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Sunni Arabs, Interest Group Politics and Cash Flow

By Fester

The New York Times reports that the Iraqi government is looking to spite the main forces responsible for the decrease in violence in Iraq in order to save money:

After months of promises, only 5,000 Awakening members — just over 5 percent — have been given permanent jobs in the Iraqi security forces. Those promises were made last year when Iraq was flush with oil money.

Now with Iraq’s budget battered by falling oil prices, the government is having trouble paying existing employees, much less bringing in Sunni gunmen already regarded with suspicion by the Shiite-led government.

In interviews with leaders from a dozen local Awakening Councils, nearly all complained that full-time jobs were lacking, that pay was in arrears and that members were being arrested despite promises of amnesty.

Abu M suspects that this is mainly a political decision that is at best partially informed by economic circumstances and not an economic decision in and of itself: "Perhaps, as Ollivant noted, the Iraqi leaders "are well and faithfully implementing the policy preferences of their constituents." How else to explain this? (I don't buy that it's about oil prices.)"

I think he is onto something here as an interest group political analysis could be fairly valuable, although I do think economics and cash flow play a large part in this probable decision tree. As I wrote earlier this month, crashing cash flows means people have to make tough choices:

Paying everyone off when oil was north of $100 per barrel was easy. Paying everyone off at a half to a third of the price of the primary revenue generator is a whole lot harder. The Iraqi government had the ability to throw money around for about eighteen months:

One of the great advantages that the Maliki government has enjoyed since 2007 had been ever increasing global oil prices. This gave them a whole lot of money to throw around and buy off competing interest groups as well as build up primary loyalties to the Maliki government. However over the past couple of months, oil prices have collapsed, and with it, the ability of the Iraqi government to throw money at problems.

Not paying the Sons of Iraq/the Awakening Councils/most former Sunni Arab insurgents may be a logical political choice as Maliki figures that he has consolidated strong US support and internal Shi'ite support for his position as he has effectively co-opted the nationalistic/anti-US strain of the Sadrists with a reasonably successful SOFA and SCIRI has discredited itself by being too corrupt and too ineffective during its hold on power. He is probably betting that if he wants to hold onto power, he needs to hold onto the Shi'ite communities by distributing to them a high proportion of valuable public goodies that are still available to be distributed. In a budgetary environment with sharp spending limits, a dollar spent on unpopular Sunni Arabs is a dollar that can not be spent in Baghdad (now mainly a Shi'ite city) or Karbala or Najaf.

The bet that Maliki is making is that the Sunni Arab tribal and insurgent militias are mainly mau-mauing for a bigger slice of the pie which the US can pay for and that he can continue to buy off enough Sunni Arab tribal elites with his diminished cash flow that his improved military can handle any groups that go back to full combat operations, or at least force them to concentrate enough for US air power to hit them.

Iraqi Unemployment

By Fester:

Young men without overt and legal jobs or hope but ready access to weapons are not a stabilizing force for society.  These young men will either enter the gray and black economies or use their weapons in an attempt to rejigger society more to their liking. 

The recent United Nations report on Iraqi unemployment was not that 'bad' at only 18% unemployment for adults in the workforce and 10% underemployment.  So the Iraqi equivilent of U-6 unemployment was roughly 28% of the adult population.  There are significant local variations but the big driver has been the massive expansion of the Iraqi government's labor force. 

Musings on Iraq looks at the younger population and notes that the young are screwed:

The U.N. found that young men and women were hit the hardest by unemployment. Men between the ages of 15-29 had a 28% unemployment rate. They made up 57% of all the unemployed in the country. That was almost double the government’s statistics of 26% unemployment amongst young people. Women faced an even tougher situation as only 17% were involved in the labor market. Of those, 23% were unemployed and looking for a job. The vast majority that were employed, 80%, were college educated. Only 30% of women with a secondary education were in the labor force, and that dropped to 10% for women that only finished primary school.

The mass exodus of the female population from the workforce in the past seven years is suppressing the society wide unemployment rate as the labor force is smaller.  The nice side effect of these numbers is that it is a good indicator of how well educated the Iraqi work force is (13% of the workforce is female and college educated, so perhaps a quarter or more of the workforce is college educated)

However Salam Pax is raining reality on this parade as the oil price collapse will lead to significantly higher unemployment in the near future:

Iraq’s largest employer is putting a hold on all future hiring.

