Iran should be "Set Up for an Attack"

The Agenda Behind The Anti-Sadr Agenda

by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach for GlobalResearch.ca

When Gen. David Petraeus along with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker gave their testimony to the Senate on April 9, they did nothing more than to confirm in spades what had been being mooted and duly leaked by the Washington-based press: that the Bush-Cheney Administration had officially endorsed the line that Iran should be set up for attack, on grounds that it--and not any indigenous resistance--were responsible for the mounting death toll among American troops in Iraq.

While claiming security had improved, Petraeus said the violence involving the Mahdi Army of Moqtadar al Sadr "highlighted the destructive role Iran has played in funding, training, arming and directing the so-called 'special groups'" which, he added, "pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq." (See Washington Post, April 9, 2008). Petraeus even granted that Syria had cut the alleged flow of fighters into Iraq, only to stress by con trast, that "Iran has fuelled the violence in a particularly damaging way, through its lethal support to the special groups." Finally, Petraeus specified that the "special groups" were run by Iran's Qods force, the Revolutionary Guards recently placed in the category of terrorists..

There was nothing new about the line: Dick Cheney had dispatched Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner last year to Iraq, with the task of finding a smoking gun, or, better, a couple of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) with "made in Iran" stamped on them. What was new in the testimony of the top U.S. military and diplomatic officials in the war zone, were the categorical statements, uttered with an air of certainty usually backed up by courtroom evidence, that Iran was the culprit, and the implicit conclusion that Iran must be the target of U.S. aggression. In order to make sure that (as Nixon would have said), the point be perfectly clear, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley was trotted out to tell an enthusiastic Fox News reporter on April 13, that indeed Iran was the casus belli; Iran is "training Iraqis in Iran who come into Iraq and attack our forces, Iraqi forces, Iraqi civilians." And, therefore, Hadley went on, "We will go after their surrogate operations in Iraq that are killing our forces, killing Iraqi forces." (www.foxnews.com). Although Defense Secretary Robert Gates was saying almost simultaneously that he thought "the chances of us stumbling into a confrontation with Iran are very low," he, too, repeated the mantra that the Iranians were sending weapons into the south of Iraq, etc. etc. President George W. Bush could not be left out of the dramatic build-up, and blessed Petraeus's testimony with an order for a halt in the troop reductions.

Pat Buchanon performed an important service in immediately blowing the whistle on this fraud, and his piece, "General Petraeus Points to War with Iran," has fortunately received wide coverage. (www.buchanon.org, 11.04.2008, globalresearch.ca, 12.04.2008) One would hope that Seymous Hersh would come forth with further ammunition in the fight to prevent an all-too-likely attack against Iran. They are at it again, they are serious, and must be stopped.

The Anti-Shi'ite Surge

But, if war is indeed on the agenda, as Global Research has documented over months, one question to be raised, is: how does the recent "surge" in military actions against the Moqtadar al-Sadr forces, in Basra, Baghdad and numerous other Iraqi cities, fold into the current military-political gameplan? The massive joint U.S.-Iraqi operations at the end of March, against the Mahdi Army, were, militarily speaking, a fiasco. The news reported by AFP on April 14 that the Iraqi government has sacked 1,300 Iraqi troops for not having performed as expected (i.e., for having deserted or joined the enemy) is a not-so-eloquent acknowledgement of this embarrassing fact. And, as has been generally acknowledged by now, it was only due to the diplomatic intervention of Iranian authorities, that the conflict was ended, leading to the decision of al-Sadr to cease hostilities.

Now, however, that ill-conceived offensive has been relaunched in the wake of the performances by the Petraeus-Crocker-Hadley trio, and with a vengeance. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told CNN on April 7, that the offensive against al-Mahdi would continue "until a decisive victory is achieved .. a victory that will not allow these people to attack the Green Zone or other areas." To signal the renewed thrust, Riyad al-Nuri, the director of al Sadr's Najaf office, and his brother-in-law, was brutally murdered in the holy city on April 11. Joint U.S.-Iraqi military incursions have continued in Sadr City. Where will this lead? To victory? If so, how does one define victory? If the joint U.S.-Iraqi military operations physically eliminate al-Sadr's forces, it will only be as a result of the deployment of massive brute force as has not yet been used. In this tragic case, the political effect would likely not be the decimation of that political force, but its enhancement. It should not be forgotten that Moqtadar al-Sadr himself comes from a family of martyrs.

One consideration in the minds of the U.S. strategists of the anti-Sadr war, is that they must wipe his organization off the Iraqi political map well before elections take place next October, elections in which his followers could make significant gains, expanding their current 30-seat presence in parliament to a considerable power. The Al-Sadr phenomenon in Iraq is, in this sense, not so different from the Hamas phenomenon in Palestine; both are militant (and military) formations fighting against foreign occupation, while also providing crucial social services to their people, be it schools, clinics, hospitals or the like. It is in this light that one must read the decision by the Iraqi cabinet on April 14 to exclude militias from that vote, i.e. to exclude any political parties that have armed militias. Clearly, this is aimed at al-Sadr. If one were to ask: What about the Badr Brigade, which is the militia of the Shi'ite party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), le d by Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim? one might get the answer: that is no longer to be considered a separate militia, but works as part of the Iraqi military forces.

Intra-Shi'ite Conflict Targets Iran

But there is more to the story. The usual assumption made by U.S. military and political leaders, and shared by too many press outlets, is that the conflict inside Iraq should now be reduced to a fight among rival Shi'ite factions: that the ISCI and al-Sadr group are competing for control over Basra, an oil-rich and strategically situated province; that al-Maliki, whose own Shi'ite party Al Dawa, depends on the support of al-Hakim's faction to survive; that, in sum, the name of the game is intra-Shi'ite conflict.(1)

Yes, the political rivalries among the three main Shi'ite factions in Iraq do exist. To be sure, neither al-Maliki nor al-Hakim would welcome the emergence of a majority force in parliament led by the al-Sadr group. But this is not the salient feature of the situation. Rather, as was shown in the recent, short-lived halt to the operations against al-Sadr, it was Iran which was decisive. The most important factor to be considered, in understanding the current crisis, at least from the inside, is this: Iran has excellent relations with {all three} major Shi'ite factions in Iraq, despite their internal differences. The ISCI, it will be remembered, was given hospitality in Iran, during its years-long exile under the Saddam Hussein regime. Moqtadar al-Sadr enjoys support from Iran. And the greatest foreign support that the al-Maliki government has, is from Tehran.

So, who can be expected to gain from exacerbating the intra-Shi'ite conflict? Most obviously, the U.S. as the occupying power. As qualified Iranian sources have stressed to this author, Iran's power lies in its ability to promote and mediate cooperation among all these factions, as dramatically demonstrated in its mediating the end to the first anti-Sadr offensive at the end of March. The occupying power is seen as intent on utilizing intra-Shi'ite conflict to damage each of these factions, and to hurt Iran.

