Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The Sunni Awakening played a major role in the reduction of violence in Iraq in 2007 and 2008, as Sunni tribes that had been fighting the government turned their attention to fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq instead.  So how’s that working out?  In Anbar Province, Liz Sly of the LA Times reports that things look pretty hopeful:

“The Awakening is an economic and political entity now, and our strategy is financial and economic,” said Abu Risha, who has led the Awakening since his brother’s assassination in 2007….Here in Anbar province, birthplace of the Awakening movement, the Sunni Arab paramilitaries who turned their guns on fellow Sunni insurgents have become the government.

….It promises to be quite a transformation for a movement that started out in 2006 as a tribal uprising against the insurgents who had sought to impose a vicious interpretation of Islamic law on the western desert province. Photographs on Abu Risha’s wall show his slain brother, Abdul-Sattar, who founded the movement, dressed in robes, slung with bullets and surrounded by Kalashnikov-wielding militiamen.

In Baghdad and Mosul, however, the London Times reports that the news is grim:

A leading member of the Political Council of Iraqi Resistance, which represents six Sunni militant groups, said: “The resistance has now returned to the field and is intensifying its attacks against the enemy. The number of coalition forces killed is on the rise.”

The increase in attacks by such groups, combined with a spate of bombings blamed on Al-Qaeda, has had a chilling effect on the streets of Iraq. More than 370 Iraqi civilians and military — and 80 Iranian pilgrims — lost their lives in April, making it the bloodiest month since last September. On Wednesday, five car bombs exploded in a crowded market in Sadr City, Baghdad, killing 51 people and injuring 76. Three US soldiers were killed on Thursday and two more yesterday when a gunman in Iraqi army uniform opened fire near Mosul.

Broadly speaking, this is the result of a missed opportunity.  The point of the surge was to provide “breathing space” for political reconciliation, but Nouri al-Maliki, for reasons that are ultimately unknowable, either couldn’t or wouldn’t take advantage of it.  In Anbar, the Sunni tribes acquired political power and the Awakening is still a going concern.  In Baghdad, they were shut out, and violence is on the rise.

It’s not clear to me that there’s anything the United States can do about this.  It’s true that George Bush’s open-ended commitment to Iraq probably reduced the pressure on Maliki to make concessions to the Sunnis — after all, why bother if the Americans are going to be around forever to protect you? — but aside from that Petraeus and Crocker and the rest of the Bush team worked pretty hard to press Maliki into coming up with a political settlement that was broadly agreeable to all.  He didn’t.  American influence just wasn’t enough to make a difference then, and it probably isn’t now.  This is still, at root, a political problem, not a military one.  It’s up to Maliki to solve it, not the U.S. Army.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate