Jon Taplin's Blog

The Surge Could Fail

Last week on his radio show, my friend Ian Masters played the tape of an extraordinary conversation he had at the Hammer Museum Forum with two of our best Middle East intelligence analysts: Bob Baer from the CIA and Wayne White from the State Department. During the course of a long conversation, both men made it clear that the “Blowback” dangers of arming and financing the Sunni “Awakening Councils” are very real and the “Surge” in Iraq might end up backfiring. This morning, the New York Times has picked up the same story.

Conflicts between provincial governments and local Sunni Arab forces allied with the United States intensified this weekend in two provinces. The conflicts raise the prospect that the creation of the forces, known as Awakening Councils or Concerned Local Citizens, formed to fight extremists and bring calm to the country, might instead add to the unrest in Diyala and Anbar provinces.

By creating incredibly well armed Sunni Militias, ostensibly to fight the remaining Sunni “foreign fighters” in Anbar and Diyala, we have a real destabilizing force that is now working to take political control of the provinces. This will not sit well with the Shiite central government or with Moktada al-Sadr’s temporarily pacified Mahdi Army. John McCain has staked his presidential run on the success of the Surge. It would be a ironic backdrop to his convention coronation if the Awakening Councils started fighting the Mahdi Army in the heat of Iraq’s late summer.