How Iraq is exploiting the surge

Omar Fadhil:

How to eat an elephant?

Most people would say it’s impossible. No one could eat an elephant. Others would argue that one actually could eat an elephant—with patience, one bite at a time.

The government cracked down on the Association of Muslim Scholars, an organization of Sunni clerics sympathetic to al-Qaeda and believed to have even been involved in leading, funding and hosting insurgent groups that have been responsible for countless attacks against Iraqis and Americans alike.

Unlike previous operations, this one is different in that the troops were sent following a request submitted to the government by the department of Sunni endowment, an entity in charge of overseeing Sunni mosques and other religious activities. The chief of the Sunni endowment, Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Ghafour Samarraie, is a moderate Sunni cleric who has renounced the insurgency and explicitly accused the association of assisting al-Qaeda by justifying their murderous attacks against Iraqis.

For four years now we’ve been waiting for this to happen. This al-Qaeda apologist, so-called association of Muslim scholars had to be dealt with and honestly it was frustrating to see them operate freely when the damage they caused was widely known, in nature if not in extent.

This incident, I believe, is not to be seen as abstract and it’s no coincidence that the raid on their office came amid efforts to prosecute corrupt officials from Sadr’s movement and the Fadheela Party. The list includes the former deputy minister of health, a Sadr follower who’s been accused of running sectarian death squads and the chief of the integrity committee in the parliament; a member of the Fadheela Party which is believed to be involved in massive oil smuggling operations in the south. He is now about to lose parliamentary immunity over corruption charges.

The interesting thing indeed is that the officials who are leading this campaign and rose to challenge the Sadrists and the association are from their respective sects and regions.

In Karbala, as a most recent example, the police chief finally declared the Mahdi Army an outlaw group. He accused them of murdering over 700 Iraqi civilians, 70 police officers, kidnapping over 130 civilians as well as conducting some 50 attacks with roadside bombs over the last three years in Karbala province alone.

In my opinion, what we’re seeing right now is an exploitation of the achievements of the surge strategy in the direction to establish rule of law-step by step.

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In a way this is part of the reconciliation process. It is an establishment of the rule of law for all sects which is the beginning of the process of assuring all Iraqis that no one is above the law. It is much more important than the resolutions that the Democrats are demanding, because it puts a real world face on what reconciliation means. Omar believes Sadr has lost much of his ability to make mischief. Many of the media are still overrating his capacity to muck things up and are giving him too much credit for standing down. The fact is that he stood down initially because of the surge. For Democrats to say that his standing down had more to do with the decrease in violence than the surge is to miss his original rationale for standing down. When he tried his brief return, it did not take him long to decide to boogy back to Iran. At this point I think he has become a marginal figure. The moves on the Sunni al Qaeda backers are significant. Even quasi open support for al Qaeda is no longer acceptable in Iraq.