The "surge" is a success?

[Arrian]

Originally posted by DanS

Perhaps it's mostly a military question. Certainly, since Vietnam, this thought has not been en vogue in the US.

I think this is worth highlighting.

DanS believes that the insurgency can be defeated by military force.

Why? What makes you think this? As you noted, the American experience in Vietnam certainly isn't the basis for this view.

-Arrian

[Ramo]

It's the British school of reporting where one doesn't just transcribe government press releases. Patrick Cockburn is one of the best reporters around on Iraq.

[Arrian]

An interesting article that provides an update wrt to what the Kurds are up to...

What Do They Want? Kirkuk! When Do They Want It? Now!
The Kurds play a dangerous game of brinksmanship.
By Zvika Krieger
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2007, at 2:08 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BANI SLAWA, Iraq—A ramshackle village of trash-strewn alleyways crisscrossed by makeshift power lines and awnings made of empty rice sacks, this "collective town" in northern Iraq was built in 1998 to house Kurds kicked out of Kirkuk by Saddam Hussein during his infamous Anfal campaign. The residents of Bani Slawa are counting the days until they can leave this squalor and return to their ancestral homes in Kirkuk. And with Iraq's new constitution setting a definitive timeline to deal with that contested city by year's end, many of them have already begun packing up their meager belongings and hitting the road. Thousands have even moved into a soccer stadium on the outskirts of Kirkuk. "We have made up our minds to go back," says 73-year-old Mam Hamid Bizam, who fled from Kirkuk to Bani Slawa in 1988 after his family was killed by Baathists. "Kirkuk is ours."

Last month should have brought Bizam and his neighbors one step closer to Kirkuk: a census of the city's residents scheduled for July 31, the last benchmark before a referendum on Kirkuk's status in November, as laid out in the constitution's Article 140. The census's postponement, which came without any explanation from the central government, marks a significant escalation in the already explosive tensions surrounding the Kirkuk question. "There is procrastination [by the government], and if this issue is not resolved, all options are open," warned Masoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish Regional Government, which administers the semiautonomous Kurdish areas in northern Iraq. "If Clause 140 is not implemented, then there will be a real civil war."

Barzani's speech is just the latest bellicose pronouncement from the Kurdish government. One of the main victims of Saddam Hussein's Arabization efforts, Kirkuk has come to symbolize the injustice the Kurds suffered at his hands—and its annexation to the KRG the only way to remedy it. Perhaps more significant are Kirkuk's rich oil fields—estimated to contain 10 billion barrels—which are the key to the economic self-sufficiency essential for Kurdish aspirations to an independent state.

The problem is that Kirkuk contains a significant minority population who do not wish to come under Kurdish control, fearing they'd be treated as second-class citizens. The city's Arab community, mostly Shiite, would rather cast their lot with Baghdad, which looks to be controlled by a Shiite coalition for the foreseeable future. The other sizable community, the ethnic Turkmen, has been advocating for special status for Kirkuk, independent from the Kurds and the central government. "The minorities in Kirkuk hear Kurdish politicians on TV and on the radio, read their words in the newspaper, and they are petrified of them," says a Kurdistan-based worker for the National Democratic Institute. "They would rather fight than come under Kurdish control."

This instability in Kirkuk has been compounded by Iraq's neighbors, who worry that an independent Kurdish state would encourage their own Kurdish populations to press for more rights. The thousands of Turkish troops amassed at Iraq's border are, in part, meant to send a clear message to the Kurds about Turkey's stake in the Kirkuk issue; a 2003 threat by Ankara to invade Iraq if the city is annexed is being taken very seriously these days. Turkey and Syria could also bankrupt the Kurdish region in a matter of weeks by closing down their borders, and—as many Kurds in Iraq fear—they could ramp up their support for radical groups in Kirkuk that are behind much of the recent instability.

Al-Qaida and its ilk are capitalizing on this volatility to bring their brand of relentless suicide bombing and explosions to the previously peaceful Kurdish region. Violence in Kirkuk has escalated exponentially as the date for the referendum draws closer—moving from the city's ethnic enclaves to include even the Kurdish neighborhoods. Last month, Kirkuk was rocked by its deadliest attack since the 2003 invasion, with 85 killed and 180 wounded by a truck bomb. A recent report by the International Crisis Group said, "Today Kirkuk resembles Baghdad in miniature."

