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White
House strategy is to help McCain win in November
The Fake U.S. Victory in Iraq
By Patrick Cockburn
02/09/08 "The
Independent" -- - Political events in Iraq are
seldom what they seem. The hand- over by the US military of
control of Anbar province, once the heartland of the Sunni
rebellion, to Iraqi forces is a case in point. The US will keep
25,000 American soldiers in Anbar, so the extent to which the
Iraqi government will really take over is debatable. But the
future of Anbar is a crucial pointer to the fate of Iraq. It is
a vast area and one of the few parts of Iraq that is
overwhelmingly Sunni.
The Iraqi government is dominated by Shia Islamic parties in
alliance with Kurdish nationalists. The vital question now is
whether or not this Shia-dominated government can reassure the
Sunni minority that they are not going to be overrun as the US
withdraws its forces. The Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is in
a very confident mood. In the past four months he feels he has
successfully faced down the Shia militiamen of Muqtada al-Sadr's
Mahdi Army by taking back control of Basra, Sadr City and Amarah.
Then he refused to sign a new security accord with the US which
President George Bush wanted to see agreed by August 31.
In the past few weeks he has been confronting his Kurdish allies
over the future of the oil city of Kirkuk and the town of
Khanaqin.
Mr Maliki may be overplaying his hand but there is no doubt that
the Iraqi state is becoming more powerful in Iraq and the Mahdi
Army, the Americans and the Kurds less so. The Americans in
particular feel that he exaggerates the extent to which his
success against the Mahdi Army was because of the new strength
of the Iraqi security forces.
These troops were doing badly until they received American
support.
Nevertheless, Mr Maliki's position is strong. He seems to have
realized that he may need the US, but the US also cannot do
without him and is in no position to replace him as it did with
his predecessor, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Much of what the White House is now doing is done to help the
Republicans in the presidential election. The aim is to give the
impression that Iraq has finally come right for the US and
victory is finally in its grasp. The surge is promoted as the
strategy by which the tide was turned and it is true that the
Sunni uprising against the US occupation has largely ended.
But it has done so for reasons that have little to do with the
surge or American actions of any kind. Crucial to the success of
the government against the Mahdi Army has been the support of
Iran. It is they who arranged for the Shia militiamen to go
home.
It takes real cheek for Mr Bush to claim yesterday that "Anbar
is no longer lost to al-Qa'ida" since during the last
presidential election in 2004, he was claiming that the media
was exaggerating the success of the insurgents.
Patrick Cockburn is the Ihe author of "Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr,
the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq
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