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Sunni Awakening Unraveling
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A key pillar of the U.S. strategy to pacify Iraq is in danger of collapsing because the Iraqi government is failing to absorb tens of thousands of former Sunni Muslim insurgents who'd joined U.S.-allied militia groups into the country's security forces.
American officials have credited the militias, known as the Sons of Iraq or Awakening councils, with undercutting support for the group al Qaida in Iraq and bringing peace to large swaths of the country, including Anbar province and parts of Baghdad. Under the program, the United States pays each militia member a stipend of about $300 a month and promised that they'd get jobs with the Iraqi government. (NOTE: the U.S. has over 100,000 militia members on the payroll and has spent $303M on salaries this year).
But the Iraqi government, which is led by Shiite Muslims, has brought only a relative handful of the more than 100,000 militia members into the security forces. Now officials are making it clear that they don't intend to include most of the rest.
Some militia members say that such a move would force them into open warfare with the government again.
The Maliki government is setting a November 1st deadline for Sunni Awakening militia members who haven't been incorporated into the national security forces or given civilian jobs to lay down their weapons. That seems pretty unlikely. This, obviously, wouldn't change the McCain plan for Iraq; he would like U.S. forces to stay in Iraq whether violence is down or up. But it poses problems for an Obama presidency.
Word comes today the U.S. and Iraq have agreed on a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. American soldiers are to be out of Iraqi cities by next June and fully withdrawn by sometime in 2011. While it's expected President Bush will sign off on the agreement (it came with tremendous concessions from the Bush Administration - claims of autonomy and immunity from Iraqi law were abandoned), there are still hurdles to clear getting approval from the Iraqi government.
It may be that the economy has replaced Iraq as the most important issue to voters in the upcoming election, the U.S. is a long ways from withdrawal and the situation is precarious, at best.
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