One generally ignored, but important factor noted by the same Iranian sources, is the factionalized situation {within} the al-Sadr movement. Moqtadar al-Sadr is seen by these sources as a fervently committed fighter, who, however, views the situation from a somewhat narrowly defined local standpoint: he wants to style himself as the leader of the Shia in Iraq, indeed as the national leader--even more national than al-Maliki. His ambitions, according to some, go beyond this; he sees himself as a future leader of the Muslims overall. At the same time, there is a faction within the al-Sadr movement, considered a "sub-group," which is controlled by outside forces, in Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and also the U.S. This sub-group is seen as responsible for provocative actions designed to destabilize Iraq, and therefore welcoming any U.S.-Iraqi joint offensive against al-Sadr. The main reason for this, is that the foreign sponsors of this sub-group, whether Saudi or Emirate or America n, are intent on weakening, discrediting and ultimately replacing al-Maliki as Prime Minister of Iraq, while at the same time undermining the role of al-Hakim. A slaughter against al Sadr's forces could doom the al-Maliki government. To put it simply: these outside influences, who are thinking strategically, are hoping to pit al-Sadr against both al-Hakim and al-Maliki; the al-Sadr forces, who are thinking on a more limited, local level, see themselves as competitors to the other two groupings, for future political leadership in Iraq, and miss the point about the broader strategic picture.

In short, the U.S.'s enthusiastic order to al-Maliki to launch his anti-al-Sadr purge, is actually a ploy to discredit and destroy al-Maliki himself, and prepare for permanent occupation. Vice President Dick Cheney has made no secret of the fact that he would like to replace al-Maliki, whom he has always accused of being too close to the Iranians, with one of his own, like Iyad Allawi, and that might be what is in the offing. Another benefit to discrediting al-Maliki is that the Cheney-Bush crew can further argue that, since al-Maliki and. co. have proven unable to deal with the al-Sadr threat alone, U.S. occupying forces should remain for a longer priod of time, if not for the one-hundred years that John McCain is fantasizing about.

Enter Condi Rice

To complete the picture, a couple of other developments should be mentioned. First, Condi Rice's trip to the region. She follows in the footsteps of Cheney, who toured the region to whip up Arab support for, or at least acquiescence to, a military assault on Iran. This had been Cheney's aim during his late 2006 visit, and now he has returned with the same agenda. Rice, then as now, will be following the same script. She will be meeting with the foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council, plus Egypt and Jordan, the famous "GCC + 2" that she and Cheney have been forging as a Sunni bloc against Iran. Her message will be: prepare for the repercussions of a new assault on Iran. In parallel, the Israelis have been working overtime to heat up tensions in the region, not only against Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, but also Iran. While National Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer threatened to "detsroy the Iranian nation," if it attacked Israel, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told Arab conference attendees in Qatar that their real enemy was not Israel, but Iran.

At the same time, an ominous event occurred on April 12 in Shiraz, when an explosion rocked a mosque during prayers, killing 12 and wounding more than 200. Although initial Iranian reports ruled out sabotage, the causes of the blast were not immediately identified, and, according to latest press reports, Iranian authorities are still "uncertain" about the affair. If, in the end, it turns out to have been a terror attack, the most likely suspects would be found among the Mujahedeen e Qalk (MKO/MEK) terrorist organization that still enjoys U.S. refuge in Iraq, and the Kurdish terrorists in the PKK-allied Pejak. The PKK also enjoys the protection of the U.S. occupying forces in northern Iraq. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Pejak (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan) warned on April 13, that it would "carry out bombings against Iranian forces" inside the country. Perhaps this is what President Bush has in mind, when he makes his periodic appeals to the "Iranian people" to rise up ag ainst their government.

NOTE

1. See Robert Dreyfuss, in "The Lessons of Basra," aljazeera.com, April 3, and also Ramzy Baroud, in "Basra battles: Barely half the story," aljazeera.com, April 13.

Muriel Mirak-Weissbach is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach

Corporate media buzzing with signs of an impending US attack on Mehdi Army and Iran

Iran joined militias in battle for Basra

Sarah Baxter and Marie Colvin, Times Online

IRANIAN forces were involved in the recent battle for Basra, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress this week.

Military and intelligence sources believe Iranians were operating at a tactical command level with the Shi’ite militias fighting Iraqi security forces; some were directing operations on the ground, they think.

Petraeus intends to use the evidence of Iranian involvement to argue against any reductions in US forces.

Dr Daniel Goure, a defence analyst at the Lexington Institute in Virginia, said: “There is no question that Petraeus will be tough on Iran. It is one thing to withdraw troops when there is purely sectarian fighting but it is another thing if it leaves the Iranians to move in.”

US defence chiefs are concerned that the troop surge has overstretched the military. Admiral Mike McMullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, warned that the army and marines were at risk of crossing an “invisible red line” if the burden on forces remained. He said deployments of 15 months had to be reduced to a year “as fast as possible”.

Petraeus is likely to announce that combat tours will be reduced from 15 months to 12 months.

The number of US troops in Iraq is set to fall from 160,000 to 140,000 by July, but Petraeus is expected to recommend an indefinite pause in further troop cuts.

Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite cleric, has called for 1m people to march on Baghdad on Wednesday – the fifth anniversary of the fall of the capital – when Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, will be briefing Congress.

A senior Iraqi official who met Petraeus last week said, “It will be difficult to show that the situation is improving.” Another Iraqi source described the US general as “furious” that al-Maliki moved against the militias into Basra without consultation and had to rely on US forces to bail him out.

Abu Ahmed, a senior military commander with the Awakening, the Sunni tribal movement cooperating with US forces, said progress was largely the result of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army ceasefire.

“When the Mahdi Army decides to resume its activities, neither the American troops nor the Iraqi government will be able to stop it,” he said.

Additional reporting: Hala Jaber
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British fear US commander is beating the drum for Iran strikes

By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, The Telegraph

British officials gave warning yesterday that America's commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed Baghdad government.

A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran's intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian military facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment. In closely watched testimony in Washington next week, Gen Petraeus will state that the Iranian threat has risen as Tehran has supplied and directed attacks by militia fighters against the Iraqi state and its US allies.

The outbreak of Iraq's worst violence in 18 months last week with fighting in Basra and the daily bombardment of the Green Zone diplomatic enclave, demonstrated that although the Sunni Muslim insurgency is dramatically diminished, Shia forces remain in a strong position to destabilise the country.

"Petraeus is going to go very hard on Iran as the source of attacks on the American effort in Iraq," a British official said. "Iran is waging a war in Iraq. The idea that America can't fight a war on two fronts is wrong, there can be airstrikes and other moves," he said.

"Petraeus has put emphasis on America having to fight the battle on behalf of Iraq. In his report he can frame it in terms of our soldiers killed and diplomats dead in attacks on the Green Zone."

Tension between Washington and Tehran is already high over Iran's covert nuclear programme. The Bush administration has not ruled out military strikes.

In remarks interpreted as signalling a change in his approach to Iran, Gen Petraeus last week hit out at the Iranian leadership. "The rockets that were launched at the Green Zone were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets," he said. "All of this in complete violation of promises made by President Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts."
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The humiliation of the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki by the Iranian-backed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in fighting in Basra last week triggered top-level warnings over Iran's strength in Iraq.

Gen Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Baghdad, will answer questions from American political leaders at the US Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday before travelling to London to brief Gordon Brown.

The Wall Street Journal said last week that the US war effort in Iraq must have a double goal.

"The US must recognise that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq," wrote the military analyst Kimberly Kagan.

