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Nuri al-Maliki, the somewhat lame duck Iraqi Prime Minister, has called today “a bright day” for Iraq, saying “It’s a day that Iraq gained back its sovereignty. Iraq is now its own master.”

Well, maybe. There are still close to 50,000 US troops there, after all, and the formal end of combat5 operations today is a bit of an afterthought since the last combat brigade left earlier in the month.

President Obama will address the end of combat operations, though we certainly haven’t seeen the last US casualty in Iraq. At least he won’t don a flight suit, land on an aircraft carrier, and declare “Mission Accomplished,” as was done the last time we declared combat operations ended (a tad prematurely).

Marc Lynch offers his take: “Why the Iraq Milestone Matters.”

Juan Cole, meanwhile, writes “The Speech President Obama Should Give about the Iraq War (But Won’t).”

Unlike Cole, I’m not sure I’m ready to assess all the rights and wrongs of the war just yet. It was a war of choice, and lasted longer than its proponents ever dreamed, but it did end a brutal; regime, albeit at high cost in Iraqi as well as American blood. Iraq is far more stabilized than it was a few years ago, but months after the elections, it still has no government. Perhaps it’s best to reserve a final verdict, or to remember the reply reportedly given by Zhou Enlai when asked what he thought of the French Revolution: “It’s too soon to tell.”

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The Telegraph reports that 59 persons are dead and 120 wounded in a suicide bombing attack on potential army recruits in Baghdad. There may have been two perpetrators, presumably with bomb belts. Those volunteering for the Iraqi army were gathered in a large crowd outside a government building and being allowed in in groups of 250.

The news came just as Iraq’s political impasse worsened. The two biggest political lists said that they entertained the most severe reservations about a proposal brought to Baghdad by State Department official Jeffrey Feltman that the two attempt to find a formula for power sharing, according to al-Hayat writing in Arabic.

Washington’s goal is presumably to put the secular Iyad Allawi in ultimate charge of Iraq’s security forces. He is an old-time CIA asset and relatively anti-Iranian and so is trusted by the US political establishment. The old-time Shiite activist Nuri al-Maliki is not considered very close to Iran, but he has correct relations with that country and Iran has made it clear that it wants al-Maliki to remain in power. Al-Maliki has been accused of using the prime minister’s office to build up direct control of the army and to establish Shiite tribal militias loyal to his person.

With regard to the security situation, the new Iraqi army does militia smackdown well, at least in Shiite areas. It patrols urban areas o.k. It has significant flaws, though. The soldiers are not good at checkpoint inspection, not good at preventing bombings of major public sites, and still have poor logistics capabilities and few helicopters or other aircraft.

This bombing of a recruitment station, as Richard Spencer of the Telegraph says, is a revival of a Sunni Arab guerrilla tactic, of attempting to forestall the formation of a new Iraqi army and government.

But the sad thing is that this guerrilla tactic, which might have had some effect in Sunni Arab areas at the height of the war, is now being applied long past the date at which it makes any strategic sense. There already is a new Iraqi army. It is increasingly better trained and equipped over time. And, in a country with high unemployment and relatively few opportunities still in the small private sector, an army job is going to remain sufficiently attractive to young men that they will risk trying to join regardless of a few bombings here and there. And, of course, all the clans of all those killed and injured now have a growing feud with the Sunni fundamentalist vigilantes or Baath remnants who were likely behind the attack.

So this bloodshed is the result of a failed guerrilla movement going on as though it still has hope of taking over. It does not. All it can do is retard somewhat Iraq’s economic and political process.

