The recent increase in violence in Anbar is not an aberration & will likely continue.

Link

Adam L. Silverman, PhD served as the Field Social Scientist and Team Lead for Human Terrain Team Iraq 6 (HTT IZ6) in 2008 and was then the US Army Human Terrain System Strategic Communications Advisor. Via SST, here

"Three quick caveats:

1) I've been home from Iraq since end of last OCT and 2) I was stationed and worked to the South and East of Baghdad, not to its West, and 3) I spent enough time with both tribal Sunnis and Shia, including the elites leading the local equivalent of the Sawha/Awakening, to have a properly informed understanding of the dynamic at play.

The increase in violence in Anbar Province can be attributed to four things:

1) The Awakening folks, and their supporters generally described as the tribal or traditional Sunnis, did not capture a majority of seats in the provincial government during the last round of elections despite what was supposed to be record turnout (ie no boycott). The turnout, in fact, was actually less than during the boycotted 2005 elections, which itself raises questions about the ability of the various political parties and movements to mobilize their supporters. Initially the results indicated that the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is the local version of the Muslim Brothers and has no real indigenous constituency, maintained their majority and control of the provincial government. While these results were eventually changed as a result of protests and investigations of fraud allegations, the final result only gave the Awakening Movement two more seats than its main rival in the IIP. This is a major deprivation issue: the belief that one is entitled to something that has been withheld. In fact it led to immediate threats of violence, which are what ultimately led to the official reconsideration of the electoral outcome. These muddled and confused outcomes are partially the result of the Iraqi High Electoral Committee and the US being rolled on the manner and format of the provincial election laws (open list/proportional representation), which meant that even if you got more of the vote, if you ran alone you could still loose to someone on a party list. Since this type of electoral format is opaque, hard to follow, and has a demonstrated track record of not working well, it should be no surprise that it led to problems and that the confused Iraqis would be upset by them. And just a note here: it wasn't just the Iraqi's confused by this system, some of the really sharp PRT personnel I worked with didn't understand this system either.

2) In May 2009 David Rose reported that the Sunnis who would become the Awakening in Anbar tried to work out a deal with the US as far back as 2004 and were cut off by Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz (he announced they were all NAZIs and closed down the contacts). Based on the failure of those negotiations, the establishment of the Sons of Iraq (SOI) in late 2007 and early 2008 (remember it took over a year from the time of the Awakening in Anbar until a formalized arrangement took place with Coalition Forces and the Government of Iraq), and what has happened or threatened to happen since we've turned control of the Sons of Iraq over to the Government of Iraq (GOI) and the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), we are perceived as somewhere between a not very smart or nor very responsible or not very faithful ally. And this is important. One of the elites I interviewed while in Iraq was a retired Iraqi Army Brigadier General of Special Forces. Highly educated, fluent English, former professor at their War College, and the leader of the awakening in the area where I was assigned. In fact our interview was, essentially, a 2 plus hour retelling of the clearing of the qada - starting well before Coalition Forces had a presence in the area through to when a brigade (the one before mine) was finally stationed there. Moreover, this sheikh was Sunni, but his mother was Shia - like so many Iraqis with ties to both denominations, familial, tribal, personal (all the near relationships). He told me that until 2007 "Coalition Forces didn’t listen to good friends, rather they mistakenly listened to the bad ones". The worry for the Sawha, and that includes the Shia involved with them (and I've met and interviewed over a dozen Shia leaders and members of the Sawha/Awakening/SOI) is that its an "us versus them" thing. "Us" being the Iraqis that care about Iraq, Sunni and Shia, and "them" being the GOI and ISF which is dominated by Iranian proxies and the Kurds, neither group being interested in Iraq as Iraq or for Iraq. With the US pullback from the cities at the end of June 2009, with GOI and ISF dominating the operational relationship because of the Security Agreement, the Sawha folks have been wondering if they have to take things into their own hands and occasionally doing so.

3) The last point leads to this one: in OCT of 2007 the Anbar Sawha leadership made it clear in an interview with (if I remember correctly) reporters from McClatchy that they were biding their time and waiting for the US to pull back inside Iraq and then out of Iraq so that they could settle up with the Iranian backed Shia controlling the GOI and ISF. They indicated that as soon as we left they were going to go to Baghdad and the streets would run red with blood. As we pull back and prepare to pull out, and as we provide less and less support to the Sawha we allied with during the Surge, and as the GOI and ISF continues to assert more and more control in advance of the national elections, just as they tried to do in advance of the provincial elections, the Sawha/Awakenings/SOI are going to take matter smore and more into their own hands.

4) The final point is that the Sawha/Awakenings/SOI guys are taking matters into their own hands for several reasons: to settle scores, to establish dominance with the societal structure and hierarchy, to defend themselves against actual and perceived actions of the GOI/ISF, and to get our attention. Please remember that Iraqis are high context communicators. They're not going to come to a meeting, walk up to the USMC Regimental Commander, shake hands, say hello, and then lay out the list of things that actual bother them and then present a list of things they want done to remedy the situation. Rather, they're going to communicate their displeasure and their intentions in symbolic ways. In this case they're going to blow stuff up because they've learned that we'll respond that kind of communication.

Finally, a lot of this could've been avoided had the US used its leverage, when it had it as both the official occupying power and the strongest actor in Iraq, back in 2007 and early 2008, to foster a reconciliation process. Instead the previous administration focused its attention on getting an unrealistic Status of Forces Agreement and then a Provincial Elections process. The US failed in both those endeavors, leading ultimately for failures in dealing with Iraq and poorer outcomes for the average Iraqi. As a result the reconciliation process never occurred, the GOI always indicates that they have a plan for doing that and they'll do it their way and in their own time. As a result reconciliation is much more likely to look like cleansing of areas and score settling, which in turn will lead to greater fragmentation of Iraqi society and a greater potentiality for a Kurdish break away and an internal struggle between Dawa and ISCI/BADR to float the Shia south free as a congery that can align with Iran. And this is itself compounded by the failure of the Coalition Provisional Authority, and subsequently the Iraqi Transition Assistance Office, to get the power working and the water flowing..."

Posted by G, Z, or B at 10:05 AM