Americans to integrate the Iraqi army, Iraqi police, and U.S. forces into an overall security plan. “We were commuting to work, but an insurgent lives among the people, so you must do it too,” he told me. “We started doing this in Ghazaliya before the surge. Ghazaliya was a killing field. The Mahdi Army was attacking from Shula and the north, Al Qaeda was attacking from the south. The first combat outpost we put in was on the sectarian fault line between the two sides. We set it up with the Iraqi army, and within a week some stores opened up, people came in. We were there in a sustained presence and wouldn’t leave them. It helped set up Sons of Iraq; people realized Americans could be an ally.”
Miska said that the Sons of Iraq were originally organized to fill a gap in local security, predominantly because the local police would not provide security to the Sunni population areas. During the surge, the Americans started placing combat outposts (COPs) and joint security stations ( JSSs) along the sectarian fault lines and right in the Sunni areas because the need was greatest there. “Al Qaeda held the Sunni population hostage in neighborhoods like Amriya, where the flagpole of Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia was planted,” he said. “I think part of the reason the Sons of Iraq came to us in Amriya and Ghazaliya was that they saw the Americans were committed to protecting the Sunni people. Nobody else had a stake in the game—not the police, not the Iraqi army or the Iraqi government.”
More than the surge itself, the declaration of the surge forced armed factions in Iraq to change their calculations. Sunni militias who resented Al Qaeda or were already in conflict realized that the Americans were no longer aiding the “Iranians” whom Sunnis saw as their fundamental enemy. Instead they saw the Americans acting to limit Iranian influence. They saw that the Americans would back them against Al Qaeda and would not abandon them, as they had previously done with Sunni collaborators. Controlling the Anbar province and cutting it off from Sunni strongholds in western Baghdad denied Al Qaeda some of its strategic depth and access to its hinterland. This weakened it and allowed Sunni groups opposed to Al Qaeda to take advantage of the opening. These Sunni groups might have been more skeptical of the Americans had they not seen the success of their Anbari brethren, who began collaborating with Americans against Al Qaeda groups in the summer of 2006 and helped turn one of the most dangerous parts of Iraq into one of the least violent.
There had always been infighting between Sunni resistance groups, but they tried to minimize these publicly to maintain the appearance of a united front. Al Qaeda tried to Iraqify itself after the death of Zarqawi, with Iraqis as its official leaders, controlling the Mujahideen Advisory Council. The increased sectarian violence and aggressive Shiite push forced Sunni groups to rally together and work with Al Qaeda. But Al Qaeda members acted like gang leaders, terrorizing local populations more than fighting the occupier. Local religious, tribal, and traditional leaders, as well as educated elites, were either killed, co-opted, or expelled. Often the population followed them out, turning areas into ghost towns.
In October 2006 Al Qaeda announced the creation of its Islamic state in Iraq. It was not about liberating Iraq from the occupation; it was about a larger global war. But most of the Iraqi resistance had no appetite for this sort of global jihad. Resistance groups began to feud with Al Qaeda, as leaders were assassinated. In 2007 the Islamic Army of Iraq publicly broke with Al Qaeda, condemning its tactics and claiming that thirty members of the Islamic Army had been killed by Al Qaeda. These clashes began in Amriya. That year three leading resistance groups established the Jihad and Reform Front, which condemned Al Qaeda’s tactics (such as targeting civilians) and goals.
Al Qaeda men condemned tribal traditions for being un-Islamic, and actively undermined or usurped traditional authority. This alienated local communities. During the modernizing era of the 1970s, tribes were marginalized as the state asserted itself. But in the ’80s tribes were co-opted and armed in the war against Iran. Tribalism was used by the regime, and tribal leaders who proved loyal servants were empowered. Although tribal leaders were initially ignored by the occupation, the Americans also began to co-opt and collaborate with them during the surge, empowering them to rebel against Al Qaeda.