The inevitable meme in the press, that such bombings and instability raise questions about Iraq’s ability to go it alone as the last of the designated US military combat units leaves the country by the end of August is misplaced. The US military was never able to prevent massive bombings when it was in charge. It is not now independently and actively patrolling major urban areas and so could not have forestalled Tuesday’s attack. And, there is no obvious immediate political fallout from random terrorism like that today. It might make caretaker prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is still trying to remain in power, look bad. It might make Iraqis even more fed up with their political class. But it won’t make the largely secular Sunni Arabs suddenly swing around and support the fundamentalists, whom the Shiites and Kurds hate with a passion. It won’t rehabilitate Baathism. It is the equivalent of the way a chicken runs frantically about after its head is cut off (my maternal grandfather raised chickens, and I’ve witnessed the phenomenon). The guerrillas, once having had a serious political agenda, have become nothing more than serial killers taking revenge on reality for their irrelevance.

All this time after the March 7 election, Iraqi parties have still not put together a governing coalition. (In parliamentary systems like that of Iraq, a multi-party election can result in a ‘hung parliament’ where no party has a majority– in contrast to the two-party system in the US, where the political constituents, such as urban liberals or the Christian Right, decide beforehand which party to support and there is always a majority of the one or the other in Congress).

In regard to the latest American proposal, Jamal Batikh of the secular, now largely Sunni Arab Iraqiya list headed by former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, described the suggestions brought to Baghdad on behalf of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and said that his party was preparing a response that would “forcefully reject” power sharing of the sort suggested. The Americans are now saying that Nuri al-Maliki should remain prime minister and that Allawi should become head of the national security council. A spokesman for one of the parties in the State of Law coalition, Abd al-Hadi al-Hassani, said that the Americans appeared to be attempting to build up the national security council so that it has greater powers than the constitution envisages for it, so as to reduce the power of the prime minister’s office and make the leadership fo the NSC attractive to Allawi. He said any such step would require an act of parliament, which in his view would be difficult to obtain.

As for Allawi’s intransigence about power sharing, all the Iraqi constitution stipulates is that the the party with the biggest number of seats have the first crack at forming a government, which would require finding allies to put together 163 seats or a majority in parliament that would vote for the government’s positions. The Iraqiya list received 91 seats in the March 7 election, out of 325 (the largest of any single party or pre-election coalition), and insists that it is therefore owed the prime ministership. That is, the Iraqi constitution envisages a British-style parliamentary system, but Allawi’s list is imagining that it is more presidential (which it is not). Like David Cameron in the UK, the party that gets the prime ministership would have to find even odd political bedfellows (such as the Tory alliance with the LibDems) to put together a majority in parliament. Allawi has not been able to do so and in my view is far less likely to succeed in doing so than al-Maliki or at least al-Maliki’s coalition. Allawi therefore does not automatically deserve the prime ministership in a parliamentary system, only the right to attempt to convince coalition parties to give it to him, in which he has consistently failed (as have all the other plausible prime ministers).

The constitutional crisis that Ms. Clinton is attempting to resolve is in my view far more deadly for Iraq than these occasional big bombings, however tragic the loss of life that they cause and however severe the impact on the daily psychology of Iraqis they are. If Iraq cannot form a government, then what is left but a coup? And if large numbers of Iraqis feel disenfranchised by a coup, which they likely would, would not such an event threaten return to civil war?

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‘Iyad ‘Allawi’s ‘Iraqiyya Bloc in Iraq has suspended talks about a coalition government between itself and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s State of Law Alliance, after Maliki reportedly called ‘Iraqiyya a Sunni bloc. It insists it is multi-sectarian (‘Allawi is a Shi‘ite).

After five months of stalemate, the failure to form a coalition threatens to cast a shadow over the US effort to emphasize the end of its combat role in Iraq by the end of August. (Of course the distinction between “combat troops” and training troops is a fine one, but it allows the US President to claim he has fulfilled a campaign promise.)

‘Allawi’s bloc one 91 seats in Parliament, Maliki’s 89.

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The public statement by Iraqi chief of staff Lt. General Babakr Zebari , at a defense conference that the Iraqi army would not be ready to stand on its own until 2020 and US troops should remain until then is not a statement about security issues in general but is a highly ethno-sectarian piece of insubordination.