The first who’ve heard the bad news were graduates and new students of medicine, dentistry and pharmacy universities. The ministry of health announced that this year they will only hire 300 (really?!!! is that all we need? I thought we had a shortage of personnel) graduate doctors and all new students were told there are no places for them in hospitals.

You’d think all is peachy in the Iraqi health sector. More probably the truth is that the government over-hired and now has to pay way to many salaries than it can afford.

After the medical profession was given the happy news the rest of Iraq was informed via TV. Gov is not hiring anymore. Unless you’re just coming back with an MA or PhD from foreign, then they might make an exception. And with no private sector this leave too many graduates with no jobs.

The tactical successes of buying off the Sunni insurgencies and the completion of the Baghdad ethnic cleansing as well as the surge have not addressed the underlying issues.  Those underlying issues have receded but are still the flash-points of sustained conflict. 

What's the 2nd best deal for Maliki?

By Fester:

This is a speculative post. 

Maliki is playing for a deal that keeps him and his allies in power while removing the electoral threat of being seen as too subservient and dependent on the US Army and Marines to keep him there.  The question is what is the second best deal that he can achieve with the United States assuming Obama is elected President.  His best deal is that the US agrees to lend him a corps or two to beat down on his domestic opponents, hand him tens of billions of dollars a year in non-accountable walking around money, and says jackshit about his internal policies. 

Lawyers, Guns and Money outlines the problems Maliki and his government faces and started this train of thought for me:

Maliki really wants a more favorable agreement with the United States, which will perhaps include a timetable but will certainly preserve a tight military relationship between the two countries. The reason for this is obvious; Maliki's military control over his country is tenuous, and Iraq is utterly incapable of protecting its borders. Still, I suspect that Maliki could get a pretty good deal on military cooperation from Obama, and I suspect that Maliki knows that such a deal is available

The best deal is basically the current situation.  And that is unsustainable as the US is broke, out of deployable reserves and needs a couple of divisions in Afghanistan to stabilize that situation.  On top of that, public support for staying in Iraq is minimal while public support for pulling most/all US ground troops is getting to the 'puppies are cute; agree or disagree' level.   So what is the second best deal that he can achieve given the assumption that his long term negoatiating partner is Obama?

Maliki's primary concerns are in-group cohesion of the powers that be is maintained while excluding the powers that aren't to be from the division of spoils.   The secondary concern is maintaining territorial integrity which means keeping the Turks from launching a full scale invasion of Kurdistan instead of the traditional rounds of punitive raids and multi-brigade recons in force.  The strategic constraints he faces are deep anti-American sentiment that is cross-sect and widespread, multiple groups with demonstrated capacity of bringing a modern state to its knees, a satratpy military and the oil curse. 

The US's concerns are getting strategic flexibility back, ensuring something that resembles a decent order and moving Iraq up the failed state index and out of the top-10. Doing that would 'coincidentally' insure higher oil flows.   We don't have much concern about who is in power in Baghdad as we have armed and paid off, and placed into power natural opponents, targeted and bombed natural allies, and then engaged in mutually contradictoray strategies all at the same time.  The strategic constraints are a diminishing ability to sustain troop levels, diminishing fiscal and popular supports for foreign adventures, and higher needs for state-stabilization elsewhere. 

So what deal could be cut that is plausible?

Maliki probably needs something along the lines of a sustained and large fixed wing aircraft deployment to either Kuwait or the northern Persian Gulf to provide support to his mercenary supported forces so that they can beat down on any large formations opposed to his government forces.  Obama has stated that he is not thrilled about Blackwater and other PMCs, but they are a fact of life.  And if the US issues a basic security guarantee that is an extension of the Carter Doctrine and relies on pre-positioned equipment to Kuwait and Irbil, that solves the American political problem of residual forces that resolves the border integrity concerns.  That type of deal solves most of the political problems and I think is fairly plausible.   