There are signs that targeting Iran would unite American politicians across the bitter divide on Iraq. "Iran is the bull in the china shop," said Ike Skelton, the Democrat chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the Shi'ite groups, whether they be political or military."
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Al-Sadr militia prep for U.S., Iraqi fighting

By Sharon Behn, Washington Times

Militiamen loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr are positioning explosives to defend the major routes into Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood in anticipation of a major battle with U.S. and Iraqi government forces, residents said yesterday.

Iraqis also said families in Sadr City and other Shi'ite areas of Baghdad are stocking up on food, fearing new fighting that will leave them unable to get to the markets.

While food prices in most of Baghdad are stable, they have increased in Sadr City and surrounding neighborhoods as people brace for a resumption of fighting that rocked the neighborhood late last month, said Sajad, an Iraqi translator who spoke with several residents in the Shi'ite stronghold on behalf of The Washington Times.

Tomatoes that were 30 cents to 40 cents a kilogram (2.2 pounds) are now $2.50 a kilo, and the price of eggs and cheese have gone up three to five times their normal price, said Sajad.

In a southwest neighborhood of Baghdad, where Shi'ite militiamen have recently been pushed out, neighbors warned Ahmed, the father of three young children in the area, that there could be another rebel Shi'ite uprising as soon as tomorrow — two days before Gen. David H. Petreaus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker are to report to Congress on progress in the U.S. troop surge.

The warning, Ahmed said, appeared to come from Sadr City, so it would only affect Baghdad. Orders to Shi'ite militia across the country normally are issued from Najaf, a holy city in southern Iraq where Sheik al-Sadr's Mahdi Army is headquartered.

In Washington, U.S. intelligence officials said they had no way of confirming Mahdi Army preparations for the Sadr City battle, but added that it is "entirely possible."

One official said the Mahdi Army is likely to try to reignite violence. "It's obviously a fluid situation."

In the U.S.-protected International Zone in central Baghdad, private contractors were "hardening" their rooms to avoid getting killed or injured in the event of another rocket and mortar barrage, similar to the one that followed the government push against Sheik al-Sadr's militia last week in southern Iraq.

"I've moved my desk so that I won't be in the line of shrapnel," said Jack, a 32-year-old American working for a U.S. company who has spent 16 months in Iraq.

"I'm wearing my Kevlar a lot," he added, referring to his body armor. Jack, like others quoted in this story, asked that family names not be used.

The unease in Baghdad comes amid calls by Sheik al-Sadr for a massive anti-American rally Wednesday to mark the fifth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

"The time has come to express your rejections and raise your voices loud against the unjust occupier and enemy of nations and humanity, and against the horrible massacres committed by the occupier against our honorable people," said a statement released by Sheik-al Sadr's office.

The statement called on all Iraqis to head toward Najaf, the site of large Shi'ite pilgrimages.

Shi'ite areas have been told to close their stores to commemorate the day, said Ahmed. The last time stores were ordered closed was when the battles between Iraqi troops and Shi'ite militias erupted last week in the southern city of Basra.

"All Shi'ite neighbors, they tell me — maybe Sunday — we have second attacks ... they will come back and attack the government," said Ahmed.

It was not possible to confirm the threats, but the reports were fueling unease in the capital, which only recently had begun to feel a modicum of security after months of concentrated military operations by U.S. and Iraqi forces.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — a Shi'ite once allied with Sheikh al-Sadr — had warned the crackdown against the Shi'ite militias would continue despite the truce ordered by the anti-American cleric.

Yesterday, however, Mr. al-Maliki backed off the threat, saying the arrests of Shi'ite suspects would be suspended.

But Sadr City residents are nervous, said Ahmed, and the militias are preparing for another showdown with U.S. and coalition forces.

"When they see American convoys, they quickly put IEDs in the street and everywhere they will attack Americans," he said, referring to bombs planted in roads.

Hassan, a Shi'ite doctor who lives in a different neighborhood and does not support the Mahdi Army militia, said he also expects the fighting to flare up again and that the streets of Sadr City are booby-trapped.

"This is the quiet before the storm," he said. "But I am sure that if anyone, government or coalition attack Sadr City it will be a big loss, because all the roads of Sadr City are filled with explosives."

Iraqi reactions to the fighting in Basra and Baghdad varied. Some praised the prime minister for taking on the Mahdi militia, others said Muqtada's ability to turn the violence on and off only strengthened his hand, and that of his backer, Iran.

While Iraqi government forces struck hard, they ended up by having to call on U.S. air support after being overwhelmed by the Shi'ite militia response.

Hundreds of police — many of whom were Sheik al-Sadr supporters — reportedly laid down their weapons and joined the militia in both Basra and Sadr City.

"In some areas around Sadr City, the militia are part of the police," said Ahmed.

In other areas, police responded differently he said. Some "left their post to return to their unit, some continued to attack militia."

• Sara A. Carter contributed to this article.

How George Bush Became The New Saddam

Its strategies shattered, a desperate Washington is reaching out to the late dictator's henchmen.


By Patrick Graham

It was embarrassing putting my flak jacket on backwards and sideways, but in the darkness of the Baghdad airport car park I couldn’t see anything. “Peterik, put the flak jacket on,” the South African security contractor was saying politely, impatiently. “You know the procedure if we are attacked.”

I didn’t. He explained. One of the chase vehicles would pull up beside us and someone would drag me out of the armoured car, away from the firing. If both drivers were unconscious—nice euphemism—he said I should try to run to the nearest army checkpoint. If the checkpoint was American, things might work out if they didn’t shoot first. If it was Iraqi . . . he didn’t elaborate.

Arriving in Baghdad has always been a little weird. Under Saddam Hussein it was like going into an orderly morgue; when he ran off after the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003 put an end to his Baathist party regime, the city became a chaotic mess. I lived in Iraq for almost two years, but after three years away I wasn’t quite ready for just how deserted and worn down the place seemed in the early evening. It was as if some kind of mildew was slowly rotting away at the edges of things, breaking down the city into urban compost.

Since 2003, more than 3,775 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, while nearly 7,500 Iraqi policemen and soldiers have died. For Iraq’s civilian population, the carnage has been almost incalculable. Last year alone, the UN estimated that 34,500 civilians were killed and more than 36,000 wounded; other estimates are much higher. As the country’s ethnic divisions widen, especially between Iraq’s Arab Shia and Arab Sunni Muslims (the Kurds are the third major group), some two million people have been internally displaced, with another two million fleeing their homeland altogether. Entering Baghdad I could tell the Sunni neighbourhoods, ghettos really, by the blasts in the walls and the emptiness, courtesy of sectarian cleansing by the majority Shias. The side streets of the Shia districts seemed to have a little more life to them.

As soon as I arrived, I tried calling old acquaintances. Many of these were from Falluja and Ramadi, and had once been connected to the insurgency that had raged across the Sunni Arab province of Anbar since 2003. In the past few years, though, many in the insurgency had become disillusioned with the direction of the anti-occupation fight—and concerned over the future of Arab Sunnis in Iraq. In Anbar, the terrorist group al-Qaeda in Iraq, initially a partner in the Sunni insurgency, had alienated many by trying to overthrow traditional tribal and power structures to impose an alien interpretation of Islam, a Salafist fundamentalism that had few adherents before the arrival of the Americans. In Baghdad, the militias supporting the Shia-dominated central government—in effect a sectarian regime—were cleansing Arab Sunni neighbourhoods. Now, Anbari Sunnis view the government as deeply infiltrated by their traditional enemy, Shia Iran. So with few allies left in Iraq, they began allying themselves with their former enemies, the U.S. Army—which also seems to be running out of friends.

