Cognitive dissonance
An Iraqi girl offered refreshments to American soldiers in Baghdad’s tense Dora neighborhood.
The NYT story is called: “At Street Level, Unmet Goals of Troop Buildup.” Its lead sentence is: “Seven months after the American-led troop ’surge’ began, Baghdad has experienced modest security gains that have neither reversed the city’s underlying sectarian dynamic nor created a unified and trusted national government.” But, just like the picture above of the smiling girl and the dour caption, the actual text of the Times story is often at odds with its grim lede:
A roadside ditch here in the Sunni triangle town of Sadr al-Yusufiya contains the two extremes of the American experience in that Euphrates River farming village southwest of Baghdad. At one end sit the remains of a truck bomb that a suicide bomber from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia tried to ram into the village’s American base in June.
At the other end, a thousand overheated Sunni men, ages 18 to 35, wait to be given physical examinations and literacy tests by the very same American troops some of them were trying to kill recently. The push-ups, pull-ups and reading exams are the American military’s attempt to screen the candidates and hasten their hoped-for entry into the Shiite-dominated Iraqi police. Those Sunnis now hope the Americans will help them rejoin the new Iraqi order that they rejected, and that has in turn rejected them for so long.
But it remains unclear whether an Iraqi government dominated by religious Shiites will be eager to embrace the large-scale return of these young men of fighting age. Nor is it clear whether the Americans’ new allies of convenience will submit to the Shiite authorities in Baghdad. Many of the men’s fathers and tribal leaders were officers in the Baath government’s military.
Whatever the suspicions harbored by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s Shiite-led government — and the suspicion is entirely mutual — it is the Sunni belt that has produced the most tangible fruit for Mr. Bush and General Petraeus. Young men in fluorescent-banded jackets stand on every corner, operating checkpoints as part of a growing neighborhood watch venture that General Petraeus has seized upon and branded “Guardians” or “Concerned Citizens.”
Under the project, financed by the American military, the local tribes are paid $10 a day per man to provide security in their areas. Despite protestations from United States commanders that they are not arming those “volunteers,” local American officers confirm that the sheiks can spend the contract money as they wish, diverting money from wages to buy weapons, radios or vehicles if they choose.
The “awakening,” as it has been called, has brought early dividends. Suicide bomb attacks in Baghdad are down — partly because those areas manufactured bombs and sent them into the capital. Certainly, life at Patrol Base Warrior Keep in Sadr al-Yusufiya has become much easier for Capt. Palmer Phillips and his men of Company B, Second Battalion of the Second Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, out of Fort Drum, N.Y.
There have been only two roadside bomb explosions in the last five months, and this week they drove their Humvees without incident to and from sheiks’ houses late at night along country roads that only a few months ago would have been treacherous. “We are now getting information from the local volunteers,” said Captain Phillips. “They are telling us very specific things about Al Qaeda’s activities. They are very specific about checkpoints, people, ratlines and targets.” (Ratlines are supply lines.)
But there are undercurrents.
On a visit to Sadr al-Yusufiya last month, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking American commander in Iraq, met with the local sheiks. They made it abundantly clear that their cooperation did not come free, and that they wanted tangible benefits like jobs, weapons, vehicles, military supplies and electricity. They also delivered not-so-veiled warnings that the Americans’ low-paying job-creation plan, while welcome, was unlikely to keep their people on the right side of the law for long.
“But there are undercurrents.” Ah yes, the New York Times. When the news is good, it’s all about the undercurrents. HT: Jules Crittenden