Peace through superior firepower

By Fester:

Artillery and air strikes, no matter how precise are not an effective means of winning hearts and minds as the smallest munitions still produce area effects and will kill a significant number of innocents even if best efforts are taken to minimize civilian casualties while firing into high density urban areas.  The recent push into Sadr City had the US provide stand-off fire support for a six week stalemate that was resovlved politically and a significant chunk of that support was from air power; via Abu Muqawama:

The U.S. military has fired more than 200 Hellfire missiles in Baghdad since late March--just six were fired in the previous three months

American ROE require positive visual identification of "hostile act" or "hostile intent" before firing, and U.S. pilots are diligent about following these guidelines, and war is not a video game--real people, including innocent bystanders, die. Sadr City is a slum of 2 million souls stacked on top of one another...

the heavy reliance on airstrikes during the surge is evidence of the lingering attraction overwhelming firepower has for the U.S. military.

This attraction towards heavy firepower is not limited to air strikes.  One US brigade commander uses artillery as a psychological terror weapon by frequent H&I strikes (via Fabius Maximus)

 Well, that’s a great question and one I like talking about. Eleven thousand five hundred rounds, I still believe in the carrot and stick, based on the propensity of this culture to — how they deal with power and authority. And it goes back to — it serves a couple purposes, the whole terrain denial piece.

One, we deny terrain to insurgents, (movement ?) routes, IED placement, those types of things. But it also sends a significant message when we start concentrating on a particular area for four or five days at 75 to 100 rounds a day in a given area, it has a profound impact on the population. Just like if I would start shooting artillery around your neighborhood.

We always do the collateral damage assessments and we will not — we have mathematical formulas that we know the effect, the physical effect of the round going off on anything nearby. So that’s not an issue, but it’s just the psychological impact.

If I would start shooting artillery around your neighborhood, it would quickly get your attention and cause you to start asking questions. Why are they doing this? And most of the time, 99 percent of the time they know why we’re doing it. We just received a series of IEDs that damaged vehicles, hurt our soldiers, et cetera. So they quickly get the message.

Peace through superior firepower is a good bumper sticker but a horrendous method of COIN. 

What's going on in Sadr City

By Fester:

There are two very distinct views of what is going on in Sadr City and Iraq in general.  Dr iRack at Abu Muquama captures this divergence very well and then presents a very strong and binding constraint of interpretation.  I agree with the second interpretation best:

1. Helping a legitimate Iraqi government (with growing cross-sectarian support) crack down on "criminals," "outlaws," and "thugs" who challenge the "rule of law" and the state's Weberian claim to monopolize violence; or

2. Whether we are simply caught in the middle of an intra-Shia power struggle, empowering one side (Dawa and ISCI) in its effort to weaken its principal rival (Sadr/JAM) in their ongoing competition for control of sourthern Iraq and the hearts and minds of the Shia masses in the lead up to provincial elections.

The significant constraint on interpretation is legitimacy of the Sadrist current.  It has it within its base and the Maliki government does not.  Some of this is identity based, but the majority of the legitimacy is presence base --- the Sadrists have been there for the poor and the dispossessed displaced Shi'ite communities for decades now.  And they have not left despite having that option.  Presence counts in all relationships:

Sadr continues to have more legitimacy than the central government or the coalition. Part of this is due to family reputation, part is due to Sadr's nationalism, and part is due to the extensive efforts by the Sadrists to provide essential services to the impoverished residents of Sadr City. It is also a byproduct of the dysfunctionality of the Maliki government and the inability of the government of Iraq to surge humanitarian aid into Sadr City during the recent fighting. In other words, in the competition to provide governance and legitimacy, the Sadrists have a significant advantage and will likely continue to do so.

What to expect if the Sadrists fight

By Fester:

Right now the probability of a large scale series of confrontations between the US military, the Maliki government and Badr aligned forces and the Sadrists is increasing.  So if the Sadrists are confronted with what they perceive to be an existential threat, what should we expect to see?

I do not expect to see significant set piece urban engagements where the objective is to hold ground.  Ground is minimally important while holding the social space is critical. For instance, the US Army and Marines were able to hold a reinforced brigade in Ramadi for four years despite not having control of the city past the line of sight of their weapons.  Ramadi only quieted down when the leaders of the Iraqi social space centered around Ramadi decided to cooperate with the US in order to achieve local goals.  The same logic will apply in Sadr City and other major slums. 

