The “Surge” …and beyond

What triggered insurgency in Iraq?  Short preparation;  Not enough “boots on the ground”;  Disbanding the military;  De-Baathification;  Unguarded weapons depots;  Unguarded borders.

The Sunni Insurgents and Al-Qaeda:  The two shared a common goal: to reverse the triumph of the Shiites and restore the Sunnis to their lost position of power.  For the Sunni insurgents, the presence of foreign jihadists also helped divert the attention of U.S. forces.

Al Qaeda associated with the insurgents for two reasons:  The first was to establish an al Qaeda-dominated ministate :  The second was to seize a leading position within the insurgency and thereby block a power- sharing arrangement between Baghdad and the Sunni nationalists.

The “Surge” 1.The last effort to secure Baghdad; thousand additional troops ; 3. American troops remained in the cleared areas “24/7; 4.Coalition troops move into both Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods; 5.Made enough of a difference within three to four months of the new deployments; 6.American troops were pulled back to the periphery of Baghdad leaving Iraqi forces to carry on the fight in the capital.

James Fearon:  the Bush administration's political objective in Iraq is unrealistic;  No military solution is possible;  Civil wars are rarely ended by stable power- sharing agreements.

Fearon’s recommnedations:  By pulling out troops from the central theaters the US would increase its military leverage;  This would allow the US to play a balancing role;  If the Iraqis ever manage to settle on the power- sharing agreement that is the objective of current U.S. policy, it will come only after bitter fighting in the civil war that is already under way.

Could Iraq be one of the cases in which power sharing ends a civil war? Two distinctive features that make power sharing feasible:  a stable agreement is typically reached only after a period of fighting has clarified the relative military capabilities of the various sides;  a power-sharing deal tends to hold only when every side is relatively cohesive.