Unsurprisingly, the elected prime minister of Iraq and head of the current caretaker government, Nuri al-Maliki, promptly refuted Zebari and insisted on civilian control of this decision-making. As prime minister, al-Maliki is beholden to the elected parliament, which set the timetable for withdrawal. The Obama White House is also committed to the withdrawal.

Zebari is an old-time Kurdish guerrilla and a prominent member of Masoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party. (That the Guardian article above did not mention this background is incomprehensible to me; I really like journalists and especially ones who risk all by going out to places like Baghdad, and don’t want to be needlessly critical, but when reporting neglects essential context it does a disservice to readers.)

The Kurds have many reasons for wanting the US military to stay in Iraq. They have established what is for all intents and purposes an independent state in what had been 3 provinces of Iraq (though by now the provincial boundaries and administrative apparatuses have long since been erased), called Kurdistan. Kurdistan is the Taiwan of the Middle East, a separate and independent nation that cannot be so named without causing a war (or a whole set of wars). But Kurdistan gives out visas and refuses to allow Iraqi army troops on its soil and does foreign contracts without consulting Baghdad, so what would you call it?

Despite being semi-autonomous, the Kurds also have a strange relationship to the Baghdad government, electing members of its parliament and at present holding the presidency of the country. Some compare this situation to Quebec in Canada, but that province has far, far fewer perquisites than does Kurdistan. It is more as though Jefferson Davis served in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet and Robert E. Lee was a high ranking staff officer in the Union army as well as in the Confederate.

Kurdish nationalism in Iraq is not satisfied with this relatively advantageous situation (de facto separatism plus powerful influence on the central government). Kurdistan nationalists want to annex part or all of several other Iraqi provinces that have substantial Kurdish populations. The Arab population of Iraq (both Sunnis and Shiites) is die-hard opposed to any expansion of Kurdistan at the expense of the territory of Arab Iraq, though virtually everyone is willing to let the Kurds retain their current territory and special privileges.

There have been clashes between the Kurdistan military, the Peshmerga, and the regular Iraqi army, in parts of Iraq as far as 200 miles from the Kurdistan border, because the Peshmerga has taken control there. The situation threatens another civil war in Iraq, and outgoing US commander Gen. Ray Odierno responded by having US troops patrol with both Peshmerga and regular Iraqi army units so as to avoid firefights between the two. Since the US will less and less be in a position to provide this mediation service, Odierno suggested that United Nations troops be brought in to fulfill it, but met a firestorm of protest from Iraqis eager to be out from under the long years of deadly UN caretaker status (Iraq is one of the UN’s great failures, where it is responsible for killing large numbers of civilians with its regime sanctions, and of destroying a promising developing economy, and of failing to prevent an illegal and aggressive war on the country by GW Bush).

The US military has consistently sided with the Kurds in both military and political affairs, so it is unsurprising that Zebari fears their departure. Without a US protectorate, the Kurds will face Arab Iraq alone. Moreover, Arab politicians in Baghdad who want to block Kurdistan expansionism have on several occasions already sought support from Turkey in this endeavor, and such a Baghdad-Ankara alliance against the annexation of Kirkuk and of parts of Ninevah and Diyala Provinces is likely to strengthen and be cemented when the US departs.

My own view is that the KDP’s romantic territorial nationalism is anachronistic and inappropriate to a Gulf oil state, and likely to be undermined by economic developments. There is much more petroleum in the Shiite south than in Kurdistan, and pumping and refining it will require a big skilled labor force. Large numbers of Kurds will almost certainly be drawn down to Basra Province to work the Rumaila and other fields (and there is more black gold in Maysan and elsewhere not yet exploited). Just as Kurdish nationalism in Turkey was blunted by the way the Kurds were spread around the country as laborers in construction and light industry (and the way they came to vote just like their Turkish neighbors in Istanbul and elsewhere), Kurdish nationalism in Iraq may well be blunted by the enormous labor migration to the south that is likely to occur over the next two decades. (Further south in the Perso-Arabian Gulf, the countries have such small populations that they have brought millions of guest workers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, etc.; but Iraq has a sufficiently large population, including the Kurds, that internal labor migration is likely to be significant).