The inability of the Sadrists to hold ground is not an indictment against their skills, it is a recognition of guerrilla warfare 101 --- don't play to the main force opponent's strength.  As the Sadrists saw in Basra this week, they can take on the Iraqi Army and win but as soon as significant US and UK firepower is applied via artillery and airstrikes, those victories become Pyrrhic. 

My analysis suggests that the Sadrists have a strong base of support that is larger and more committed than the Dawa/SIIC base of support within the Shi'ite Arab population.  This is aided by the rhetoric of liberation and anti-American nationalism as well as the extensive and reasonably competently provided social services.  The Sadrists have some good will they can afford to burn off in a service denial campaign.  The Maliki government is a weak government and it possesses several crucial choke points.  The most notable is the flow of oil and therefore the flow of money.  The Sadrists have a demonstrated capacity to blow up the southern oil export infrastructure, and this should be anticipated.  Furthermore the Sadrists have excellent information on the key individuals with unique skills in the Basra oil industry to target for information, intimidation, kidnapping and assassination.  It is very likely that a sustained 50% shut-in could be achieved. There is a much lower probability of sustained system disruption in the north.  However there have been Sadrist groups in Kirkuk for two years now.

The other point of governmental vulnerability that the Sadrists can support is the electrical infrastructure.  This infrastructure is long, linear and brittle and can be taken down and kept down for sustained periods of time with minimal effort.  These actions will hurt Sadrist supporting groups, but will impose higher direct and legitimacy costs on the Maliki government.

Most of this analysis has focused on intra-Shi'a capabilities with little reference to attacks on Americans because the immediate objective of the Sadrists would be to survive and it is easier to defeat the weaker opponent first.  Roadside bomb attacks, mortar and rocket fire and sniper fire against US patrols and US positions will increase, but if the Sadrist fighters are smart, most of their offensive efforts should be directed against Iraqi government forces. 

Finally, as Cernig noted, the Sadrists have a blueprint of an effective state destabilization campaign laid out for them by the Sunni Arabs, and the Sadrists have several common threads with the Sunni Arabs:

Sadr can field a force comparable in size to the Sunni insurgency before the Awakening, with the support of a population just as large as that insurgency had. The obvious conclusion is that any "war of liberation" he mounts could be just as difficult to defeat as that insurgency proved to be for five long years.

Sadr treed Sistani

By Fester

The cat herder Grand Ayatollah Sistani has been treed by one of his cats according to initial reports from CNN.  Moqutada Sadr's offer to reign in/disband his militia on the condition that the senior Shi'ite religious leadership ordered it was a nasty, effective and Machiavellian piece of work.  Sistani could either ordered the Mahdi Army to disband and thus hang the Maliki government around his neck and thus de-legitimatizing his moral/political authority in the eyes of Sadr supporters just as Sadr finishes up his studies to advance in theological rank OR Sistani balks at the blatantly political move by Maliki and re-legitimatizes Sadr and the JAM/Mahdi Army as first among equals in the Intra-Shia scrum. 

Sistani blinked according to initial reports:

Iraq's top Shiite religious leaders have told anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr not to disband his Mehdi Army, an al-Sadr spokesman said Monday amid fresh fighting in the militia's Baghdad strongholds....

But al-Sadr spokesman Salah al-Obeidi said al-Sadr has consulted with Iraq's Shiite clerical leadership "and they refused that." He did not provide details of the talks.

The Mehdi Army has borne the brunt of an Iraqi government crackdown on what Iraqi and U.S. officials call "outlaw" militias in the past two weeks. The government's effort to reclaim control of the southern city of Basra in late March sparked clashes across southern Iraq and into Baghdad, leaving more than 700 dead, according to U.N. agencies.

Al-Sadr's followers have accused the government, which is dominated by al-Sadr's leading rivals, of trying to cripple their movement before provincial elections in October.

