All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and our next guest on the show today is Daniel DePetris.
He's the senior associate editor for the Journal on Terrorism and Security Analysis at Syracuse University, or at least it's a Syracuse University publication.
Welcome to the show, Daniel.
How are you doing?
Thank you, Scott.
Thanks for having me out.
Doing well.
Good.
Very happy to have you here.
Very important article here at Foreign Policy in Focus, Al-Qaeda in Iraq's strategy for 2012.
And I like the fact that you seem to know what you're talking about in an article about Iraq, which is rare.
I guess, one, there's an article about Iraq, which is rare for these days.
And then also that you know what you're talking about at the same time.
And, you know, I'm learning new stuff.
I really like that.
It's actually something very rare going on.
But so right now there's Arab League meeting or it's about to start Arab League meeting in Iraq.
And yet there's bombs going off and the civil war is still going on to some kind of degree.
Can you fill us in on who's who and what's going on here?
Sure, Scott.
Like you said, the Arab League meeting is actually began yesterday with a introductory meeting with the Arab League economic ministers or the finance ministers, if you will.
This is the summit is actually a very, very big event for the government of Iraq.
They haven't had an Arab League summit inside of Iraq since 1990, which, of course, was the year when Saddam Hussein's infamous invasion of Kuwait.
Basically, for the last two decades, Iraq has been outside of the Arab fold or at least out of the Arab mainstream.
And the summit is basically a very, very prime opportunity for Iraq's leadership to attempt to reintegrate themselves back into into our politics.
But like you said, there's the security problem is not going away.
And really, regardless of how much effort and time and money that Iraqi government has been voting to anti-terrorism campaigns, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is by far or used to be by far one of the most deadly insurgent groups in the country, are still plotting and planning attacks throughout the country, virtually uninjured, at least outside of Baghdad.
And now, do they even call themselves that at all?
Or it's the Islamic State of Iraq or means the most vociferous of the Sunni fighters?
Or how exactly do you define that?
Back in 2005 and 2006, the Iraqi wing of Al-Qaeda had a very horrible time getting on, quote unquote, the good side of Iraq's Sunnis.
They've been especially back in this when the sectarian violence was completely out of control.
So the Islamic State of Iraq was essentially a name trying to put an Iraqi face on the organization, which at that time was was significantly stocked with foreign fighters from Syria and Saudi Arabia and Libya.
So technically, yes, Islamic State of Iraq is really a political banner where a number of Sunni insurgent groups operate.
But you would agree, though, with, I guess, whoever's calling that the DoD or whoever that these are the direct descendants of Zarqawi's insurgent group back from 2004 and 2005?
I would agree with that.
Yes.
OK.
And now, so whatever happened to the Sons of Iraq strategy where first the Americans and then it was supposed to be Nouri al-Maliki's government were supposed to try to integrate the Sunni former rebels who had kind of after all lost the civil war for Baghdad and were up against Iraq in a hard place kind of situation.
And they were supposed to take guns and money in order to eliminate these al-Qaeda in Iraq, Islamic State of Iraq, suicide bomber, crazy types and take over their own kind of security.
And then everybody said, well, they kind of never really mentioned the benchmarks again, did they?
They did all chant over and over again that the surge worked.
So sounds like you're telling me it didn't.
Well, I'm not saying that.
I'm saying, essentially, the al-Qaeda, first of all, it's very difficult to, as we know throughout the world, regardless of which region we're talking about, it's very, very difficult to eliminate a terrorist group in its entirety.
It was supposedly designed to get the sectarian violence under control, at least enough for the Iraqi government to start making progress on the political front.
On the security aspect, it worked.
Politically, it has not worked as well as we would hope.
The whole strategy of the surge was essentially to get Baghdad, if common enough, the Iraqi government and the Iraqi parliament to essentially war with the country and mend their differences.
And as we see throughout the various news programs here in the United States and even in Iraq itself, there's still a significant amount of sectarian tension within Iraqi politics as a whole.
And now, does Maliki still pay the Sons of Iraq, as they were called then, the former insurgents who then turned against al-Qaeda in the end of 2006 and were then paid by Petraeus in 2007?
Essentially, the Sons of Iraq program, which we obviously nowadays credit with, at least partly, for bringing down some of the violence in the Sunni-dominated areas of Anbar province, they have had a very, very difficult time with the Prime Minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki.