In any case, Zebari cannot name any real function the US military could play in Iraqi security in the coming decade beyond logistics and air support, and the latter can be done from Qatar. The US is no longer independently and actively patrolling the cities and therefore increasingly lacks the sort of intelligence that would allow a pro-active intervention. The violence is much less now than when the US was wholly in control.

But beyond being biased and incorrect, Zebari is being insubordinate. The Iraqi parliament passed the Status of Forces Agreement which calls for US troops to be out by the end of 2011. That is the decision of the civilian government. For a serving general to attempt to undermine it is a very bad sign, and if there were an Iraqi government in existence, it should fire him.

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Sajad Jiyad writes in a guest editorial for Informed Comment:

The dilemma for Hizb al-Da’wa: A commentary on the issue of leadership in Iraq

A friend recently said to me that the Iraqi mentality is to only respect the leader and to be outside the spotlight is to be outside full stop.

This, according to my friend, means that having a credible opposition is never a feasible scenario. Any self-respecting politician in Iraq will do their utmost to avoid being shifted from the spotlight, and going into opposition, especially from the position of leadership, is unthinkable.

I countered by saying that actually there may be no need for an opposition now in Iraq and that having a majority or consensus government is the best thing for Iraq given the circumstances.

However, this discussion raised an important point, namely that of being the ‘leader’ or to say it frankly, to hold the office of Prime Minister. What is it that makes this issue at the centre of the negotiations for forming the next government? Aside from the obvious issues of power, patronage and protecting party interests, Iraq may indeed have a problem of ‘al-sanamiyyah’ (literally idolatry) or the cult of personality. Whoever is in power, is very much inclined to do their utmost to stay there, because of the general attitude of the people which promotes the ‘yes-men’ culture around the PM and also because to move away from the prime ministerial position is to be ignored and much less revered.

Recent political developments in Iraq make more sense if we take into account this cult of personalities rather than only looking at the maneuvering of parties. The Shiite religious parties are saying they will only go into coalition with the ruling Da’wa Party and its State of Law coalition if it dispenses with incumbent Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. But that diction assumes that the party is independent of al-Maliki, who is its head, though he is surrounded by a small, powerful and secretive ruling committee, as well. Moreover, it assumes that in today’s Iraq a party and its leader could flourish when out of power, whereas in fact the levers of the state are crucial for acquiring resources and patronage, especially in a party that has a limited and fickle constituency. Since al-Maliki’s appointment as PM, the party has entrenched itself in the state apparatus and institutions, empowering itself politically and financially, far greater than its legal and constitutional mandate allows it to. Undoubtedly, a change in PM means a change in staff, ministers and the strength of the ruling party, in this case, al-Da’wa al-Islamiyyah or Islamic Mission Party.

For al-Da’wa, this is a situation which threatens to seriously weaken it, bringing it to a similar fate that the Shiite, clerically-led Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq faced, coming down several rungs in the ladder and having far lesser influence and weight than it used to. This is because the al-Da’wa party does not have significant membership or cadres on the ground. Someone might say that this applies to most of the other parties as well, but the issue with al-Da’wa is that it does not identify particularly with any one constituent or community. The Kurdish parties have their party constituencies in the northern provinces tied to the Barzani and Talabani families, ISCI plays to the Shi’ite communities of the South and many of the clergy (who influence many thousands), the Sadrists derive their strength from the impoverished followers of the late Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and the Iraqiya list draws its votes from the Sunni community of Iraq (former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi’s own faction picked up much less votes than the Sunni parties in his coalition). The Da’wa do not identify clearly with a religious, ethnic or other constituent community.

