Who is the enemy? Who is the United States fighting in Iraq? And what's the objective?
Nearly five years into the war, the answers to these basic questions should be obvious. In the Alice in Wonderland-like wilderness of mirrors that is Iraq, though, they're anything but.
The U.S. isn't fighting the Sunnis any more. Almost the entire Sunni establishment is either actively co-operating with the American military or sullenly tolerating what it hopes will be a receding occupation. Across Sunni-dominated parts of Iraq, the U.S. is helping to build army and police units as well as neighbourhood patrols — the Pentagon calls them "concerned citizens" — out of former resistance fighters. Attacks on U.S. forces in Sunni-dominated areas, including the once violent hot-bed city of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, have fallen dramatically.
U.S. forces aren't fighting the Shiites. The Shia merchant class and elite, organized into the mostly pro-Iranian Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council and the Islamic Dawa party, are part of the government that the United States created and supports. The far more popular forces of Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army aren't the enemy either. In August, Mr. al-Sadr declared a ceasefire, ordering his militia to stand down; since then, attacks on U.S. forces in Shia-dominated areas of Iraq have fallen off sharply. Though recent, provocative attacks by U.S. troops, in conjunction with Iraqi forces, on Sadrist strongholds in Baghdad, Diwaniya and Karbala have caused Mr. al-Sadr to threaten to cancel the ceasefire, and though intra-Shiite fighting is still occurring in many parts of southern Iraq, there is no Shia enemy that justifies a continued American presence.
And the United States certainly isn't fighting the Kurds. For decades, the Kurds have been America's closest allies in Iraq. Since 2003, the three Kurdish-dominated provinces have been fairly peaceful.
The United States isn't exactly fighting al-Qaeda any more either. Despite U.S. President George Bush's almost frantic efforts to portray the war as a last-ditch, Alamo-like stand against Osama bin Laden's army, commanders on the ground are having a hard time finding pockets of al-Qaeda to attack these days. In recent weeks, General David Petraeus, Ambassador Ryan Crocker and other authorities have pretty much declared al-Qaeda in Iraq dead and buried. That happy funeral is the result not of brilliant U.S. counterinsurgency efforts, but of the resolve of America's new-found Sunni allies to exterminate the group. Gen. Petraeus now admits that al-Qaeda has been expelled from all its strongholds in Baghdad. In Anbar, says Mr. Crocker, "People do feel the weight's off. Al-Qaeda is simply gone."
And, nearly a year after President Bush proclaimed Iran to be Public Enemy No. 1 in Iraq, blaming Tehran for supporting both al-Qaeda and Shia militias, things are getting better on that front. Last week, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates declared that Iran had quietly promised to halt the smuggling of weapons and advanced roadside bombs into Iraq. "I don't know whether to believe them. I'll wait and see," he said, downgrading the White House's earlier, alarmist warnings about Iran.
General Ray Odierno, the commanding general of the multinational forces in Iraq, noted a sharp decline in the use of EFPs (explosively formed penetrators), the sort of improvised explosive device that the United States blames Iran for supplying. Partly as a result, Mr. Crocker announced that he will resume a dialogue with the Iranian ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi. And the United States has announced its intention to release a number of Iranians detained in Iraq.
Violence in Iraq has dropped precipitously since late summer. With al-Qaeda declared dead, former Sunni resistance fighters wearing American-supplied uniforms, and the Mahdi Army lying low, killings are way down. The security situation is far better than at any time since 2005.
Coming back to life
