Michael Howard has a fascinating story in today’s Guardian. In his piece, Howard profiles Muhammad Rafiq (not the man’s real name):
Muhammad is one of the thousands of young Baghdadi men to have joined neighbourhood security groups, which have mushroomed over the last year and are a crucial factor in the dramatic decline in civilian deaths. U.S. soldiers call them “concerned local citizens”; Iraqis just call them sahwa (awakening) after the so-called Anbar awakening in western Iraq, which has seen Sunni tribal sheikhs take on foreign-led Islamists. There are now an estimated 72,000 members in some 300 groups set up in twelve of Iraq’s eighteen provinces, and the numbers are growing. They are funded, but supposedly not armed, by the U.S. military. “It is Iraq’s own surge,” said a western diplomat, “and it is certainly making a difference.”
It is a moving story about the reconciliation that is taking place in a nation that was traumatized by Saddam Hussein’s 35-year Reign of Terror, and the chaos and bloodshed that followed in the wake of Operation Iraqi Freedom. “We grew tired and angry about the killing, and so decided to act,” according to Muhammad. “Muhammad, a Sunni Arab, and his Shia colleagues in the neighbourhood watch group are determined to reverse the ethnic cleansing,” according to Howard.
This story is anecdotal evidence of two important trends: Iraqis are increasingly taking back their streets, and the Petraeus Plan is allowing political progress and reconciliation to take place from the bottom up. Critics of the war who insist that the surge has “only” shown progress on the security side are quite wrong. The success in pacifying Iraq is, in fact, allowing many other good things to take place.
Howard’s story comes during a week in which Major General Joseph Fil, Commanding General of the Multinational Division Baghdad and 1st Cavalry Division, reports that attacks against citizens in Baghdad have dropped almost 80 percent since November 2006, murders in Baghdad province have decreased 90 percent since November 2006, vehicle-borne IED incidents have declined approximately 70 percent since November 2006, and more than 500 shops are now open in the Dura Market in southern Baghdad, compared to less than a handful in January 2007. “Commerce has returned to many of the marketplaces in Baghdad,” Fil reports, “and many Iraqis now can shop without fearing for their lives.”
As we reach the end of the year, there are many things for which we can (collectively) be grateful. Right at the top has to be the progress we’ve seen in Iraq in 2007. The situation remains fragile and the challenges there are enormous. The United States liberated a broken nation, and we lost crucial years while pursuing the wrong counterinsurgency strategy. Yet with all the appropriate caveats in place, we can still say the gains we have seen since the surge began earlier this year are staggering. A nation that was in a death spiral a year ago is reconstituting itself. Al Qaeda has absorbed tremendous punishment and is now scattered and on the run (if still lethal). Iraqis are now siding, in huge numbers, with a Western, “occupying” power in an effort to defeat Islamic militants. And, according to recent data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project, much of the rest of the Arab world is turning against bin Ladenism (in Lebanon, for example, 34 percent of Muslims say suicide bombings in the defense of Islam are often or sometimes justified; in 2002 – pre-Iraq war—74 percent expressed this view). And what seemed almost impossible a year ago now seems within reach. If we prevail in Iraq, the United States will have done so on a battlefield chosen by our enemies. And if we do, the war in Iraq—for all the cost in blood and treasure—will be seen as a key, and maybe even a decisive, moment in the war against militant Islam.
We’re not there yet. But we’re much closer than we were a year ago.