And part of the reason is, number one, the payments have either entirely stopped or, in some cases, have not even been given to the tribes, who are essentially, if you think about it, local militiamen trying to keep their areas under control.
The Sons of Iraq program in itself, at least politically, has not held up.
Again, has not held up very well.
Maliki was supposed to reintegrate most of those militiamen into the Iraqi security forces, whether it be the National Army or the National Police Force.
That has essentially stopped, and Maliki has really been very suspicious, or at least partly suspicious, of a group of armed fighters that he cannot control.
So, that is essentially where we stand with the program now.
Because I think what you're saying is, it was always, not just the local Iraqi fighters, but it always was the Libyans and the Syrians and the Saudis, that they had joined up the Sons of Iraq program too, and that made Maliki want to cut it off.
And I guess the question for the other side of this break will be whether that has anything to do with this new rise of Al-Qaeda and this great piece, Al-Qaeda in Iraq Strategy for 2012, by Daniel DePetris.
It's at foreignpolicyandfocusfpif.org.
We'll be right back after this.
Alright y'all, welcome back.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Daniel DePetris.
He's the Senior Associate Editor for the Journal on Terrorism and Security Analysis, a Syracuse University publication.
And he's got this very interesting, very important, I would say, article here at foreignpolicyandfocusfpif.org.
It's called Al-Qaeda in Iraq Strategy for 2012.
And so, you know what, never mind where we were.
Just go ahead and tell us about their strategy for 2012.
The Shiites control Baghdad now because of our war, and now we're kicked out because they don't need us, because they're in alliance with Iran like they always were.
And so now we're gone, and so now they still have the Sunni-based insurgency on their hands, led by the suicide bomber crazies.
Is that about right?
Take it from there.
Well Scott, as you said before the previous break, Al-Qaeda's strategy is not simply blowing up people for the sake of blowing up people.
That is, in no doubt, part of it.
I mean, we have 50 people killed in suicide bombings in one day, and then the next week we have another 50 killed.
But there are a number of dimensions that Al-Qaeda in Iraq is essentially trying to accomplish, at least in the short term.
One of them, as I alluded to in the article, is to get the Shia to overreact.
And that's essentially been their main strategy in Iraq since their formation back in 2004.
The notion essentially is to rekindle the civil war at such a height that the violence would get completely out of control and the Iraqi government wouldn't be able to handle it anymore.
It would basically collapse in and of itself.
Thankfully for most parts of Iraq, especially in Baghdad, that has not happened.
The Shia have essentially taken the violence in stride, I guess you could say, simply because, like you said, they control the government.
Technically it's a coalition government, but Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been essentially an autocratic strongman in the government in control of many of the security force units.
So the Shia have had no reason to stand up, because they're essentially in control of the security ministries.
The second short-term dimension I alluded to is to essentially strike out at the Iraqi security forces.
And this would essentially have two goals.
One is to inflict enough damage that the Iraqi people themselves will feel unconfident about the authority of the police officers to actually do their job.
And the second is to deter other young men, whether Shia or Sunni, from joining the police force.
And so it's essentially a divide-and-conquer strategy.
The conqueror part is still far way off.
I don't see them conquering anything.
They can certainly divide the Iraqi people, though, and they've proved in the past that they've done that.
Well, and you know, there's also the thing where if the government is going to do everything they can to prevent these kinds of attacks, that means creating an unbearable martial law police state for everyone, which undermines their support as well.
That's why Bin Laden mocked us for embracing the choking life that he was trying to get us for overreacting in the first place back in 2001.
When you look in Baghdad today, especially now that the Arab League Summit is going on, you have an additional 100,000 security forces deployed inside the capital.
And the capital in and of itself has had thousands upon thousands of security forces before that.
So like you said, at least in the next coming week, especially the last three days, Baghdad has been virtually in a state of quote-unquote martial law, if you think about it.
We have a lot of major checkpoints dotted around the city.
It takes four or five hours for an average Iraqi family to get to their jobs.
Some people have just been so sick of the traffic that they ditch their cars and start walking miles to their employment.
And even despite all those security measures, we have significant bombings and shootings going on across the country.
So Iraq is anything but a stable place.
Yes, it's a heck of a lot more safe than it was, but it still has a tremendous amount of trouble on the security front, and I assume it will probably have more trouble in the future, at least again in the short term, in the next two or three years.