The election results show that 22.3% of the total votes for the State of Law coalition were collected by al-Maliki, and only those in Baghdad could vote directly for him. That is to say nearly a quarter of the votes that the governing group gained were won by the PM. It would be fair to say that his position as PM was a major vote-getter, reinforcing the earlier point about the benefits of incumbency. To say this more clearly, a major reason the election results were good for al-Da’wa is because the head of the party is the Prime Minister.

This brings us to the dilemma they currently face. On Sunday 1st August, the Sadrists announced that they will cut off negotiations with the State of Law Coalition (of which the Da’wa is the central party) because of their insistence on nominating al-Maliki as PM. Though they announced it as a decision by the political committee, it was actually an order from Muqtada al-Sadr. Ahmed al-Chalabi reflected the general thinking of the Shiite fundamentalist Iraqi National Alliance (which groups ISCI, the Sadrists and others) in backing this move, yet dangling the carrot for al-Da’wa by saying the National Alliance is still alive. That is, it is alive if al-Da’wa will jettison al-Maliki.

What the Sadrists have done is to force SOL, in truth al-Da’wa, to choose between two scenarios. One is to nominate a new figure for PM (Haidar al-Ebadi would be the most acceptable) and keep hold of the position of PM and all the benefits that this brings at the cost of upsetting al-Maliki and possibly fracturing the party again and also showing their limitations, as well as confirming the Sadrists (in reality Muqtada al-Sadr) as kingmakers, which reaffirms the precedent of 2006 and may come back to haunt them in the future. The Da’wa has already split several times, most recently when former prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari formed his own branch of the party and was excommunicated by al-Maliki.

The second scenario is for al-Da’wa to insist on al-Maliki’s candidacy and seeing the other parties propose a new PM (probably not the secular-leaning ex-Baathist Allawi) and force the Da’wa to accept some ministries but see themselves lose the privileges of the PM position. This means that their political influence will diminish and the future ability to pick up large numbers of votes decrease. Ever since ISCI lost the poll for PM in 2006, their power has been eroding. Once al-Maliki goes from being the PM to an MP, he will no longer attract the same spotlight, bringing us back to the discussion at the beginning of this article.

If the Iraqi people can move away from the yes-men culture and the idolization of political strongmen, its democracy will be much more robust and also allow politicians to save face, maybe even to lead to idea of sitting in the opposition benches being credible. As it stands, the ability for parties to engage in corruption and to abuse the state institutions and the fear of the no-spotlight effect breeds a jungle-like environment in which only the most ruthless wins and survives. The cut-throat state of Iraqi politics, while still more democratic and sophisticated than everyone else in the region, only leads to the worsening condition of the country and the discontent of its people.

Sajad Jiyad is a researcher on Iraqi politics, based in Londond

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I know I’ve already posted once today on Fadlallah, but in the wake of CNN’ firing Octavia Nasr for a Tweet expressing admiration for the man, perhaps CNN should comment on the kind words spoken by, among others, by my count so far, King ‘Abdullah II of Jordan, Nuri al-Maliki of Iraq, and NATO Ally Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.

But then, those guys don’t work for CNN.

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Politico/ here

“… The vice president has one big mission here: to NUDGE Iraq’s top politicians to resolve the standoff they’ve had since their March 7 elections. He’s meeting with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Ayad Allawi in hopes that they’ll form a coalition ahead of Aug. 31 – the date President Obama decreed, back in his Camp Lejeune speech of February 2009, that “our combat mission in Iraq will end.” The next day, as a way of signaling that Obama has kept his promise, the mission’s name will change from ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom” to “Operation New Dawn.” …”

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President Obama’s appointment of Gen. David Petraeus to succeed Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of US forces in Afghanistan signaled a continued commitment by the White House to a large-scale counter-insurgency campaign involving taking large swathes of territory, clearing it of insurgents, holding it in the medium term, and building up local government and social services.

It is frequently asserted that Gen. Petraeus “succeeded” in Iraq via a troop escalation or “surge” of 30,000 extra US troops that he dedicated to counter-insurgency purposes in al-Anbar and Baghdad Provinces.

