Juan Cole: Forget the Surge -- Violence Is Down in Iraq Because Ethnic Cleansing Was Brutally Effect

[RedEarth]

Forget the Surge -- Violence Is Down in Iraq Because Ethnic Cleansing Was Brutally Effective
By Juan Cole, JuanCole.com
Posted on July 29, 2008, Printed on July 30, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/93081/

In the article below, Juan Cole takes a closer look at the "surge," weighing the troop increase alongside the numerous other contributing factors to the decline in violence. At the same time, he reminds us that, regardless of the relative decrease in bloodshed -- and what may be behind it -- the country is still a frightfully unstable place for Iraqis. "Most American commentators are so focused on the relative fall in casualties that they do not stop to consider how high the rates of violence remain," he writes. Few people would consider Afghanistan, where last year an average of 550 people were killed per month, a safe place. Yet, "that is about the rate recently (in Iraq), according to official statistics." -- AlterNet War on Iraq editor Liliana Segura

......

For the first six months of the troop escalation, high rates of violence continued unabated. That is suspicious. What exactly were U.S. troops doing differently from September than they were doing in May, such that there was such a big change? The answer to that question is simply not clear. Note that the troop escalation only brought U.S. force strength up to what it had been in late 2005. In a country of 27 million, 30,000 extra U.S. troops are highly unlikely to have had a really major impact, when they had not before.

As best I can piece it together, what actually seems to have happened was that the escalation troops began by disarming the Sunni Arabs in Baghdad. Once these Sunnis were left helpless, the Shiite militias came in at night and ethnically cleansed them. Shaab district near Adhamiya had been a mixed neighborhood. It ended up with almost no Sunnis. Baghdad in the course of 2007 went from 65 percent Shiite to at least 75 percent Shiite and maybe more. My thesis would be that the United States inadvertently allowed the chasing of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs out of Baghdad (and many of them had to go all the way to Syria for refuge). Rates of violence declined once the ethnic cleansing was far advanced, just because there were fewer mixed neighborhoods.

.....

The Shiitization of Baghdad was thus a significant cause of falling casualty rates. But it is another war waiting to happen, when the Sunnis come back to find Shiite militiamen in their living rooms.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/93081/forget_the_surge_--_violence_is_down_in_iraq_because_ethnic_cleansing_was_brutally_effective/

[TwilightGardener]

1. We let them kill each other, or move to segregated areas, or become refugees--

and we bribed the rest of the would-be insurgents. That's pretty much it in a nutshell.