This “Anbar Awakening” has been a slow process, beginning long before the recent U.S. “surge” that increased the number of American troops in Iraq by 30,000, to 180,000. But it is still a shaky union, a desperate marriage of convenience based on shared enemies: Iran, and the Sunnis’ former-friend-turned-foe al-Qaeda. Many of America’s new allies are former insurgents and Saddam Hussein loyalists (Saddam was a Sunni) who only a short while ago were routinely called terrorists, “anti-Iraqi fighters,” and “Baathist dead-enders.” They are suspicious of one another and strongly anti-American, although willing to work, for the moment, with the U.S. The leader and founder of the Anbar Awakening Council, Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, was recently killed by a roadside bomb outside his house in Ramadi, clearly an inside job of some kind for which al-Qaeda claimed credit. Only 10 days earlier, Abu Risha had met with George W. Bush during the President’s visit to Iraq, the photo op of death, apparently.

I kept phoning Iraqis but few answered. When I told a friend in Baghdad that no one was taking my calls, he suggested that people didn’t answer unknown numbers because they were afraid of threats. Apparently, according to Arab custom, if you warn your victim before an attack, it’s not a crime. Perhaps—but you can read too much ancient custom into Iraq. My suspicion was that they were dead. My hope was that they were avoiding embarrassing calls from girlfriends when they were with their wives. Iraqis’ love lives can be as complicated as their politics.

When I finally got through to one friend, he was in Damascus, along with several million of his countrymen. “Come to Falluja,” Ahmed said. “You can kill al-Qaeda with my troop.” It wasn’t clear how I was supposed to get to Falluja from Baghdad, although it is only 50 km west of the capital. Ahmed wasn’t sure it was a good idea to try. Passing through Abu Ghraib, a large suburban area outside the capital where Saddam and then the Americans ran a notorious prison, could be a real problem, he said. There, both insurgents and Shia militias often set up checkpoints and kidnap travellers. The Americans, mind you, have a more optimistic view of the Abu Ghraib situation. A few weeks later, I would watch Ambassador Ryan Crocker tell Congress of a real milestone in co-operation between former Sunni insurgents and their enemies in the Shia-dominated administration: over 1,700 Sunni tribesmen in Abu Ghraib were officially hired by the government as security forces. Ambassador Crocker may have been accurate—it’s just that the positive steps happening in Iraq shouldn’t be called milestones. They are more like yard-pebbles. Or even inch-dust.

“Come to Damascus—we can drive from here and the road is safe,” Ahmed said. He listed the various tribal militias controlling the 450-km road through Anbar province from the Syrian border to Falluja that could protect us. It seemed to be typical of the recent over-hyped success of the Anbar Awakening that you would have to fly from Baghdad to Damascus, and then drive six hours back across the desert, to get only 40 minutes outside Baghdad in order to see it for yourself (you could go with the U.S. Army as well, but you learn mostly about Americans if you are with Americans and end up sounding like a visiting columnist for the New York Times). Ahmed said that when he and his “troop” (his quaint word for what sounded death-squadish to me) captured al-Qaeda fighters around Falluja, they shipped the leaders to the border for interrogation by Syrian intelligence. So far, he’d sent 12. You can’t blame him—even the Americans send suspects to Syria when they want them tortured. Just ask Maher Arar.

I first met the tribal militias that make up the Anbar Awakening during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, when a family I knew smuggled me out to a small village between Ramadi and Falluja. Saddam’s army had virtually disappeared from the countryside, and these militias, trusted by Saddam’s regime and at the time still loyal to it, controlled the roads and villages of Anbar just as they do today. I spent a lot of 2003 and 2004 around Falluja and Ramadi, getting to know a group of insurgents fighting the U.S. occupation. I’m fairly certain that if the tribal militias had been intelligently treated—i.e. paid US$10 each per day the way they are now—and the U.S. Army hadn’t driven around Ramadi and Falluja shooting wildly in the spring of 2003, many would have been American allies from the beginning. Instead, a lot of them became insurgents, hooked up with their cousins from Saddam’s former security services, and eventually allied themselves with the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda. That relationship was symbiotic at first, but al-Qaeda soon became destructive parasites, jihadi body snatchers who killed anybody opposed to their control and strict Islamic codes.

When Gen. David Pet­raeus, commander of the multinational force in Iraq, appeared before Congress with Ambassador Crocker to testify about the results of President Bush’s “surge” strategy, he talked a lot about these tribal militias and the success of Anbar. It is the only progress the U.S. has made in Iraq for years. It’s unclear whether the additional 30,000 troops that make up the surge have had much effect on the Anbar Awakening. But watching Gen. Petraeus, I was struck by how familiar his words sounded. The general talked like every Sunni I’ve ever met in Iraq—hell, he sounded a bit like Saddam. The old tyrant would have had one of his characteristic chest-heaving guffaws watching Petraeus as he intoned the old Baathist mantra about the dangers to Iraq: Iran, Iran, Iran. Bush took up Gen. Petraeus’s views a few days later in a nationally televised speech about Iraq, in which he talked about the threat Tehran posed. It seems that Petraeus and Bush have come to the same conclusion as Saddam: the main enemy is Iran, and you can’t govern Iraq without the Sunni Arab tribes, even as you encourage anti-Iranian nationalism among the Shia. This is what Saddam did during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and what Washington is trying to do now. One of the main problems with this strategy is that both the Sunni tribes and Shia nationalists are profoundly anti-American and don’t trust each other—a potential recipe for further disaster.

Going back to Iraq is like sitting through a depressing Scheherazade, 10,001 Nights of Horror Stories. Everybody had them. Do you want to see a picture of someone’s 10-year-old boy, chopped up in pieces and put in a cooking pot because his parents couldn’t pay the Shia militia’s ransom? Here, look at the burns on my body, inflicted by the bodyguards of the Sunni politician who sold my eight-year-old son and me to al-Qaeda. Let me tell you about being kidnapped in Falluja by a gang that pretended to be al-Qaeda—they made me drink urine and had a fake beheading studio where they set up mock video executions to scare us into raising ransoms. As a friend of mine kept saying over and over—“Where do they get these people? What kind of a person does this? Where do they get them?”

Sadly, these stories are true, while so much that is said about Iraq is myth and delusion. As the famous American war correspondent Martha Gellhorn wrote about armed conflict, there is “the real war and the propaganda war.” During the congressional hearings about the surge, I kept thinking of Tattoo on Fantasy Island, half expecting Ambassador Crocker to tug on Gen. Petraeus’s sleeve and say, “Look, boss, da plane.” Smiles, everyone, smiles! Sometimes I think Iraq doesn’t exist at all. It’s just a series of preconceptions, a country invented to keep the West’s intelligentsia busy arguing and pontificating, fighting over facts about a place that is so clearly a work of fiction. Frankly, I wish it didn’t exist, at least for the sake of Iraqis. First Saddam, now this.