But it would be a huge mistake to see Iraq either as a success story or as stable. It is the scene of an ongoing civil war between Sunnis and Shiites that is killing roughly 300 civilians a month. It can’t form a government months after the March 7 elections, even though the outcomes are known, having a permanently hung parliament, wherein the four major parties find it difficult to agree on a prime minister. The political vacuum has proved an opening for Sunni Arab insurgents, who have mounted effective bombing campaigns and more recently are targeting the banks. And now the caretaker government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is being shaken by a wave of violent mass protests even in Shiite cities that voted for him, against his government’s failure to provide key services, especially electricity in the midst of a sweltering summer heat wave. On Saturday, a big protest rally denouncing the lack of electricity turned violent, and police shot dead two protesters. In some parts of Iraq temperatures reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and few places have electricity more than 6 or 7 hours a day. The minister of electricity has been forced to resign. On Thursday, the headline in al-Zaman, the Times of Baghdad, read “Electricity Uprisings Break out in Hilla and Diyala under the Banner of Ousting al-Maliki.” If the caretaker government falls in the face of this popular pressure before parliament can agree on a new prime minister, there would be a dreadful security vacuum and a constitutional crisis.

Going back 3 1/2 years, Gen. Petraeus did what he could to end the Sunni-Shiite Civil War of 2006-2007, which helped produce the nearly 4 million Iraqi displaced (most of whom are still homeless) and likely killed tens of thousands. He put blast walls up to separate Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods; he put in checkpoints to keep out car and truck bombs; he made some markets pedestrian-only to stop them being blown up; he established Sunni Arab pro-American militias, the “Sons of Iraq,” to fight the fundamentalist vigilantes, both Sunni and Shiite; and he systematically tracked down and had killed the leadership of the insurgent cells.

I mean to take nothing away from the significant and important efforts of the US military in 2007 when I say that they did not all by themselves end the Sunni-Shiite civil war. In some ways, they inadvertently hastened a Shiite victory. Gen. Casey had been convinced to begin his plan of disarming the Iraqis in Baghdad with the Sunni Arabs by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The US military stuck to this bargain. But it turns out that if you disarmed the Sunni Arabs, then the Shiite militias came at night to chase them away. As I argued a couple of summers ago, working in part from the intrepid journalism of Karen DeYoung at WaPo, the main reason for decrease in the virulence of the Civil War (it is not over) was that the Shiites succeeded in ethnically cleansing the Sunnis from Baghdad. Based on US military and NGO statistics, on patterns of ambient light from West Baghdad visible by satellite, on the on-the-ground investigations of journalists like AP’s Hamza Hendawi, and on subsequent voting patterns, I don’t think Baghdad is now more than 10-15% Sunni, whereas it was probably about half and half Sunni and Shiite at the time of Bush’s invasion in 2003.

Obviously, when formerly mixed neighborhoods gradually no longer had Sunnis living in them, the ethnic violence declined (militant Shiites would have had to drive for an hour to find a Sunni to ethnically cleanse). My own field research among Iraqi refugees in Jordan in August of 2008 revealed to me the mechanisms by which the Sunnis were chased out. Many had been explicitly threatened by name, receiving death threats in their mail boxes. In addition, one fourth of Iraqi families who formally registered as refugees in Jordan had had a child kidnapped. Many had seen family members or close friends killed before their eyes. Some continued to receive threats in East Amman apartments, as the militias tracked them down to their new, squalid residences.

It was in part this Shiite wave of militia power and the usurping of Sunni property (most displaced families in Iraq have lost possession of their homes) that convinced many Sunni clans to go over to the Americans and to fight the Sunni fundamentalists in their midst, since it was the latter whose constant bombings and attacks on Shiite neighborhoods that had provoked the Civil War. Sunni Arabs in Iraq were initially absolutely convinced that they were a majority and that the Sunni Arab world would help them get back their country from the Americans, the Shiites and the Kurds. By early 2007 it had become clear that the Shiites were overwhelming them and that, indeed, their only plausible savior was the Americans, who might be persuaded to act as a moderating influence on the Shiites.

