Ameriyah update

An interesting response from the current battalion commander in Ameriyah, LTC Don Kuehl, to this article from the Guardian.

One thing that I haven't seen much of is to what extent the "soft" ethnic cleansing, i.e., the homogenization of neighborhoods, has contributed to the willingness for CLC to work with US forces and contributed to the reduction in citizen deaths.

Another thing I haven't seen is coverage on upcoming elections and efforts to unlock the grips of political power from the religious/militia parties. I wonder if it's a matter of trying not to taint potential alternatives with American support and coverage or something else. While this goes much beyond just one neighborhood, much of the recent coverage revolves around the string of tactical successes that the "surge" has brought, but unless this translates into greater strategic success, then we won't have really moved the ball forward much.

It is interesting that nothing LTC Kuehl says really contradicts anything in the article. LTC Kuehl says that Abu Abed is not the only authority in Ameriya. The Guardian notes that there are Americans present, and they try to limit Abu Abed's authority to raid and detain --- they just cannot supervise him 24/7, and thus have little real authority over them. Detaining one militiaman (for what, and for how long?) does not impress, nor does a written set of rules. The Guardian reporter witnesses numerous violations of said rules, including by Abu Abed himself, but LTC Kuehl does not mention any penalties or investigations resulting from these charges.

That IA and US Army units are not suffering casualties in Ameriyah also does not contradict the Guardian article - that the fall in casualties began when Abu Abed's Islamic Army cell stopped targeting Americans and began targeting al-Qaeda is attested to the article quite well, as is Abu Abed's open friendliness towards American officers.

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Another thing I haven't seen is coverage on upcoming elections and efforts to unlock the grips of political power from the religious/militia parties. I wonder if it's a matter of trying not to taint potential alternatives with American support and coverage or something else.

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First, there are questions as to whether or not elections are going to be held at all. There has been almost no progress on actually defining the relative powers of provincial and local governments vis a vis the center, which is a key stumbling point between Sunnis & Sadrists vs ISCI and the Kurds, as well as no progress in setting the provincial councils that will run the elections, despite the fact that Maliki claims that elections will be by the end of the year.

Second, really, what political groupings or movements exist in Iraq in any significant numbers that do not have their own armed militias? Maybe al-Dawa, but that party exists solely as a counterweight between the Sadrists and the ISCI and is hardly nonreligious. Also what, exactly, are the potential alternatives? The technocratic, educated middle class was crippled in the 1980s and 1990s and has has largely fled the country since 2003. Violence may have declined from the furious pace of early 2007, but let's not forget that killings are down to a pace equivalent to early 2006, when things were not exactly seen as good, either. There is no real room in Iraq for an unarmed political party, and not much of a constituency for one, either.