Sunnis in Anbar might have opposed the occupation, but they also wanted stability, and Al Qaeda brought only chaos. The Sunni tribal “Awakening” began in Anbar, led by Sheikh Sattar Abu Risha. Soon other tribal leaders joined him. Many were not important or powerful until the Americans empowered them. Abu Risha himself was widely known as a highway robber, operating on the highway between Baghdad and Amman. His conflict with Al Qaeda might have had more to do with a dispute over looted goods than ideology. But when Al Qaeda killed his tribesmen, a blood feud between it and the tribes started. Al Qaeda taxes on smuggling also made tribal leaders chafe. The explicit American shift in emphasis from killing the enemy to protecting the population allowed it to be more subtle when dealing with resistance groups. By the end of 2006, the Syrians had also cracked down on illegal border crossings, closing some of the routes Al Qaeda relied on for personnel and supplies. As for Sheikh Sattar, shortly after meeting President Bush, he was blown up outside his home in September 2007, which was probably convenient for both the Iraqi government and the Americans, who now no longer had the problem of disposing of him once he outlived his usefulness.
At the same time, the Sadrists were facing a backlash from fatigued Shiites who saw them as an onerous gang. An increase in American troops focusing on Baghdad was guaranteed to lead to a crackdown on the Mahdi Army, and Muqtada al-Sadr always retreated before the Americans could defeat him, a lesson from his 2004 experience in Najaf. But if his people could lie low and wait for the Americans to reduce their troops once more, they could emerge unscathed and even benefit by letting the Americans cull his ranks of disobedient and criminal- minded elements, strengthening his control.
By the summer of 2007, tension between Maliki and the Sadrists had increased. Though the Sadrists had backed Maliki’s rise to power, they now withdrew from the government, hoping to weaken him. Maliki went so far as to compare Sadrists with Baathists. On the other hand, many of the Sadrists in the government were viewed as corrupt and brutal, so it is also possible that Muqtada withdrew them to clean his movement’s image. The year 2006 was supposed to be the year of the police, according to the Americans. Instead it was the year the police and Mahdi Army became one. The rank and file were dominated by Sadrists. Officers were terrified of their own men. The Mahdi Army took for granted its authority over certain areas. Nobody could challenge the Sadrists—not the Iraqi Security Forces and not the Americans. Just like Sunni criminals using
Control over its men was always a concern for the Mahdi Army leadership. As leaders were arrested, younger, less-disciplined fighters gained more control. Different Mahdi Army units fought each other. As Mahdi Army territory increased, its leadership lost control over local units. Splinter groups terrorized and preyed on people in the name of the Mahdi Army. Even supporters of the Sadrists began to resent the Mahdi Army.
In the summer of 2007, six months into the surge, the Mahdi Army was still cleansing Sunnis in areas like Hurriya. Although Hurriya was majority-Shiite, its Sunnis were well organized and strong. Shiites were initially on the defensive, with many of their civilians killed on a daily basis. To defeat the threat of Sunni militias, the Mahdi Army systematically cleansed all the areas and began to encroach on the nearby majority-Sunni Adil neighborhood. The assassination of businessmen and religious leaders struck fear into the community, weakening it and facilitating its flight. Following attacks on Shiites, the Mahdi Army would pile Sunni corpses on streets in revenge. Amriya and Ghazaliya were the last two neighborhoods in western Baghdad still fully in Sunni hands. Dora was still contested. In eastern Baghdad, only Adhamiya remained in Sunni hands.
In late August 2007, Mahdi Army men clashed with opponents from the Supreme Council in Karbala. About one hundred people were killed and much property was destroyed while hundreds of thousands of pilgrims were in the city to mark the Mahdi’s birthday. An outraged Maliki, who considered Karbala his town, flew down and made it clear he was the boss, wearing a pistol and giving orders to his special forces to secure the city and arrest Mahdi Army men, in some cases leading his own men into neighborhoods. Maliki realized that the Mahdi Army could threaten his authority. On August 29 Muqtada declared a
The Mahdi Army cease-fire was the most important factor in the decline in violence. Until the freeze, eight months into the surge, the civil war was still raging and Sunnis were being cleansed from Shiite neighborhoods that had already been walled off. The militias were still advancing on the west side of the Tigris, far from their base in