The Shiite victory in the Civil War was thus absolutely crucial as an Iraqi social-history background for what success Petraeus’s policies had.

No such major social-historical change has occurred in Afghanistan or is likely to. The Taliban and other insurgents primarily spring from the Pashtun ethnic group that predominates in the east and southwest of the country. Pashtuns probably make up about 42 percent of Afghanistan’s some 34 million people. Pashtun clans provided the top political leadership to Afghanistan from the 18th century, through the Durrani monarchy, and they look down on the northern Tajik and Hazarah ethnic groups (who speak dialects of Persian). Although probably only 20-30 percent of Afghan Pashtuns view the Taliban favorably, more may admire the Taliban as a group that stands up for Afghanistan’s independence from the Western nations now occupying it.

The Pashtuns do not believe that they have been conquered by anyone, and the vast majority of them wants US and NATO troops out of their country. They would fall down laughing at the idea of being afraid of the Tajiks and Hazarahs. So they will not be as easy to turn as the terrified and traumatized Sunnis of Iraq were in 2007.

What governmental and military framework the government of Nuri al-Maliki has been able to provide depends deeply on Iraq’s human capital. It was an industrializing society with an educated work force, a majority urban sector, and a respectable literacy rate, and its army could be rebuilt in part because literate soldiers are easier to train (not to mention that a stock of experienced soldiers and officers familiar with conventional military tactics could be drawn on). Iraq is an oil state with an income of $60 billion a year from petroleum alone. Afghanistan’s entire nominal GDP is $12 bn. a year. Afghanistan is 28% literate and its army is 10% literate. It is largely rural, poorly educated, and decades of civil war have destroyed or chased abroad its small managerial classes. Afghanistan is far more dependent on kinship ties (clans and tribes) in politics than Iraq (only 1/3 of Iraqis in polling say that tribal identity is important to them). Clan politics is notoriously insular and difficult for foreigners to enter into.

Moreover, Gen. Petreaus’s policies in 2007 in Iraq had many drawbacks. As noted, starting with the disarming of one ethno-religious group, the Sunni Arabs, left them vulnerable to ethnic cleansing by the still-armed Shiite militias. The creation of 100,000 Sons of Iraq fighters among the Sunni Arabs was viewed as a security problem by the Shiite government of al-Maliki, which brought only 17,000 of them into the police or other security forces. Many of the others were gradually dropped from the payroll by the Iraqi government, and, deprived of support by the withdrawing American troops, began being targeted by vengeful fundamentalists as traitors. The blast walls erected around neighborhoods cut them off economically from the city and produced 80% unemployment within, and so that tactic was not sustainable. There were also joint Sunni-Shiite demonstrations against Gen. Petraeus on the grounds that he was imposing and artificial sectarian separation on Iraqis. (I know.) The heavy US dependence on Blackwater and other private security contractors went badly awry when they kept going cowboy and committed a massacre at Nissour Square in 2007. ( The same firm, now renamed, is being brought into Afghanistan.)

Above all, Gen Petreaus was unable to attain in Iraq that pot of gold at the bottom of the counter-insurgency rainbow, increased government capacity and political reconciliation. Even his ultimate crackdown on the Mahdi Army and attempt to marginalize the Sadrists who follow Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr largely failed. The Sadrists did well in the March elections and may well end up being king-makers in the negotiations over a new prime minister and the speed of the American withdrawal. Nor has the Arab-Kurdish conflict been resolved (and that one is a tinderbox).

