terrorism is the goal, and we can withdraw and let Iraqis do it themselves, why don’t we?