Sistani's great fear is that the internal divisions within the majority Shi'ite community could/would be exploited in a classic divide and conquer routine to keep his people out of power.  This is what happened in 1920, and it dominates his actions and option space shaping.  Since this is a blatantly political divide and conquer move by Maliki to fracture the pan-Shi'ite coalition that Sistani wants be either marginalizing or destroying the Sadrist current, this is entirely predictable. 

Furthermore as Juan Cole points out, this is a standard tactic of legitimatizing behavior combined with political hot potato:

the US press went wild for this supposed report that Muqtada al-Sadr said he would dissolve his militia if Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani ordered it. Folks, he always says that when there is a controversy. (He said the same thing in spring, 2004). He says it because he knows it makes him look reasonable to the Shiite public. He says it because he knows that the grand ayatollahs are not going to touch the matter with a ten foot pole. They are not so foolish as to take responsibility for dissolving a militia that they had nothing to do with creating. And that is probably the real meaning of this CNN report that they 'refused' when asked. I doubt the grand ayatollahs in Najaf actively commanded Muqtada to keep his militia. They just declined to get drawn in.

Cole has some fun at the local idiots who are convinced that Saddam's WMDs are in Syria, victory is around the corner, the Iraqi Army is standing up, the Badr Brigade is no more, and tax cuts pay for themselves:

So let us get this straight. Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fought off thousands of regular Iraqi army troops in Basra and Baghdad, and perhaps thousands of those troops deserted rather than fight. So the Mahdi Army won big and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki lost. Also the US military trainers of the Iraqi troops lost face.

So the next thing we hear is that al-Maliki is talking big and demanding that the Mahdi Army be dissolved. Usually you get to talk big if you win the military battle, not if you lose.....

So the idea that, having lost militarily, al-Maliki and his political allies (who are a minority in parliament now) could just a couple of days later jawbone Muqtada into giving up his paramilitary was always absurd.....

Maliki wins, Maliki wins.....

By Fester

Some of the right wing dead-enders are insisting that Maliki and the SIIC/Dawa alliance won the most recent round of intra-Shi'ite incipient civil war.  Or if at least if it is not apparent that he and his side won, it is part of a super secret, double reverse Statue of Liberty play in which this intermediate phase is designed to give the Mahdi Army a dose of overconfidence to draw them out from their strongholds so that the super duper Iraqi Army can have a wargasm on them at some point at a politically convenient time. 

Really, Maliki won if you exclude Basra, Baghdad, amnesty, motivation and loyalty.

The New York Times is following up with reports of the replacements from yesterday with another report on the desertions today.  And that picture is not pretty and indicative of an army that does not want to fight for the causes of the central government:

More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.....

But three officials said that among those who had been relieved of duty for refusing to fight were Col. Rahim Jabbar and Lt. Col. Shakir Khalaf, the commander and deputy commander of an entire brigade affiliated with the Interior Ministry.

A senior military official in Basra asserted that some members of Colonel Khalaf’s unit fought even though he did not. Asked why he believed Colonel Khalaf did not fight, the official said that the colonel did not believe the Iraqi security forces would be able to protect him against threats to his life that he had received for his involvement in the assault.

Two things we should remember here.  The first is that a significant easing factor of the initial invasion was quite a few Iraqi field commanders decided that the reports of a multiple-division US attack in the sector meant it was a good idea to look at Swiss ski chalets while their troops stayed in barracks and painted rocks.  Some of their decision making was aided by large suitcases of unmarked $100 bills, but another was a lack of motivation to fight.  Secondly, the Interior Ministry is de facto Badr Brigade.  So not all of Maliki's militia muscle is motivated to fight for him.  Interesting.....

Secondly, Maliki won if winning includes following the demands of the loser to release prisoners, cut back on raids, and beg for captured vehicles back.   The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Maliki has ordered his forces to  stop all raids on militias:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Friday ordered a nationwide freeze on raids against suspected Shiite militiamen, according to a statement issued by his office. The announcement came a day after Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia fought government troops in Basra and Baghdad last week, hinted at retaliation if the arrests of his followers didn't stop....

Really, these are the signs of a victory --- seeing seemingly loyal units and commanders desert or engage in search and evade activities, begging for captured supplies to be returned and not following up on the resounding success in Basra by taking advantage of the weakness and moral fracturing of the Sadrist militias by calling off all attacks at the threat of massive retaliation.

