The Loyalty lease is expiring

By Fester:

Col. Pat Lang on the upswing in large scale bombings in Iraq:

The most important component of the policy package shorthanded as "The Surge" was not the increased US combat presence, however helpful that was.  The most important thing was the successful effort to woo Sunni insurgents away from active or tacit support of the takfiri jihadis and into the "friendly" category.  We did that, and well.  They were not wholeheartedly converted "born again" friends of Brother Dave Petraeus?   What a surprise!  We used money to bring them to our side?  How terrible!  Does that mean that their hearts were not pure!!  Ah, the world is a sad place and this kind of work is always like herding cats.

Now the Americans are clearly leaving.  Power is steadily shifting towards the Shia dominated government that the Americans created.  That Shia government does not seem inclined to honor the variety of overt and implied "promises" that the Americans made to the "Sons of Iraq," etc.  The government's actions toward their Sunni "brothers" surely indicate that this is true.

In that situation it is to be expected that Sunni Arab hostility to the takfiri jihadis will wane and it is waning.  That is why it is possible for there to be more and more suicide bombings.  Get the message?

There are two ways to avoid further difficulty - 1.  The government should understand that bloody minded oppression of the Sunni Arabs will mean unending low level warfare in Iraq, and 2.  Someone should keep paying off the Sunnis sub rosa. 

Me in 2005:

• The Sunni Arab community believes it will receive a much better deal by outlasting the US and imposing either rent against a Shi'ite dominated government for non-violence or a military victory that is far more favorable to them then currently participating in the political process.
• Sooner or later the US will get out of Iraq in some fashion; the Sunni Arab community will stay in Iraq no matter what.

Me in 2007:

The overarching Iraqi Sunni Arab political goal is a return to their previously privileged positions within Iraqi society, thus receiving the economic, political and cultural rents that they previously were collecting...

It is looking more likely that the lease with the option to buy the Sunni Arab tribal loyalty is running out with little chance of that option being picked up.  The dynamic has been to either strengthen the Sunni Arab tribal elites or see an increase in violence.  That dynamic is playing out in Mosul and Baghdad as well as in the disputed areas near Kirkuk's oil fields and oil distribution systems.  The Sunni Arabs are potentially re-asserting their capacity to be veto players.