Certainly the notion of there being any cohesive central power in Iraq is a myth. Whatever is running the country, it’s not a government. Iraq’s body politic has some kind of autoimmune deficiency syndrome in which the antibodies designed to defend it have turned on its own organs. It’s a perfect environment for opportunistic parasites, in this case Iraq’s neighbours. So it seems almost unfair to criticize Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s failure to govern, as if somehow he was in charge of anything that could be called a state.

In many ways, this is Saddam’s fault. Like most tyrants, he turned the Iraqi government into a series of fiefdoms loyal only to him. That’s why it was called a regime. But today, it’s really a set of regimes. Each of the ministries is controlled by a sectarian or ethnic group and, like Saddam, they hire people mostly loyal to themselves (although some are fought over by competing factions). The ministries are important because that’s where the money is—apart from oil, Iraq has no industries, unless you consider murder a job, and that is a heavy industry at the moment. As an Iraqi doctor who left medicine to work for one of the many foreign companies losing money in Iraq (most of them are) said to me: “There are only two ways to make money in Iraq—working for the ministries, or working for the U.S. Army.”

The level of corruption in the ministries is astonishing, but according to U.S. government reports they are often “untouchable” because the prime minister’s office protects allies from investigation. The Ministry of Finance is run by Bayan Jabr, the former minister of the interior who hired thousands of Shia militiamen as police and set up death squads and torture prisons. His successor had to fire 10,000 employees, and today various factions fight for control of each floor of the Interior Ministry building.

At least US$10 billion has been embezzled, according to Iraq’s Commission on Public Integrity, which is itself underfunded (12 of its members have been murdered). After a U.S. report surfaced detailing how the prime minister blocked the commission’s investigations of corrupt officials, Maliki accused the head of the commission of corruption and threatened him with arrest. Luckily the man was already out of the country. Corruption in the Oil Ministry—Iraq’s nationalized energy sector is its only real source of revenue—has resulted in shortages that have only increased the long lineups for gasoline in a country brimming with oil. Senior Iraqi army officers complain that when they organize raids on Shia militias, they are stopped on orders from the prime minister’s office. Iraq was a disaster under Saddam, but it has turned into Nigeria.

Maliki has been accused of running an “ethno-sectarian” government, but accusing him of running a pro-Shia government is like accusing Bush of running a pro-Republican administration. Like Karl Rove, who hoped to make the Republican party supreme, Maliki seems to want to set up Shia-dominated rule that will control Iraq for generations. And like Rove, he focuses on his base, with little regard for any other point of view unless the U.S. pressures him (even then he pouts and makes vague threats about looking for other allies—by which he obviously means Iran).

Instead of polls and data mining, the governing Shia parties have taken control by using militias to “sectarian cleanse” Baghdad, a retaliation against al-Qaeda’s spectacular car bombing campaign. By one estimate, Baghdad was once 65 per cent Sunni; today it is 75 per cent Shia. Deaths from sectarian killings are reportedly down, in large measure because there are few mixed neighbourhoods left. Almost the entire Sunni middle class lives in Jordan or Syria. If you are named Omar, a traditional Sunni name, chances are you are dead or living abroad. Under Saddam, no one on the streets of the capital ever uttered the word mukhabarat, mean­ing the feared security police. Today, no one says maktab, meaning “office,” but in fact referring to radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army’s bases from which members control neighbourhoods. Their preferred method of torture is the electric drill.

The great irony of Maliki is that under other circumstances a government like his—one that is: a) accused by the U.S. of close relations with an American enemy (Iran); b) running a strategically important country (like Iraq); c) involved in the oppression and murder of one of its minorities (the Sunnis), which is closely linked to an important U.S. ally (the Saudis)—is an administration that many Americans would want to eliminate. There is a good chance that if the U.S. Army wasn’t there already, Washington would have invaded to get rid of Maliki. But having toppled Saddam, lost thousands of soldiers, and so far spent some US$500 billion on combat operations alone, the U.S. is now in too weak of a position to do much.

Maliki, though, might fall of his own accord. In the end, having alienated Sunnis and secular Iraqis, his unwieldy coalition government will probably be brought down as a result of the growing rift between Shia parties that are now fighting for control of southern Iraq and Baghdad. (On Sept. 15, Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement withdrew from the ruling coalition because Sadr had been frozen out of power.)

One of the problems outsiders have in criticizing the present Iraqi government for its appallingly sectarian policies is that there is a tendency for people to think: “Well, what do you want—Saddam?” That’s absurd, of course, like criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin and being accused of wanting a return of the Soviet Union. And the group in Iraq that seems to be most critical of this government—other than the Sunnis—is the U.S. Army.

U.S. soldiers have been up to their knees in the blood of Shia militia killings, as well as insurgent death squads and car bombs, and have few illusions about this government’s intentions. You can tell the military’s views not just by its enthusiasm for its new Sunni tribal allies, but the vehemence with which American politicians who have come through Iraq on this summer’s army-organized tours have come out against Maliki. Senators Carl Levin, a Democrat, and Jack Warner, a Republican, could barely contain their contempt for Maliki when they left Iraq in late August. Neither could the refreshingly undiplomatic French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, an outspoken advocate of human rights who supported the original invasion. It must drive him mad to see what Maliki is doing now, helping to destroy Kouchner’s robust, pro-human rights Western foreign policy model that was supposed to make the world unsafe for tyrants.

We all understand, in a very basic way, that a settling of scores by the Shia is impossible to avoid, especially with the car bombs and insurgent attacks on their neighbourhoods since 2003. But after a few years of patience, the Shia parties have shown themselves to be particularly motivated by revenge. Take Bayan Jabr. I met him before the war in Syria, when he was the representative of the Iranian-based Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (now SIIC, formerly SCIRI), and was struck only by his blandness. When the interview was over, I asked him how many members of his family had been killed by Saddam. Thirty-two, he said, shaking my hand. As minister of the interior, Jabr was responsible for at least as many deaths as the 148 people Saddam was convicted of killing after an assassination attempt outside the village of Dujail in 1982, murders for which the dictator was hanged. That doesn’t mean Jabr is as bad as Saddam, but I wouldn’t want to be his enemy.

Revenge is deeply woven into the foundations of this war, and not just on the Iraqi side. I remember looking inside the lead Humvee coming into downtown Baghdad on the day the Americans took the city on April 2003. Inside was an “I Love NY” sticker. How much of the American motivation for the war was payback for 9/11 is a question that can be asked every time Bush is quoted, as he was recently in Australia, saying “we’re kicking ass.” Misplaced payback, perhaps, but revenge is rarely rational.

Just as one is accused of being a pro-Saddam, Baathist sympathizer if you crit­icize the government in Baghdad, so one is accused of being a neo-con if you point out how deeply in­­volved Iran has become in Iraq. The role Iran plays is as complex and shady as can be expected in a situation that is so murky on so many different levels, from neighbourhood turf wars to world oil strate­­gies and a proxy war with America. But the U.S. government is right to be concerned, al­though it’s not clear they can do much except protest, threaten loudly, and fight a secret, dirty war.