If you ask Kamal Kirkuki, the deputy speaker of the Iraqi Kurdish parliament (one of the components of the KRG), to delay the referendum in order to resolve these issues first, he will pull out his laptop and show you a series of videos: footage of Kurds being beaten to death and thrown off tall buildings by Saddam's security forces, blood splashing the camera as their tongues are sliced out, piercing screams of pain as their limbs are chopped off one by one. "If we postpone the referendum," he says, slamming shut the laptop, "this is what we will get."

It's a fatalistic attitude that Kurds have honed over centuries of mistreatment and abuse. They see this referendum as a unique opportunity to get Kirkuk by capitalizing on their relative strength within the central government. As they see it, a postponement could allow Kirkuk to slip through their fingers forever. The 2006 Iraq Study Group, which brought thousands to the streets of Kurdistan to protest its suggestion that the referendum should be delayed, only heightened this sense of paranoia.

"People have been telling us for years to wait for our rights—'Later, later, later'—and all we get are mass graves and chemical smoke," Kirkuki says. "We're not waiting anymore."

The Kurds are barreling toward a referendum they are sure to win even though a hasty resolution of Kirkuk's status promises to bring even more violence. They have done little to reassure Kirkuk's minority populations that the KRG would protect their rights—by, for example, strengthening minority provisions in the draft of the Kurdish Constitution and appointing ethnic leaders to senior KRG positions. Instead, Kurdish nationalist rhetoric has become more aggressive. Kurdish politicians have made little effort at outreach to these communities, preferring to deal with the small segments that support annexation rather than the significant portions that don't.

The Kurdish narrative of victimhood prevents many of them from admitting that they may be the aggressors in this situation. But the KRG could get more than they bargain for by taking such a hard line on the Kirkuk issue and recklessly raising hopes among Kirkuk's displaced Kurds like those in Bani Slawa.

"Imagine if someone took your house, stole your property, killed your sons, raped your wife, kidnapped your daughter, and then the government told you to just live peacefully among them as their neighbors," Kirkuki says. "If the Kurds don't get Kirkuk, thousands will take revenge."

It doesn't seem that their rhetoric will soften anytime soon, since the Kirkuk issue has become a key tool for the two warring Kurdish parties to prove their nationalist credentials. "The Kurds will never relinquish or bargain over Kirkuk," Barzani reiterated after the postponed census. The hasty constitutional process was reaffirmed last week as the two Kurdish parties joined the two Shiite parties in renewing their support for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on the condition that he commit to a "speedy completion of the stages of application of Article 140 of the constitution … and the attempt to adhere to the timetable … to the settlement of matters in Kirkuk."

But by raising expectations on all sides, Kurdish politicians have boxed themselves into a corner, risking ethnic violence in Kirkuk and Turkish retaliation if the referendum is pushed through by the November deadline, Kurdish backlash if it isn't.

"The Kurds are now anxiously awaiting the implementation of 140 by the end of the year," says Nouri Talabany, an independent Kurdish MP from Kirkuk and chair of the Kurdish electoral commission. "If nothing is done for them soon, they will become hopeless, and that is dangerous."

It is a precarious game of brinksmanship in which the Kurds will lose no matter the outcome. The central government in Baghdad can help allay Kurdish concerns by helping them to develop oil fields in territory already under KRG control. But a sustainable solution to the Kirkuk issue will come only from genuine Kurdish efforts to build confidence among the city's minority communities—a lengthy process that will require postponing the referendum. Their leaders must accept that sacrificing a swift victory in the short term is the only way to prevent Kirkuk from becoming the next flashpoint in Iraq's bloody civil war.

Ever since the Kurds of northern Iraq received semiautonomous status in 1991 (after the first Gulf War), two political parties have competed for control of the Kurdish regional government—the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Party (known as the PUK). From 1994 to '96, the parties waged a bloody civil war that claimed more than a thousand lives and essentially divided the Kurdish territory into two separate fiefdoms. The civil war ended in 1998 with a U.S.-mediated cease-fire called the Washington Agreement.