The Shiite prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, deeply dislikes the ex-Baathists (whom he sees as supported by neighboring Syria), and which he codes as predominantly Sunni Arabs. He has not reached out to them in any significant way, and some 80% of the Sunni Arabs are estimated to have voted for Maliki’s rival, Iyad Allawi (an ex-Baathist himself). Although the list they voted for, the Iraqiya, gained the largest single number of seats, it is not being recognized as the biggest bloc in parliament and will almost certainly not be allowed to form a government. Instead, the two big Shiite blocs made a post-election alliance and are insisting that they will form the government, and the courts have backed them.

The message to Sunnis? Even if you put down your arms and participate in the electoral process, you will likely be marginalized by the Shiite majority.

And now al-Maliki faces the Great Electricity Uprising of 2010. Iraq cannot be a model for victory in Afghanistan, and it isn’t even clear that there has been any meaningful ‘victory’ in Iraq. The best that could be said is that in summer of 2006, 2500 civilians were showing up dead every month, and now it is a tenth of that (still a lot).

The counter-insurgency push in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan could go either way. It could tamp down the Taliban and other insurgents and produce a population grateful for increased security, even at the cost of increased foreign control. Or it could involve Fallujah-like leveling of towns and large numbers of killed and displaced clansmen, pushing Pashtuns now favorable to Karzai into insurgency. I would give the former a 10% chance of happening.

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A series of coordinated attacks on checkpoints and a Shiite mosque on Monday in Iraq demonstrated that the guerrilla opposition to the US-imposed new order in that country continues to be active and organized. Some 300-400 civilians and members of security forces are still being killed in political violence every month, not counting the insurgents themselves. The death rate from such violence appears little changed this year from last. The attacks continue to make economic progress difficult; they often disrupt the work (and even destroy the edifices) of government agencies, and they discourage foreign investment. Attacks on Shiite mosques are intended to provoke reprisals against Sunni Arabs, sharpening the contradictions and polarization and making Sunnis easier to recruit and mobilize for the resistance.

Meanwhile, one of the only ways mainstream Sunni Arabs, about 17 percent of the population, can hope to avoid another purely Shiite-Kurdish government would be to acquiesce in the formation of a government of national unity. That step would require the secular Iraqiya List, for which most Sunni Arabs voted, but which includes secular Shiites like its leader Iyad Allawi, to join the government. Thus, Al-Sharq al-Awsat (the Middle East) reports in Arabic that incumbent PM Nuri al-Maliki and Iraqiya leader Iyad al-Allawi have met to discuss a place at the table for the Iraqiya.

This move would have benefits for several parties. Al-Maliki campaigned against ex-Baathist secularists, but his current allies, the Shiite religious parties of Ammar al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr, seem insistent on replacing him with someone else, perhaps Ibrahim Jaafari. The Iraqiya might prefer al-Maliki, who has backed off purely sectarian language and speaks like an Iraqi nationalist, even though he remains head of the fundamentalist Islamic Mission Party (Da’wa), to a more sectarian candidate favored by the Sadrists. So, if al-Maliki can draw the Iraqiya in, it might be a way of outmaneuvering Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army al-Maliki attacked militarily in 2008. Ammar al-Hakim of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which is close to Tehran, has in any case made it clear that he will not join a government from which Allawi’s list is excluded.

So the scenario I predicted soon after the March 7 election, of a core Shiite alliance but a government of national unity that includes Iraqiya and the Kurds, seems in train. It replicates the government of summer, 2006, when US ambassador Ryan Crocker worked hard at cementing it. This time, much of the work seems to be being done by the Iraqis themselves, sometimes reluctantly, as the need for political reconciliation bears in on them and they realize it is key to their future as a state.

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Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that despite their announced coalition, the religious Shiite State of Law and National Iraqi Alliance lists will probably have to resort to an up and down vote in parliament to choose the prime minister. The State of Law refuses to put forward any alternative to incumbent prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is unpopular with the Sadrists, who hold 38 of the National Iraqi Alliance’s 70 seats. Al-Maliki militarily attacked the Sadrist militia or Mahdi Army in spring of 2008 in Basra, and then in Sadr City.

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