Really he won...........[/snark]

Motivation, Mutiny and Militias

By Fester

Cernig already passed along the report from Mark Lynch at Abu Aardvark that the Maliki government is hiring 10,000 new security service members/cops in southern Iraq despite the long standing claims that the Iraqi government could not hire most of the Sunni Awakening Councils due to budget constraints and manpower limits.  Mark also notes that all of these jobs went to local Shi'a militiamen who happen to be supporters of the SIIC/DAWA coalition --- amazing integrating the Badr Brigades further into the state security apparatus to take on politically more popular groups with US air support --- now that is reconciliation!

Juan Cole is passing along a report that provides some understanding and motivation for this move ---- a good chunk of the Iraqi security forces that were tasked to fight the Sadrists either sat the fight out, or outright defected.  We had seen some reports of small units handing over their weapons, but Kevin Drum is passing along a report that multiple brigades of the Iraqi Army either decided to sit this fight out or allied themselves with the Sadrist militias. 

Maliki is making a smart move from the point of view of a weak player with a crappy hand and limited loyalty forces.  It is a horrendous move if the objective is to recreate and cement a national Iraqi identity and foster political reconciliation. 

The 14th Division that he sent into Basra was a loyal unit and it was not that good of a unit on both performance and loyalty.  He needs to bind his supporters ever more closely to his side and using the notational national security forces is a good way of doing that.  He has the advantage of his guys get to wear shiny uniforms with nifty flags on their shoulders calling themselves the national and legitimate army and thus being able to call for occasional US/UK air support, but his cadres have not been motivated to fight and take heavy casualties. 

This is why the talk of political reconciliation and standing down as 'they' stand up is and has been a farce for four years now.  The groups and units that are motivated to fight have either consistently been shooting at US forces three or four years, in the national uniform but are fighting for alternative loyalties or are defending their own neighborhoods.  The Sunni Arabs are not invested in an Iraq that the US will allow to exist as they are screwed in; the Kurds who are on the government payroll are willing to fight and fight hard, but they are fighting for an independent (de jure or de facto) nation, and the Shi'ite militias may or may not be in government pay, but they are fighting on who gets the oil spoils. 

So in this environment, individuals and units who are willing to either collect a paycheck as long as it is not too dangerous (for Iraq adjusted values of too dangerous) OR fight and fight hard when it suits their interest have every reason to sit out fights or defect when the fight is for an objective that has no salience for them.  Fighting to enhance Maliki and SIIC/Dawa's power is not in the group interest of quite a few of the groups willing to fight for their own causes. 

 

Refugees and Revealed Preferences

By Fester

Several years ago I worked as an evaluator for a program that had a completely voluntary attendance policy.  Some portion of the origins of the policy were legal, a bit more was mission derived and a tiny chunk was an implicit quality management measure as the people I worked for figured that if their programs sucked and were unattractive for one reason or another, their audience would quickly fade away and vice versa.  If they saw a revealed preference among their intended audience to not be at the programs, it was a time for change or at least a re-examination of the offerings.  Not a bad metric, but not perfect, but that is why they hired me. 

If one assumes that people are reasonably self-interested and that their behaviors make a decent degree of sense to them within the confines of their environment, incentives and constraints, looking at behaviors is a good way of seeing what the environment is and perceived to be.  This logic was applied last fall when Syria started to kick Iraqi refugees out for visa violations and as refugees began to ran out of money.  A large show was made about the few thousand refugees who returned to Baghdad.  Most returned because they had no other options.  Only a few, according to the UN, were there because they had options but thought the situation and security in Baghdad had improved.    This was supposed to a revealed preference argument that things were improving.

However the United Nations is reporting a stable external refugee population of approximately 2 million Iraqis (~7% of the pre-war population) and an increase in the internally displaced population from 2.5 million to 2.8 million since the start of this year.  Some of the internally displaced increase is being attributed to more efficient counting measures.  However the revealed preference is that things are not getting sufficiently better to make the leave/not leave decision lean in the not-leave direction for anyone with the capacity to leave.