The two parties joined forces in 2005 to form the Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan, winning 25.6 percent of the vote in the 2005 elections for the Iraqi National Assembly and securing the post of president for Kurdish politician Jalal Talabani. The subsequent 2006 alliance by the two parties to jointly govern Iraqi Kurdistan has been tenuous at best, with both parties maintaining their own militias and separate finance ministries.

With increasingly aggressive rhetoric, each party has tried to position itself as the champion of the Kirkuk issue as a way to gain more support among the Kurdish population. A recent report by the International Crisis Group declared, "Neither party can afford to take the lead in sounding moderate on Kirkuk, as the other would promptly exploit such 'weakness' for rhetorical and political (especially recruitment) gain. … So when [KDP leader Masoud] Barzani calls Kirkuk 'the heart of Kurdistan,' [PUK leader Jalal] Talabani immediately has to say Kirkuk is 'the Jerusalem of Kurdistan.' It's like a bidding war."

Zvika Krieger is a writer based in the Middle East.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2172546/

[Ramo]

It's also worth pointing out that Maliki is going to go to the mat for the Kurds on Kirkuk since if they were to abandon him (now that the Sadrists, the NAF, Allawi, etc. have as well), he's gone.

And no Shrapnel, I don't have any "credentials." I just read a lot of new s on Iraq from lots of sources.

[Ramo]

Regarding the Army/Police/Militia issue go to google new s and look it up. It's not hard. Here's the first link:

Basra police 'work for militias'
Mr Colbourne said some Iraqi officers were corrupt
Some Iraqi police officers in Basra are working for Shia Muslim militias and carrying out sectarian violence, the UK's chief police adviser has warned.

Mike Colbourne, assistant chief constable of Bedfordshire, admitted there were officers who were guilty of corruption, kidnap and murder.

But he said the situation was getting better and promised UK forces would not leave until Iraqis were ready.

He told BBC's The World at One "We know that there are bad apples."

Mr Colbourne said that in spite of an anti-militia drive by the new provincial director of police, Major General Jaleel Khalaf Shuwail, a number of officers were still linked to violence.


We are not looking to leave Iraq. We want to leave Iraq when the job is done
Mike Colbourne
Chief UK adviser to police in Basra

He added: "The corruption that we are talking about does range from financial corruption through to serious offences such as murder, kidnap.

"There are a number of Iraqi police service officers who are clearly aligned to militias.

"I think it is fair to say that there is sectarian violence that is being committed by both police officers and other Iraqi security forces officers.

"That is just the truth of the situation as it is at the moment.

"We know that there are bad apples and there are a significant number of both serving, but also those who have been sacked and retired, officers who continue to agitate and continue to be involved in violence."

Mr Colbourne said that British police advisers were helping Iraqi officers to drive out corruption from their ranks.

BBC middle east editor Jeremy Bowen said it would have been easier to address the problems as they were building up after British troops captured Basra in 2003 and not now, when the end of the British occupation was in sight.

He added that Mr Colbourne's comments came at a time when Britain was being widely criticized for losing control of Basra.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6957170.stm

[Ramo]

From International Crisis Group:

Where Is Iraq Heading? Lessons from Basra

Middle East Report N°67
25 June 2007

To access the report in Arabic, please click here.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Amid the media and military focus on Baghdad, another major Iraqi city – Basra – is being overlooked. Yet Basra’s experience carries important lessons for the capital and nation as a whole. Coalition forces have already implemented a security plan there, Operation Sinbad, which was in many ways similar to Baghdad’s current military surge. What U.S. commanders call “clear, hold and build”, their British counterparts earlier had dubbed “clear, hold and civil reconstruction”. And, as in the capital, the putative goal was to pave the way for a takeover by Iraqi forces. Far from being a model to be replicated, however, Basra is an example of what to avoid. With renewed violence and instability, Basra illustrates the pitfalls of a transitional process that has led to collapse of the state apparatus and failed to build legitimate institutions. Fierce intra-Shiite fighting also disproves the simplistic view of Iraq neatly divided between three homogenous communities.