Well, I guess I want to get back to the first part of al-Qaeda and Iraq's strategy here, that they're trying to get the Nouri al-Maliki government to overreact, meaning start the civil war back up full scale.
And I guess it sort of looks like that was more or less impossible because the war was over Baghdad.
And once the Sunnis were kicked out of Baghdad, there's no way that they could possibly take it back now, not in any near term.
And so it would have to be a really kind of careless mistake for Maliki to send his entire army into Anbar or something and try to just lock it down when, you know, after all, 50 dead cops or 50 dead people near a police station or something there's no skin from his chin, right?
So what does he care?
I mean, he's a politician after all.
It would be, quote unquote, suicidal.
I mean, if you think about it, the Sunni-dominated Anbar provinces, even without a large contingent of police officers, looks very warily at the Shia-led government in Baghdad.
They don't think that the central government cares about their needs, and they're very distrustful of many of the Shia police officers that are deployed in the area.
So the hard stick approach, simply bringing troops into Anbar province and trying to, like you said, lock down the city and put more checkpoints around the city, would not be received well by the locals living there.
Well, which means that, you know, that's really to al-Qaeda and Iraq's advantage, too.
I mean, maybe they can't provoke Maliki into going that far, but that also means that they have a safe haven, apparently, as long as the locals will tolerate them, then they can at least keep accomplishing goal number two, which is eroding the confidence of the people of Baghdad and the rest of Shiite Iraq, eroding their confidence in Maliki and maybe even in the system of government that they have, the current parliament and security forces, such as it's all set up.
It is essentially to create an extremely wide divide between the people and their leaders.
It's essentially the opposite of the counterinsurgency strategy that the United States and our coalition allies were attempting to forge inside of Iraq a couple of years ago.
And to al-Qaeda's advantage, at least within the Sunni population, the Shiite-led government, like I alluded to before, the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, particularly Maliki, is not good with much support and respect.
The question then becomes, will this divide reach a point where the secession of provinces, whether you have Anbar or Salahuddin province or Diyala province, will try to seek more advantage and more authority and control of their own resources?
And to that point, we have seen some moves in that direction.
We have some local councils, local provincial councils, essentially pushing the autonomy front.
Maliki has, I guess for predictable reasons, not embraced that, and it's essentially because it would take control out of his hands.
This is all part of al-Qaeda's long-term strategy, divide the people from the government.
And unfortunately, if you at least look at some of the interviews that an Iraqi employer or an Iraqi employee gives to some of these press agencies, depending on whom you ask, they have been relatively successful at doing this.
Now, I'm not saying that al-Qaeda is the number one factor for this result, but the Shia-led government in Baghdad has made a couple of mistakes as far as reconciliation, and that's also contributed to it.
But the violence inside of Iraq, whether it be shootings, suicide bombings, or mortar attacks, it all plays into al-Qaeda's hands in saying, look, the government cannot protect you.
Whatever the government does, they cannot protect you, the Sunni, nor do they care about your safety.
All right, now, can you tell me, do you know if there's anything as far as DOD left in Iraq?
I mean, it goes without saying that the CIA is there with the State Department at the embassy, and I guess there's a detachment of Marines, and they say as many as 5,000 mercenaries working for the State Department as security forces, that kind of thing.
But beyond that, are there any air bases, even in Kurdistan, or anything?
Anything left of the U.S. military in Iraq right now?
As far as the information I have, I do not see any large-scale presence or small-scale presence.
I really do not know.
Like you said, they have an attachment to the embassy, but that is essentially a diplomatic procedure, defending the embassy grounds and defending the diplomats and everything like that.
What we see is more, like you said, quote-unquote mercenaries or security contractors filling out the jobs that the soldiers would normally do.
As far as information gleaming as to whether we have a large-scale presence, I don't see it.
Well, we're selling them all those planes.
Somebody's got to teach them how to fly them.
Somebody's got to build their air traffic control system for them and everything.
Something's got to...
I don't know what they're doing, but maybe there's a good story in there for you, Daniel.
All right, well, thank you very much for your time on the show today.
Sure appreciate it.
Thank you, Scott.
Appreciate it.
All right, everybody, that is Daniel DePetris.
He's got this great piece at Foreign Policy and Focus called Al-Qaeda in Iraq Strategy for 2012.
And he's Senior Associate Editor for the Journal on Terrorism and Security Analysis, a Syracuse University publication.