Iraq, Iran’s neighbour to the west, is Tehran’s self-declared security zone. Iran has already been attacked once from Iraq—by a then-American ally, Saddam—and won’t let it happen again. Nor do the Iranians want, as the West does, a secular Iraqi government that could destabilize their own theocracy. For them, Iraq is a survival issue. U.S.-led invasions have conquered not only Iraq but Afghanistan on Iran’s eastern flank. The U.S. Navy is floating off Iranian shores. Every few weeks, Washington debates whether to bomb Iran. How could Iran afford not to be involved in Iraq? Following the American example, the Iranians have learned that it’s bet­­­ter to fight the U.S. on the streets of Baghdad than the streets of Tehran.

The real question is, what are Iran’s objectives in Iraq, and how will Iraqis react? If Iran wants economic, political and military domination, the problems are long-term. If Iran is in Iraq to fight a proxy war against the United States, then presumably it will leave when the U.S. does. In general, I have found Iraqis to be extremely suspicious of the Iranian government and its involvement in their country—not just the Sunnis, but the Shias and Kurds as well. But then again, even Iranians are suspicious of their own government.

Iran has a number of interests in Iraq that go beyond security. The most obvious is religious—Iraq contains some of the holiest sites of Shia Islam that have been cut off from Iranian pilgrims for decades. The other is economic. With a population of over 65 million people, Iran views itself as a regional superpower and expects the financial rewards that come from that position. And like any other superpower, it creates economic problems for its neighbours. When I was in Baghdad in August, people complained that Iraqi farm produce was being driven off of the market by Iran, which is dumping its fruit and vegetables in Iraq. This is a disaster for Iraqi agriculture, one of the few areas of employment in the country.

The actual influence of Iran on the Iraqi government is hard to gauge. The present administration is made up of mainly Shia parties, some of which are very nationalistic and anti-Iranian, like the Fadhila party, while others, like the SIIC, that was formed as an anti-Saddam party in Iran in 1982, are very close to Tehran. For the U.S., the most worrying Iranian influence is the authority that Iranian security services have over militias like the SIIC’s Badr Organization, which was based in Iran for 20 years until the fall of Saddam. Even Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi Army, is thought to have one wing controlled by Iran.

These days, though, the biggest concern on the highways of Baghdad is not Sunni insurgent bombs, but the explosively formed penetrators that fire a molten copper slug through even American heavy armour. According to U.S. intelligence, they are provided by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to Shia militias. Of course, U.S. intelligence accusations are now as suspect as the Iranian government denials that they provoke.

America’s other main enemy is al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda what a cheap watch is to a Swiss timepiece—effective, easily reproduced, and disposable. Al-Qaeda did not exist in Iraq before the invasion, but today it, along with Iran, are the two strongest arguments the U.S. makes for “staying the course.” Al-Qaeda in Iraq is essentially a religious criminal gang that kills anyone who threatens its power or differs from its Salafist views on establishing a perverse form of an Islamic state. Its death squads and enormously destructive truck bombs have killed thousands of Shias, but Sunnis, too, have suffered al-Qaeda’s violent nihilism. Car bombs, assassinations and “religious punishments,” including decapitations and cutting off the fingers of smokers, have put Sunni Iraq under a Mordor-like shadow of terror and justified collective punishment from the Shias. In his testimony to Congress, Gen. Petraeus pointed out the lethal threat of al-Qaeda. But this should come as no surprise to an American general—because the U.S. Army helped create al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The American role in the promotion of the terrorist organization is not some mad conspiracy theory, but a well-documented attempt by the U.S. government to demonize the insurgency and make it appear to be the central front in the war on terror. This was as great a mistake as disbanding the Iraqi army, which the U.S. did in May 2003, or perhaps even greater, since it led to the sectarian downward spiral that has destroyed the country.
When the insurgency started in the summer of 2003, it was made up primarily of the same class of alienated Sunnis who are now part of the tribal Anbar Awakening. The insurgents I spent time with in 2003 and 2004 were, in essence, nationalists who didn’t like the U.S. Army driving around their villages, kicking down their doors and shooting their cousins at checkpoints. They were also deeply suspicious of American plans for democracy, because they feared it would lead to Iran taking over the government. Some hated Saddam, some liked him, but Saddam wasn’t the issue. For want of a better term, they are the equivalent of rednecks who believe in God, their country, and the right to bear arms.

But rather than come up with an intelligent counter-insurgency policy, reach out to traditional tribal social structures and try to understand why American soldiers were getting killed, U.S. military leaders did what Americans have gotten very good at doing in the last few years. They made up a story, which they repeated on the news for U.S. domestic consumption—and then started to believe themselves. In this story, evil foreign terrorists led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a chubby Jordanian freelance terrorist, were setting upon the popular U.S. Army. AMZ, as the U.S. Army jauntily called him, existed, but he was a minor figure unlikely to get much of a following on his own in Iraq. Jordanians are not greatly respected by Sunni tribal Iraqis, who tend to view them as the metrosexuals of the Middle East. I used to watch the nightly news with insurgents—they called themselves the “resistance”—and they would laugh at what U.S. spokesmen were saying about the insurgency and Zarqawi’s prominence. But from the U.S. perspective, “tribal freedom fighter,” as the former Sunni insurgents are described today, does not sound as good as “foreign terrorist” or “anti-Iraqi fighter” when you are trying to demonize people fighting your occupation.

The ploy backfired. As AMZ (he was killed in June 2006) got more and more airtime, he gained more and more legitimacy, money and volunteers. It was as if Japanese whalers were mounting a “Save The Whales” campaign on television. Thanks to the Americans, al-Qaeda in Iraq became the Greenpeace of the jihadi world.

AMZ’s foreign fighters were never more than a tiny percentage of the insurgency, but they got all the credit, especially when their car bombs began killing civilians. Al-Qaeda in Iraq also had a tremendous appeal among the Sunni Iraqi underclass, just as Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda appeals to poor, angry Muslims the world over. Provinces like Anbar are very poor and very hierarchical, with a large and resentful social stratum at the bottom. Local Iraqis were drawn to al-Qaeda’s Salafist fundamentalism because it freed them from the conservative, tribal oppression that governed their lives. Al-Qaeda was able to take over some of the insurgency—and still controls chunks of Iraq—precisely because it was revolutionary, not conservative, and offered poor people in An­­bar a chance to kick some rich sheik and Baathist ass, as well as kill Americans and Shias. In part, al-Qaeda was part of a class war fuelled by profound anger and so­­cial resentment.

When my friend Ahmed, the grandson of an important sheik, invited me to “come kill some al-Qaeda” around Falluja, he didn’t mean hunt down Saudis who had trained in Afghanistan under bin Laden. He meant, “Let’s go shoot the uppity trash who took over my village.” Ahmed comes from an area outside Falluja where the same people who are now called al-Qaeda briefly kidnapped me in the spring of 2004. They would have shot my three Iraqi friends—one of whom was a sheik—and me if the U.S. Marines hadn’t attacked their checkpoint. After these people have kidnapped you, you understand where Ahmed is coming from.