Lack of attention to Basra is understandable. Iraq’s future is often believed to depend on Baghdad, and most of the spectacular bombings have taken place in the centre of the country, far from the southern city. Observers, by now accustomed to the capital’s dynamics, have had difficulty making sense of Basra’s and so have tended to downplay them. Finally, because U.S. forces have not been directly involved, news coverage has been both limited to Arabic and British media and forced to compete with the gruesome violence that is tearing the centre apart.

But to neglect Basra is a mistake. The nation’s second largest city, it is located in its most oil-rich region. Basra governorate also is the only region enjoying maritime access, making it the country’s de facto economic capital and a significant prize for local political actors. Sandwiched between Iran and the Gulf monarchies, at the intersection of the Arab and Persian worlds, the region is strategically important. Sociologically, Basra’s identity essentially has been forged in opposition not only to the capital but also to other major southern cities such as Najaf and Karbala. For these reasons, it is wrong either to ignore it or lump it together with an imaginary, undifferentiated Shiite south.

On its face, Basra’s security plan ranked as a qualified success. Between September 2006 and March 2007, Operation Sinbad sought to rout out militias and hand security over to newly vetted and stronger Iraqi security forces while kick-starting economic reconstruction. Criminality, political assassinations and sectarian killings, all of which were rampant in 2006, receded somewhat and – certainly as compared to elsewhere in the country – a relative calm prevailed. Yet this reality was both superficial and fleeting. By March–April 2007, renewed political tensions once more threatened to destabilise the city, and relentless attacks against British forces in effect had driven them off the streets into increasingly secluded compounds. Basra’s residents and militiamen view this not as an orderly withdrawal but rather as an ignominious defeat. Today, the city is controlled by militias, seemingly more powerful and unconstrained than before.

What progress has occurred cannot conceal the most glaring failing of all: the inability to establish a legitimate and functioning provincial apparatus capable of redistributing resources, imposing respect for the rule of law and ensuring a peaceful transition at the local level. Basra’s political arena remains in the hands of actors engaged in bloody competition for resources, undermining what is left of governorate institutions and coercively enforcing their rule. The local population has no choice but to seek protection from one of the dominant camps. Periods of stability do not reflect greater governing authority so much as they do a momentary – and fragile – balance of interests or of terror between rival militias. Inevitably, conflicts re-emerge and even apparently minor incidents can set off a cycle of retaliatory violence. A political process designed to pacify competition and ensure the non-violent allocation of goods and power has become a source of intense and often brutal struggle.

Basra is a case study of Iraq’s multiple and multiplying forms of violence. These often have little to do with sectarianism or anti-occupation resistance. Instead, they involve the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighbourhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors. Should other causes of strife – sectarian violence and the fight against coalition forces – recede, the concern must still be that Basra's fate will be replicated throughout the country on a larger, more chaotic and more dangerous scale. The lessons are clear. Iraq’s violence is multifaceted, and sectarianism is only one of its sources. It follows that the country’s division along supposedly inherent and homogenous confessional and ethnic lines is not an answer. It follows, too, that rebuilding the state, tackling militias and imposing the rule of law cannot be done without confronting the parties that currently dominate the political process and forging a new and far more inclusive political compact.

Iraq is in the midst of a civil war. But before and beyond that, Iraq has become a failed state – a country whose institutions and, with them, any semblance of national cohesion, have been obliterated. That is what has made the violence – all the violence: sectarian, anti-coalition, political, criminal and otherwise – both possible and, for many, necessary. Resolving the confrontation between Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds is one priority. But rebuilding a functioning and legitimate state is another – no less urgent, no less important and no less daunting.

http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4914&l=1

[Patroklos]

Tick for Tack

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/08/news/assess.php

U.S. hopes success in Anbar, Iraq can be repeated
By John F. Burns Published: July 8, 2007

RAMADI, Iraq: Sunni merchants watched warily from behind neat stacks of fruit and vegetables as Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno walked with a platoon of bodyguards through the Qatana bazaar here one recent afternoon. At last, one leathery-faced trader glanced furtively up and down the narrow, refuse-strewn street to check who might be listening, then broke the silence.

"America good! Al Qaeda bad!" he said in halting English, flashing a thumb's-up in the direction of the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq.

