The Other Iraqi Awakening: Sunnis are back on the beat. (Getty Images)
It was like that in the Beirut of the 1980s, too: weeks, months of calm would pass, giving the impression that the civil war was over, then a colossal bombing would kill dozens and shatter the illusion of anything resembling peace or national cohesion. That's Iraq today, where the illusion of peace is always a trigger away exploding.
Five bombs today in Baghdad, at least three of them set off by suicide bombers. More than 120 killed so far. The bombers went after the central institutions of civilized and communal life: a college, a courthouse, a market, a mosque, a residential neighborhood not far from the Interior Ministry. That last is a clue about the bombers: the ministry is controlled by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki at one level, and by former Shiite militiamen at another. The ministry is the enforcer of Shiite hegemony in Iraq. It's Iraqi Sunnis' Bastille.
The coordinated bombings are al-Qaeda's signature, but that's knee-jerk analysis. Al-Qaeda didn't invent the coordinated bombing. Back in the Lebanon of the early 1980s, it was Hezbollah's signature (Hezbollah is Shiite). Al-Qaeda may have adopted the tactic. That doesn't mean the bombings today were an al-Qaeda job. Al Qaeda in Iraq has been eliminated, principally by Iraqis--and more to the point, by Iraqi Sunnis, whose distaste for al-Qaeda is similar to Hamas' in Gaza.
That's not to say that the bombings are less worrisome for it. To the contrary. They're more worrisome if, as I think is the case, they turn out to be the work of a reconstituted, or reconstituting, indigenous Sunni insurgency. That's been a running fear in Iraq: the so-called "Sons of Iraq," the former members of the Sunni insurgency bribed with American money to give up the fight and join the "Iraqi Awakening," have not been treated well since the Americans began their pull-back. They've not been paid. They've not been incorporated into the armed forces. They've certainly not been given entry to the Interior Ministry. The bombings may be their answer.
The bombings, besides their bloody results on Baghdad's streets, reflect another serious disconnect between American popular assumptions about Iraq and Iraqi realities. The "surge" didn't work. It pressed the pause button. As Steven Lee Myers wrote in The Times in late November, "Adopting legislation to knit the country together; reforming the Constitution; strengthening independent security forces; reconciling Iraq's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds -- all were benchmarks, and all remain partly or wholly unmet, despite the security gains that were supposed to create the space for political progress and thus peace."
Keep that in mind in light of President Obama's Afghan escalation.
Keep this in mind, too--the words Obama spoke about withdrawing from Iraq when he last visited there in April: "It is time for us to transition to the Iraqis. They need to take responsibility for their country and for their sovereignty. And in order for them to do that, they have got to make political accommodations."
Isn't that what he's already saying about Afghans? If most Afghans aren't listening, the Taliban certainly are.
See Also:
- Profile: Iraq's Nouri al-Maliki
- Who Are the Sons of Iraq, or Iraqi Awakening?
- Escalation Gamble: Obama Orders 30,000 More Troops to Afghanistan
- Interpreting "Good News" from Iraq
- Is the "Surge" Working? An Analysis
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