The insurgents whom I knew at first tolerated al-Qaeda and its foreign volunteers, even though Salafism was alien to their beliefs in local Islamic traditions and their affinity toward the more mystical branch of Islam, Sufism, both anathema to Salafists. But al-Qaeda eventually turned against the other insurgent groups to consolidate its power, demanded their allegiance, and began killing anyone who opposed it or whom it thought might be a threat. In doing so, al-Qaeda extremists became like the Khmer Rouge, murdering any tribal sheik or former Iraqi military office or educated person not on their side (al-Qaeda’s attacks on the Sunni elite make many Sunnis believe that Iran, along with Syria, is funding the organization).

By 2005, the insurgents and their families, whom I had gotten to know, were fighting al-Qaeda as well as attacking the Americans. Today, they are working with the U.S. Army in the various tribal militias of the Anbar Awakening. But this recent success in Iraq is really just the proverbial “one step forward” following two earlier steps backwards. The former insurgents’ loyalty is not to the U.S. —the same people who make up the tribal militias probably killed the majority of American soldiers who have died in Iraq—nor can they tolerate the government in Baghdad. Now that there are Sunni militias to balance the Shia militias, the question is whether the Iraqi government will be forced to reconcile with the Sunnis—or turn up the volume in the civil war.

One of the worst things to happen to Iraq was the war in Bosnia, a misleading precedent of civil strife and international intervention that taught all the wrong lessons. The conflict in the former Yugoslavia gave the West the false impression that we could successfully interfere in complex disagreements because we were on the side of justice and immensely powerful.

We subsequently saw Iraq through a Yugoslav lens, but Iraq is not Yugoslavia. Instead, it has been balkanized by many of the journalists, intellectuals and diplomats who cut their teeth during the “invade and aid” strategies of the 1990s. Western journalists and intellectuals love a three-way civil war. It is a deeply satisfying morality play and makes everything simple—Bad Serbs, Good Bosnians, and Croats allied with the West. Or in Iraq’s case, Bad Sunnis, Good Shias, Kurdish allies. The easy trinitarian logic of the Balkans was applied to Iraq, even before the invasion, by advocates for the war on both the right and the left of the political spectrum.

But Iraq is not a collection of European nation-states, and sectarian identity here is far more complex than in the Balkans, too subtle for foreigners to easily grasp and yet easily exploited to justify invasions in bumper-sticker phrases (although Yugoslavs also endured a great deal of moralistic simplifications themselves). Iraq is like a French cheese that can’t be pasteurized for the palates of a reading public that has grown up on Kraft slices of Good Guy/Bad Guy. Of course, Iraq has good guys and bad guys; they just switch roles a lot depending on our perspective.

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that some of the most sectarian people in Iraq are the foreign journalists, intellectuals and diplomats paid to interpret what is happening in the country. The Kurds were the first to find enthusiastic backers like Michael Ignatieff, who felt that their suffering under Saddam justified the invasion. The Shias, too, have their supporters. For a while after the invasion in 2003 there was a great deal of sympathy among foreigners in Iraq for their point of view after the decades they suffered under Saddam. But once elected, the Shia parties’ policies—militia infiltration of the security services, death squads, torture prisons, contempt for secular values and women, embracing Iran—have encouraged cynicism.

In the past, few outsiders have expressed much sympathy for the Sunnis, those Saddam-loving authoritarians, but that has recently begun to change. Now that the White House has la­­belled the Anbar sheiks “heroes,” and the Shia government is described as pro-Iranian and anti-American, we are beginning to see a sudden outpouring of sympathy for Sunnis in the Western press. This will probably be short-lived, because the Sunnis have a talent for mak­­ing themselves de­­­­spised. But intellectuals and journalists are, to an astonishing degree, sentimental, and fawn over cultures like high school kids with a new crush. If you protect us and tell us your story, we like you and are very sympathetic—for a while. If you try to kill us or, worse, treat us with contempt, we’ll demonize you. The Sunnis treated Westerners with contempt un­­­­­der Saddam, tried to kill us during the insurgency, and were vilified. Now they are weak and friendlier. It is the Shia government that is contemptuous, and its militias life-threatening, so journalists aren’t quite so enthusiastic anymore.

An enduring myth about Iraq is that it can be split into “nation” states based on ethnicity or sectarian differences, with a Shia south, a Sunni middle and a Kurdish north. But Arab Iraqis are far more nationalistic than you would guess from all the discussions of “ethno-sectarian” differences. Indeed, many Iraqis are astonished by the sudden emergence of Sunni and Shia divisions. As one Iraqi American said to me: “We never used to talk about it, but the other day a stripper asked me if I was Sunni or Shia.” And that was in California.

It’s true that many Kurds are keen on partitioning Iraq, but they are also keen on taking chunks of Iran, Syria and Turkey to make a Kurdish homeland. And at least some members of one Shia party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, promote a very decentralized federalism. But, for the most part, the vast majority of Arab Iraqis see Iraq as a strongly unified state. Shias and Sunnis may be chauvinists, violently so in some cases, but that doesn’t mean they don’t see Iraq as a nation.

If you look at recent polls, Shia support for partition runs around two per cent, while the majority, 56 per cent, support a strong centralized state. Some Shias in the south may want to create regional blocks, but this is more an expression of regional culture than sectarianism—they just don’t like Baghdad, the way western Canadians don’t like Ottawa. The Sunnis, for their part, want a unified, centrally controlled government because they view themselves as the country’s natural governing class. In fact, many Sunnis don’t view themselves as Sunni, just Iraqi. This is especially true in Baghdad, where every Sunni I know has a Shia parent or grandparent—until recently class was the primary division in Baghdad, not sect. The Sunnis think of themselves as Iraqi in the way that Torontonians think of themselves as Canadian, not English-Canadian—it’s the other guys who are hyphenated.

The much-repeated line that Iraq is a phony country made up by colonial powers is itself a myth. Indeed, I’m always amazed by the extent of Iraqi nationalism in Arab Iraq, a nationalism that coexists with sectarian suspicions but which is very real. The historian Reidar Visser has written extensively about this, especially the diverse Shia sense of being Iraqi, and the long history of Iraq as a governed unit. But it is too complex an argument to be put forward in the media, and blaming previous colonial governments is easy. As Visser points out, U.S. Democratic party supporters have found the argument for partition to be a convenient solution for a problem they have no clue how to solve, but which makes them sound less clueless and cruel than saying, “Forget the Iraqis, let’s leave.”

But foreign interference in Iraq has greatly exacerbated the divisiveness among the various groups, which were already suffering years of grinding dictatorship under which citizens and sect were played off against each other. The process that began during the Saddam era has now turned into civil war—with outside help. Early on, the American-controlled occupying government created a “Governing Council” organized on sectarian lines, with money being funnelled through various groups according to their “ethno-sectarian” divisions. This only increased existing divisions, and once an actual Iraqi government was elected it governed purely along sectarian lines.

Ironically, the recent American support for Sunni militias is itself a classic Balkan solution to an Iraqi problem. In 1994, the U.S. quietly helped to build up the Croatian army, allowing the Croats to sweep through Serb-held Krajina the following year, viciously cleansing it of the Serbs. The newly pumped-up Croats then acted as a counterbalance to Serbian power; this, in turn, brought Slobodan Milosevic to the table and led to the signing of the Dayton peace accord. Today, the Sunni tribes are the Croats, backed by the U.S. and presenting an increasing military threat to the Shia government, which at some point may have to rely on Iran to defend itself.