Until only a few months ago, the Central Street bazaar was enemy territory, watched over by U.S. machine-gunners in sandbagged bunkers on the roof of the governor's building across the road. Ramadi was the most dangerous city in Iraq, and the area around the building the deadliest place in Ramadi.

Now, a pact between local tribal sheiks and U.S. commanders has sent thousands of young Iraqis from Anbar Province into the fight against extremists linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The deal has all but ended the fighting in Ramadi and recast the city as a symbol of hope that the tide of the war may yet be reversed to favor the Americans and their Iraqi allies.

In a speech on June 28 at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, President George W. Bush cited the turnaround here and elsewhere in Anbar Province, a vast desert hinterland that accounts for nearly a third of Iraq, as a reason to resist demands from Democrats in Congress for an early withdrawal of U.S. troops.

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But Bush's pitch masked some of the crucial questions that still confront U.S. commanders.

Two factors that have led to the astonishing success in Anbar - the Sunnis' dominance of the province and the nature of their foe here - could have the opposite effect elsewhere, especially in Baghdad. There the population is an explosive mix of sects, rather than largely Sunni.

And the Sunnis' fight - explicitly so, in the case of many of the new volunteers - is not just against Qaeda-linked extremists, but ultimately against the U.S. presence here, and beyond that, the new power of the majority Shiites.

The Anbar turnaround developed just as Bush was committing nearly 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq in a bid to regain control of Baghdad and the "belt" areas that surround it. The so-called troop surge reached full strength in mid-June, and the results so far have been mixed. In any case, the Pentagon has told U.S. commanders it can be maintained only until next March at the latest.

This has left commanders looking beyond the surge's end to a point when the trajectory of the war, increasingly, will be determined by decisions the Iraqis make for themselves.

So the question is whether the Anbar experience can be "exported" to other combat zones, as Bush suggested, by arming tribally based local security forces and recruiting thousands of young Sunnis, including former members of Baathist insurgent groups, into Iraq's army and police force.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who leads the Shiite-dominated national government, has backed the tribal outreach in Anbar as a way to strengthen Sunni moderates against Sunni extremists there. But he has warned that replicating the pattern elsewhere could arm Sunni militias for a civil war with Shiites.

Anbar has been a war zone now for four years, and the Americans are as much a part of life as the blasting summer heat.

Ramadi, which lies on the edge of a desert that reaches west from the city to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, had a population of 400,000 in Saddam Hussein's time. That was before the insurgents - a patchwork of Qaeda-linked militants, die-hard loyalists of Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath Party and other resistance groups fighting to oust U.S. forces from Iraq - coalesced in a terrorist campaign that turned much of the city into a ghost town, and much of Anbar into a cauldron for U.S. troops.

Last year, a leaked U.S. Marine intelligence report conceded that the war in Anbar was effectively lost and that the province was on course to becoming the seat of the Islamic militants' plans to establish a new caliphate in Iraq.

The key to turning that around was the shift in allegiance by tribal sheiks. But the sheiks turned only after a prolonged offensive by U.S. and Iraqi forces, starting in November, that put Qaeda groups on the run, in Ramadi and elsewhere across western Anbar.

Not for the first time, the Americans learned a basic lesson of warfare here: that Iraqis, bludgeoned for 24 years by Saddam's terror, are wary of rising against any force, however brutal, until it is in retreat. In Anbar, Sunni extremists were the dominant force, with near-total popular support or acquiescence, until the offensive broke their power.

[Ramo]

And in Kurdistan:

On May 30, US commanders and Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan, signed an accord transferring security responsibility for the region from Coalition forces to the Kurdish Peshmerga. American troops were hurriedly pulled out of Erbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah, but remain in force in and around Kirkuk.

While Iraqi Kurdistan faces threats from Turkey and Iran, it stands accused of provocative actions and abuses in disputed areas outside the region. These are nominally controlled by the federal government, but militarily in the hands of the Kurdish militias.

http://www.kurdishaspect.com/doc080907IWPR.html

If Kurdish political maneuvering fails, however, the KRG has a considerable military force to turn Barzani’s talk of civil war into reality. Kurds who were recruited out of the peshmerga militias of the KDP and PUK make up a large percentage of the new Iraqi army units operating in northern Iraq. One estimate is that the KRG could mobilise 175,000 fighters, equipped with tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery.

