20 killed in Iraq - woman in Baquba suicide bombing (Roundup)

In no way a stable situationJun 22nd, 2008 - 21:50:24

This link from O'Hanlon et al gives the good news/bad news aspects pretty accurately. The good news is that the Iraqi Army is more functional than ever before.

The bad news is that it's impossible to integrate Sunni and Shia units; which means that official Sunni units will have to police the Sunni areas, and the Shia will handle the rest, except for the Kurds who have the Peshmerga. Once the oil revenues start flowing, the REAL battle begins between the various factions.

While the analysis below is fair, the fact is that behind the scenes American forces are still directing traffic, and we have the Predators and other advanced gear, not the Iraqis. The Predators are flown from U.S. soil, so our troops are not needed there for that. The new embassy will need protection, plus other government buildings, ministries, etc.

This is anything but a stable situation. al-Maliki has not really 'defeated' anyone, but rather warned them in advance and cut deals, as the Pakistanis have done with the Taliban in Pakistan, who are now launching rockets into Afghanistan.

www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/opinion/22ohanlon.html?th&emc=th

IRAQ remains a violent country plagued by high unemployment, raw wounds from sectarian conflict, extremist militias aided by Iran, more than four million people still displaced by violence, and very limited government capacity to meet the country’s core needs. There has, however, been major progress this spring on two fronts. Together they give reason for hope that the major improvement in security resulting from the surge of American forces may endure even as the surge itself ends this July.

First, the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki showed real backbone by undertaking major military operations that ultimately reclaimed Iraq’s chief southern city of Basra, the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, and much of the northern city of Mosul. Iraq’s government now controls almost all of the country for the first time since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Second, in these recent battles the Iraqi security forces performed far better than previously. While American (and British) combat support and advisory teams remain critical, Iraqis are doing much of the fighting now. Although some units performed badly, as with the Iraqi Army’s inexperienced 52nd Brigade in the Basra operation, the reasons have been identified and addressed. The Pentagon now rates about 55 percent of the Iraqi security forces as “good” or “very good” — and for the first time, such American metrics seem accurate.

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The more interesting story is about the oil deals being quietly cut:

www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/opinion/22sun1.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slog in

So great is the demand for oil today — and so great the concern over rising prices — that it would be tempting to uncritically embrace plans by major Western oil companies to return to Iraq.

Unfortunately, the evolving deals could well rekindle understandable suspicions in the Arab world about oil being America’s real reason for invading Iraq and fan even more distrust and resentment among Iraq’s competing religious and ethnic factions.

We cannot blame Baghdad for wanting to get on with exploiting the country’s lucrative oil deposits, especially when Kurds in northern Iraq are rapidly signing contracts to develop oil fields in their own semiautonomous region. Still, the negotiating process pursued by Baghdad is flawed and troubling.

The contracts are being let without competitive bidding to companies that since the American invasion have been quietly advising Iraq’s oil ministry how to increase production. While the contracts are limited to refurbishing equipment and technical support and last only two years, they would give these companies an inside track on vastly more lucrative long-term deals.

Given that corruption is an acknowledged problem in Iraq’s government, the contracts would have more legitimacy if the bidding were open to all and the process more transparent. Iraqis must apply that standard when they let contracts for long-term oil field development.

Also troubling is that the deals were made even though Iraq’s parliament has failed to adopt oil and revenue sharing laws — critical political benchmarks set by the Bush administration. That is evidence of continued deep divisions in Iraq over whether oil should be controlled by central or regional government, whether international oil companies should be involved in development and how the profits should be distributed.

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