The Calm Before The Storm?

[babylonsister]

http://www.atlargely.com/2008/10/the-calm-before.html

The Calm Before The Storm?

Posted By Cernig


John McCain's declarations of victory in Iraq are likely to turn out just as premature as Bush's famously-flightsuited "mission accomplished", simply because the various faction fights underlying violence in Iraq have been postponed, not solved.

A few days ago, Mariam Karouny of Reuter's Baghdad bureau posted this on the Reuters blog:

Conversations with senior Iraqi officials in the past few days suggest the optimism may be premature.

Shi’ite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians spoke of “bad news” ahead. They talked of deep political divisions, and assassinations ahead of the provincial elections expected in January.

A senior Sunni Arab official, wishing me a happy Eid last week, said: “I wish I could mean this. Nothing has really changed since you have last visited.”

A Shi’ite official pleaded: “Please be careful, we are expecting lots of problems. Don’t be fooled by the current security situation.”

No one sane expects there to be anything other than a rise in violence focused around the provincial elections. The real question is: how bad will it get? If it's bad enough to kick off another round of recriminatory attacks and counterattacks, Iraq will revert back to pre-Surge conditions very quickly. If not, then Iraq has a chance at merely having the kind of background violence experienced in Lebanon or Palestine. With a split in the ruling Shiite elite, between Maliki's Dawa and Hakim's ISCI, to contend with an insurgency that appears to be gathering its strength again and which seems capable of pre-Awakening attack levels, the latter seems a slimmer possibility than the former.

[leveymg]

1. Didn't they get the memo? They're supposed to strew our path out the door with flowers.

Just like the road in.

[babylonsister]

2. Hi, Mark. This is worrisome. We so need to get out of there. nt

[leveymg]

3. First overseas priority for the Obama-Biden Admin. will be to start regional talks

with all the stakeholders in Iraq -- Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, China, EU, Israel, etc. -- to reach a comprehensive "Grand Compromise." Preliminary back-channel negotiations have already started, and the relative calm that's prevailed in the last months has been because of this truce, not The Surge.

It'll work out, if the U.S. doesn't try to impose a settlement on our own terms.