Iraq after the ‘surge’

The interesting thing about the surge was always going to be what would happen when it came to an end. We do not have long to wait. By July, American forces in Iraq will have returned to pre-surge levels. Top US commanders are already debating how best to maintain the fragile but undeniable gains which the surge has achieved, and have decided it would be dangerous to draw down their forces any further.

Accordingly, by the summer Iraq will have reached a fateful moment in its post-Saddam destiny. Five developments are worth careful watching.

•    As the surge winds down, Al-Qaeda insurgents are likely to test US resolve by trying to regain the initiative which, to a considerable degree, they have lost in recent months. If they are able to resume devastating suicide attacks, particularly in Baghdad, that would be a serious setback for the Americans.
•    The Sunni tribesmen (known as Awakening Councils) who have switched sides and joined the US-led fight against Al-Qaeda will increasingly want to be rewarded for doing so – but the Shi’ite-led Baghdad government, suspicious of where their true loyalties lie, will be reluctant to integrate them into the national armed forces. This risks turning them into yet another sectarian militia.
•   The Shi’ite militia, the Mahdi Army, whose ceasefire since the summer of last year has been an important factor behind the decline in violence, will come under growing pressure to resume operations – pressure its leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, would prefer to resist in order to maintain his current political respectability. But if serious sectarian conflict resumes, the ceasefire is likely to collapse.
•   The Iraqi political factions will continue their halting efforts to pass legislation designed to promote national reconciliation, but without substantial success. Nuri al-Maliki’s weak and divided government will stumble on, despite general disapproval.
•   Both Sunni and Shi’ite political factions will prepare for provincial elections scheduled for the beginning of October (though recent squabbling has cast doubt on whether that deadline will be met).

In short, while anti-American violence will continue, the Iraqi actors will become increasingly preoccupied with their own localised power struggles – for the Sunnis, centred on Anbar province; for the Shia, on their southern heartland stretching from Baghdad to Basra. The main Sunni power struggle will be between the Awakening Councils and Vice-President Hashemi’s Islamic Party of Iraq. The main Shi’ite power struggle will pit the Sadrist movement against the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI, formerly SCIRI) of Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim. In the new Iraq, with its weak central government, power at the local level is an important prize and one the different factions are ready to compete (and fight) for. Moreover these struggles are not only about power and resources but about the future character of the Iraqi state (centralised or decentralised, Islamic or secular).

The second half of the year will be a highly sensitive period for the Americans, not simply because it will indicate the direction in which Iraq is heading, but because there is a real danger that the Iraq issue could return to haunt the American elections. Thus far, the issue has receded (to the relief no doubt of the White House) and economic concerns have taken its place. Should Iraq plunge further into serious instability after the surge, the outcome of a highly unusual presidential contest will become even harder to predict.

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