Arab and Turkoman organisations fear that deployments are already underway for the armed seizure of the city. Following suicide bombings in Kirkuk on July 16 that killed 85 people, there are unconfirmed reports that as many as 12,000 additional Kurdish troops have begun moving into areas surrounding the city, ostensibly to provide security. According to the Voices of Iraq news agency, some 6,000 peshmerga have been dispatched to "protect oil pipelines", while another 6,000 are being sent to "protect power lines".

Given the carnage in Iraq over the past four-and-a-half years, Barzani’s choice of the word "real" to describe the character of a civil war over Kirkuk cannot be passed over lightly.

The Kurdish leader’s remark suggests that he believes ethnic conflict in northern Iraq would result in even greater death, destruction and displacement than the sectarian violence raging in Iraq’s central provinces. Fighting between Shiite militias linked to Maliki’s pro-US government and Sunni Muslim extremists opposed to its existence has killed tens of thousands of people from both sects and forced well over one million to flee their homes. An exodus of Arabs, Turkoman and other minorities from Kurdish-populated areas—including Iraq’s third-largest city of Mosul which the KRG has only reluctantly not laid claim to yet—could produce well over two million refugees.

http://uruknet.info/?p=m35161&s1=h1

i.e. the Iraqi army units in the North are basically Peshmerga...

Why do I have to demonstrate this? It really is completely obvious to anyone who has been following Iraq.

[Patroklos]

So what your saying is that Northern Iraq is a peaceful place with a functioning secruity apparatus?

I like how you use articles from May when the surge didn't reach full strength until June.

Of course your articles show no progress if you continually use old ones from the same month.

[Ramo]

Tick for Tack

I already refuted this. In my first post.

[Patroklos]

I already refuted this. In my first post.

No Ramo, you think you did. Mostly because of your impossible parameters for success.

Also nice that out of the five provinces the British have turned over you ignore the non happenings in the four the British have turned over and focus on one city in the one province they haven't

[Ramo]

So what your saying is that Northern Iraq is a peaceful place with a functioning secruity apparatus?

No, I was demonstrating that the Northern army units are basically Peshmerga. What I would say about the security situation in the region is that it's a powerkeg waiting to expode over Kirkuk, Turkey and the PKK, federalism, any number of issues. But it's true that the Peshmerga aren't as bad as the Shia militias. I notice that you're not defending your ridiculous post about the glory of the Shia militias.

[DanS]

Originally posted by Arrian
I think this is worth highlighting.

DanS believes that the insurgency can be defeated by military force.

Why? What makes you think this? As you noted, the American experience in Vietnam certainly isn't the basis for this view.

-Arrian

At a minimum, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that it's mostly a military question. Here in Washington, it is received truth that modern armies are not good instruments with which to fight insurgencies. This axiom is fed by our experiences in Vietnam and confirmed to a lesser extent by the Russian experience in Afghanistan.

It seems possible to me that we have a negative-reinforcement loop going on here -- the military wants no part in counter-insurgency, so devotes few resources to making itself better at it. Insurgencies from time-to-time have been fought successfully. Even the US has had some successful experiences in this regard.

Vietnam was a very bad experience for the military and the country, but it seems possible to me that some failures of the time were due to the military being led poorly. Beyond that, it also seems possible that the Vietnamese insurgency, for whatever reason, was especially difficult for the U.S. to fight at that time.

[Patroklos]

I notice that you're not defending your ridiculous post about the glory of the Shia militias.

You have yet to say anything requiring a responce. Are the majority of these tens of thousands of militiamen combing the streets killing everyone they see or sitting in their own neighborhoods guarding their shops and homes. I know this will be hard for you to admit, but almost all of them are doing the latter.

[Ramo]

No Ramo, you think you did. Mostly because of your impossible parameters for success.

The piece that you posted is retarded on it's face. The Anbar model can't be exported. It relies on using Salafi militants as a wedge. That wouldn't work anywhere else. And it's more than dubious that we should be arming thugs like the 1920 Revolution Brigades who are not likely to support the Iraqi state. Seriously, if you're going to post something, it should be, you know, not retarded.