To call this “Yugoslav solution” a risky strategy in Iraq is an understatement. Once the Sunnis are free of their own civil war with al-Qaeda, and are no longer wasting their strength fighting U.S. forces, you will see the re-emergence of the same coalition of Sunnis that supported Saddam, but which is increasily allied with the U.S. military. And then? My guess is that there will be a series of well-orchestrated assassinations of Shia government officials, especially in the Interior Ministry, who are viewed as responsible for killing Sunnis and the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad. The U.S. will be unable to stop this, just as in the aftermath of the invasion it was unable to stop the Shia parties from hunting down and killing former Baathists. Nor will there be much incentive for the Americans to step in, since the Sunnis will also target anyone in the government or government-sponsored militias who have close ties to Iran. When Prime Minister Maliki says he’s reluctant to have the tribal militias gain too much power, he knows that the old Saddam cadres of Republican Guards and intelligence officers with a base among the tribal militias in Anbar will be coming into Baghdad for a little payback. It will be a proxy war against Iran, masked by warring sectarian militias. And this is just the kind of problem partitioning the country cannot solve.

A few years ago, I was asked to speak about Iraq at a conference on insurgencies. At the end of the day, participants were asked to guess what might happen in five years. I said I thought the U.S. would be allied with the Sunnis and fighting Iran. In a limited way, that has turned out to be the case. To some degree, the military has switched sides in the middle of the fight.

So far, the plan has not been as successful as its proponents maintain. But it isn’t entirely a failure, either. It is probably the only major military strategy that has had any real effect since the original invasion. I’ve now been invited to “hunt al-Qaeda” in two other areas outside Anbar, which means there has been a ripple effect in the Sunni areas. But in the end, it may not matter much. The discussion in Washington and New York has always drowned out the reality of Iraq. One of the terrifying aspects of the war is the monumental failure of analysis and action on the part of America’s political, military, journalistic and even business elites.

That problem may be systemic—the result of a “fact-based” America confronting a society it did not understand and simply making up an alternate reality, guns ablaze. So far, the Republicans have done an impressive job at failing in Iraq. Soon it may be the Democrats’ turn to fail, albeit in a different way. It’s a shame because Iraqi political parties are perfectly capable of doing that on their own. Indeed, they seem to be going out of their way to compete with the Americans on that score.

US-Allawi Coup May Be On Its Way

By Arianna Huffington

As we all await the Petraeus Report on the state of the surge, we may also need to be anticipating the Allawi Coup. I'm talking, of course about Ayad Allawi, longtime C.I.A. asset and former interim prime minister of Iraq. He's making quite the PR push to get his old job back, penning an op-ed for the Washington Post, hooking up with Wolf Blitzer on Late Edition on Sunday, and even putting the high-powered GOP lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers on a $300,000 retainer.

It says everything you need to know about who the true power holders in Iraq are that Allawi, who has a "six-point plan" for Iraq that involves replacing the current Prime Minister, is campaigning in Washington -- not Baghdad. He clearly knows that despite Bush's bathetic paeans to Iraqi sovereignty, the real deciders in Iraq are not the Iraqi people, but a few dozen folks in the White House and the Pentagon. They are Allawi's true constituency.

So where does the White House stand on the idea of Allawi replacing current embattled prime minister Nouri al-Maliki? Well, it depends on whether you think Mitch McConnell was freelancing on Fox News Sunday when he jumped on the bash-Maliki bandwagon, calling the Maliki-led Iraqi government "pretty much a disaster" -- or whether you think he was performing his familiar function as White House water carrier.

Could the White House be seeing in the blame-Maliki-for-the-disaster-in-Iraq meme an opportunity replace the sputtering "give the surge a chance" plan with a "give Allawi a chance" plan?

Let's go to the Blitzer-Allawi interview to see what such a move would mean for the White House.

For starters, Allawi told Blitzer that his "six points call for a full partnership with the United States" and that his "objective is to develop a plan to save Iraq and to save American lives, as well as, of course, Iraqi lives, and to save the American mission in Iraq." Full Partnership? Save the American mission? Surely, music to the White House's ears. And it was good of him to toss in those Iraqi lives -- of course.

So what would an Allawi takeover mean in terms of U.S. troops remaining in Iraq? "If we talk around the region of two to two-and-a-half years," Allawi told Blitzer, "I think we are in the right direction." Who needs Petraeus buying the administration another few months with his report when the Allawi coup can buy them another two-and-a-half years?

And the White House doesn't have to worry about Allawi knowing his lines -- he's already memorized the playbook. When Blitzer asked him when the United States might be able to start reducing our presence in Iraq, Allawi responded with a Bush classic: "As soon as the Iraqi forces are able to stand on their feet and provide security for the Iraqis I think the draw-down should start." Ah: When they stand up, we can stand down! Misty water-colored memories. Being away from Iraq so much, I guess Allawi missed all those reports about the repeated failure of Iraqi forces to "stand on their feet."

So exactly how would an Allawi-for-Maliki switch occur? Allawi says he wants to proceed by "democratic means." But after being appointed interim prime minister by the U.S.-led coalition in June of 2004, Allawi had six months to campaign before the January 2005 legislative elections. He came in third with 14% of the vote.

When Blitzer asked Allawi who is paying for the $300,000 Barbour Griffith & Rogers lobbying contract, Allawi wouldn't say. He was only willing to disclose that the "payment is made by an Iraqi person who was a supporter of us, of the INA, of myself, of our program, and he has supported this wholeheartedly, without any strings attached."

As Spencer Ackerman of TPMmuckracker wrote, perhaps it's being financed by Allawi's old buddy Hazem Shaalan, who Allawi appointed as his defense minister. Shaalan is currently fighting charges that he stole $1 billion from the Iraqi defense budget (out of a total of $1.3 billion). That's some way to endear yourself to the Iraqi people.

Allawi and Shaalan are also closely tied to the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, which is funded and controlled by the C.I.A. and which has been a persistent thorn in relations between the U.S. and Maliki.

Meanwhile, we'll have to see whether Barbour Griffith & Rogers' lobbying will be as effective with administration officials as it has been with Washington's media gatekeepers. Last week, Bush issued a tepid defense of Maliki, saying he is "a good guy, a good man with a difficult job, and I support him." Hmm, didn't he say the same thing about Alberto Gonzales? And Don Rumsfeld?

While I was working on this post, I got a call from John Cusack, who had watched Blitzer's interview with Allawi from Berlin, where he is making a movie. He was stunned by Blitzer's remark to Allawi, after he had read him Maliki's quote about Iraq being able to "find friends elsewhere": "Those words," Blitzer said, "were seen here in Washington as pretty biting, given the enormous amount of support the United States has provided Iraq over these years."

"Can you imagine?" Cusack told me. "We invade their country, an invasion that has resulted in over 100,000 -- and maybe as many as 650,000 -- Iraqi civilians dead; 2 million Iraqis having fled the country, with 1.14 million displaced from their homes within Iraq; and tens of thousands of Iraqis detained -- with many of them tortured. After that 'enormous amount of support,' Iraqis have the temerity to complain?"

Talk about ingratitude. I bet Allawi would never bite the hand that feeds -- and bombs -- him.