Monday, June 05, 2006
The violence in Iraq and the legitimacy of the government
The recent sectarian atrocities in Iraq -- which are horrendous -- set the table for the government to earn its legitimacy, or not. Stratfor's morning note($):
In Iraq, as was expected, opponents of the political settlement reached in Baghdad launched offensives from the south to the north. Some were carried out by people who oppose the settlement in principle. Others were by people who are opposed to their status now that a settlement has been reached. Some were by criminals trying to carry out kidnappings for ransom before the market closed. All of it added up to all hell breaking loose. With Abu Musab al-Zarqawi calling for war against the Shia, and the Shia fighting in Basra, it looked like the situation was completely coming apart.
Now we are coming to the real issue. This surge of violence was inevitable, but the core questions are these: Can and will the Sunnis shut down their insurgents, and will the Shiite leadership be able to control factions that are not pleased by their cut of the deal? If so, this will not be a long, complicated process. If the leadership of each side has a degree of control in their communities, then the level of violence should flare out and decline in the next week or so. Any degree of control -- and it doesn't have to be absolute -- should cut into the operational capabilities of insurgents and factionalists, even if it doesn't shut them down completely. The issue is whether Sunni and Shiite leaders want to shut down the violence, and whether they have the control everyone has assumed they do.
By the end of the coming week, if the violence is intensifying or simply maintaining its current level, the news will not be good for those who want a unified Iraq. Certainly, it is possible that it will take another few weeks, but as we have said before, we should be seeing substantial changes by July and some indicators by June 15. There is nothing yet that leads us to call the new government a failure, but we will be watching this coming week for some sign of abatement in the violence.
This strikes me as generally correct, although I wonder if Stratfor is right that we should see results, if there will be any, in days or weeks. The terrorists have recently focused on very soft targets -- vans and buses filled with civilians. While it seems to me that a political deal might indeed degrade the insurgency's operational capabilities against hardened targets, it may also be that the "unity" government will be least able to prevent seemingly random attacks on clusters of innocent civilians, even with the cooperation of Sunni and Shiite leaders. Will the government be able to achieve the much more challenging objective of shutting down the wholesale slaughter of unarmed, unguarded Iraqis? If its legitimacy turns on that requirement, it will be longer before the government of Iraq is worthy of the name in the eyes of its own people. And it is they, after all, who count.
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